When I went to university I was a half-hearted cradle Catholic with a vague sense that maybe God existed and maybe I should be going to Church maybe. I met a bunch of people called the Christian Union who had a very strong sense that God existed and in that first year at university patiently formed me in the basics of the Christian faith, something you might have thought my Catholic school would have done for me. They were also very definitely of the opinion that I should be going to a different Church to the Catholic one.

A difficult situation. The people who awoke me from my rediculous primary school "if you are good you go to heaven" theology and explained so much about who Jesus Christ is and what He came to do were now suggesting I drop the Catholic Church and become "Free Church". I was sufficiently deficient in my formation in the Catholic faith that they had to explain terms like transubstantiation to me before they could then explain why I should not believe them.

I looked for help in the Catholic Church but sadly found, as I sadly do today, that many priests are more keen on enlisting you in their own personal battle to change the Church than on defending it. Who then, would help? Google was my friend. Actually, in those days, Inference Find was my friend. I found folks like Dave Armstrong and Karl Keating. It wasn't long before I found a chap called Mark Shea. Mark, his sheavings and blog offered something no other Catholic apologist had offered before. Humour. He spoke my language. He had a huge influence on my decision to go with the Catholic option and to take it seriously but he also did something else, in introduced me to GK Chesterton.

He also inspired me to begin my own blog. Without Mark Shea Catholic and Loving it! would be Catholic and not blogging it! Some of you might have preferred things that way. I even got a mention (at my old blog address).

Anyway, when I heard that Mark might be coming to England to make a film (there's stardom for you) I jumped at the chance to have him over to speak in Hull. His film was cancelled (disaster) but he heroically volunteered to come anyway on some air miles he had lying around. On Saturday morning at 2am we awoke to pick him up. We went to bed. His flight had been cancelled. We stayed up on Saturday until 10.30pm cutting and sticking for Fr Massie and got four measly hours of sleep before getting up 2am Sunday morning and heading out towards Stanstead Airport to pick him up from his 7am flight. Stanstead at 7am is cuh-hold. We wrapped Leona up.

Mark is, of course, an American. This is obvious and I have known it all along but after five years of reading his blog with my own accent it was a little startling to hear an American voice. We began by taking him to Cambridge. As we drove to Cambridge he was remarklably chirpy for one so recently jarred 8 hours in to the future and remarked "Do you guy's realise you live in England? It's really really far away". We went to Cambridge and met up with our friend Ryan Day. Ryan took us to look at King's College which is really cool.

We went to mass at Fisher House where it was all in latin with gregorian chant. Really cool. Why do they have it in such an ugly room though? After mass we passed some morris men and then went for breakfast in the only place Ryan could find in Cambridge that does breakfasts. It wasn't the greasy cafe I was hoping for but it fed me up a treat and they provided Leona with a really cool high chair from which she had an interesting conversation with Mark's and his camera.

After breakfast we used Ryan's on suite bathroom (posh git) and then got on our way and drove the length of the country past Lincoln and over the Humber Bridge. The Humber Bridge was stunning with the Humber River looking blue and glistening in the setting sun while the sky was pale blue with pink clouds overhead and the concrete of the bridge gleamed gold. Mark Shea slept right through it. Bloody Americans. We let him fall in to bed when we got home and then got him up at 7ish to take him to Ella's parent's for dinner. "Okay" he said, "as long as we don't stay too late." More than four hours later as we drove home at 1.30am Mark remarked that Ella's has "a fun family". The next morning Ella's mum complained to Ella that Ella's Dad and Mark had consumed an entire bottle of Whiskey. This is not true. Ella had some too.

We went to bed at 2ish and left Mark checking his emails on my laptop. Who knows when he went to bed but his ability to function without sleep is remarkable.

Tomorrow... we go to York (if we get up)