Just to report the success of yesterday’s great innovation – we had the main Synod Eucharist in the place where we meet rather than in the Cathedral Church of St Mary (Edinburgh) just down the road.

Yesterday’s service was splendid. James Macmillan’s lovely mass setting rang around the synod hall. The bishops huddled in splendour around the altar.

Fr Primus’s charge to the synod is online elsewhere. Some of it seemed to be a plea for the bishops to be given greater leaway to exercise their authority in the church. Odd then that they did not wear mitres.

One distraction from true worship at this year’s general synod is the floral display which bedecks the platform. The red and pink clash with Episcopal shirts.

And they are not real.

(The flowers, not the bishops).