The August bank holiday is, in my house, taken seriously. Not in a spiritual performance sort of way. In a genuinely practical sort of way. I use it - and the few days around it - to take stock of where I am. How am I doing on the goals I set at the start of the year? Not to beat myself up about what hasn't happened, but to look honestly at what has - what's come in, what's still outstanding, what I've quietly abandoned without quite admitting it. The harvest metaphor is a useful one here....

have climbed Croagh Patrick. Once. In 2001, I think, or thereabouts. It took about three hours up and considerably less time down, partly because my knees had opinions about the descent that I couldn't ignore. It was a college weekend away...) It's a remarkable experience. I won't pretend otherwise. Standing at the top of a mountain on the west coast of Ireland, with the islands of Clew Bay laid out below you, is genuinely moving - whether you're doing it for Patrick, for the pre-Christian...

For a long time, I had a problem I couldn't solve. My relationship with Brigid was growing. My Catholic upbringing wasn't going anywhere - not because I was still practising in any conventional sense, but because it's in me, in the way that anything you're raised inside is in you. And I couldn't work out how to hold both things at once. I've written about this conflict recently - the specific discomfort of being a pagan Catholic, of loving figures who belong to a tradition you've also had...