The Latin tag above is by Manilius. It means “from the moment of our birth we begin to die, and the end of our life is closely linked to the beginning of it.” An early English gravestone I once saw paraphrased Manilius perfectly: “When we to be to be begunne, we did beginne to be undonne.”

My cat, Beachy Bede, was killed today. Some of you may remember a number of Bede stories I have told over the past few years. He was an outstanding cat, in his prime, and very much the Alpha male here at the stables. He had three on-site girlfriends, Zoe, Figgy, and Olive, and an elderly male chum, Caspar. He lorded it over them all. Weighing all of 15 lbs, he dwarfed the other cats both in terms of character and size. He had just had his sixth birthday in August - a Leo, of course.

This afternoon, a lady who lives across the way knocked at my door. “I think your cat’s been run over. He comes and visits us sometimes. I’ve moved him to the side of the road.” It was true that the Bede travelled far on his hunting sorties. And when Ned Halley and I have our literary lunches, he often followed us on long walks. He was splendid company.

Yesterday he had a particularly affectionate day, with much lounging on my mouse platform (beside my computer), on the gate post (as I lean across the gate, both of us monitoring the comings and goings at the stud), and on my and my wife’s lap (in that order, watching the news and a recording of University Challenge). He had also been having a magnificent mouse harvest recently, with the occasional rabbit thrown in for good measure. Two mornings ago he surpassed himself by leaving a mouse just outside the bedroom door, upon which my wife trod on it in bare feet first thing, letting out a terrified shriek. This gave him immense pleasure - you could almost see the grin on his face.

He was a philosophical cat - addicted, unfortunately to knitting (kneading), which caused him to drool with pleasure. I banned him from knitting on my lap, and he adhered to this with difficulty - but adhere he did, preferring the prospect of the lap, sans knitting, to no prospect at all. A great joy would be to hide behind the stairway curtain and swordfight with me through the material. He usually won. He was also prone to giving me double bats on the back of the leg if he felt I had done him a disservice - claws sheathed, needless to say. I had begun to train him to sit in my wife’s bicycle pannier, but he would only last a minute or so before ejecting himself onto the verge. He was an adept at wire-walking, however, and often soft-footed across the ten foot long metal gate top with an extraordinary assurance.

I went to collect him from the side of the road and carried him back to the stables. I found an old coal scuttle and placed him inside to protect him from predators - an irony, as he was the greatest predator of all. I sealed the mouth of the scuttle with a stone, rather as one would seal a sepulchre in the bible. I buried him behind our shed, on the land he used to hunt on. I won’t put up a plaque. It’s unnecessary. He will eventually become part of the soil he lived on, just as happens to us all.

Thursday was a remarkable day. It started in a rush, however, in which I found myself locked behind an Aldi lorry all the way from Tidworth to Swindon. I was due at the BBC in Swindon at 8.50 am to take part in a round table discussion on Religion: A Force For Good Or Evil?, but at five minutes past nine I was still trying to find the BBC car park (up a maze of one way streets). I asked a passing lady for directions. “Are you appearing on a program?” she said. “Yes. In about five minutes!” “I’m the vicar’s wife. Why don’t you park in the vicarage? Then I’ll point you out the way to the studio.” A miracle! Hot-footing it up to the BBC, I squeezed through security, and sat down in my place just as the program started. Around the table were a Rabbi, a Catholic Priest, a Humanist Officiant, and me (with a Muslim lady called Jasmine taking part over the telephone). There followed an excellent hour of discussion, sometimes heated, often placatory. Here, for anyone interested, is the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00k5sb6/Mark_ODonnell_22_09_2011/

At one point in the debate we were discussing condoms (as one does). Father McAndrew was explaining the Catholic Church’s view on the matter. “You can’t slide out of the condom issue so easily,” said Judith Stares, our humanist. “That is a magnificent pun,” I opined, trying not to corpse, and thoroughly enjoying watching the engineer and producer silently cracking up in the hermetically sealed control room.

Later, I drove north, aiming for Rugby School, where I was to give a lecture to the Temple Society (sixth formers interested in philosophy, the arts and discussion). Rugby School was my alma mater - I spent five years there from 1967-1971, and this was pretty much the first time I had been back. It all seemed very strange, as the school has become entirely co-educational in the interim, and my old house is now a girl’s house. But my host, Dr Jonathan Smith, and his wife Sandra, were so welcoming, and the atmosphere in the school so peaceful and calming, that I instinctively knew that the evening would be a successful one.

After the talk, Barbara Inge, the wife of one of my old masters forty years back (whom we schoolboys all knew as Bill Inge), told me that she had not fallen asleep during my lecture as “You have a smile in your voice. It kept me awake.” It was quite the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Later, after a chat to the headmaster, Patrick Derham, and to the former housemaster of Whitelaw in my time, John Pierson, Jonathan, Sandra and I dined with nine or so of the Temple Society members, and continued on with our discussion. I was very impressed indeed with the sheer quality of the young people seated around the table, and touched that they were kind enough to show such an interest in my subject. I spent the night at Dr and Mrs Smith’s house, and I have to say that the whole experience was one of the pleasantest I could imagine. The school has improved no end since my time, and the young people I saw were clearly benefiting from being brought up in a mixed - both ethnically and in terms of gender - and tolerant environment, in which learning is valued per se, and not merely viewed as an adjunct to passing exams. Floreat Rugbeia!