´óÏó´«Ã½

That's the name of a beer in these parts. It's also the name of the pub next door to the hotel Gene Robinson stayed in before he left Canterbury this afternoon. I met him in the courtyard of the hotel and found he had quite an entourage, including an American camera crew who are following him for a year while filming a long-format documentary about his life for network television in the US. They even filmed my interview with the bishop, which turned out to be the very last interview he gave before leaving the Lambeth Conference. Terry, the bishop's bodyguard, was also there, but I think he worked out fairly quickly that I wasn't too much of a threat. I asked Bishop Gene if he'd any regrets about visiting the conference from which he had been excluded, and he was absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do. Print journalists have been telling me how relieved they were that the bishop attended because, first, he was a great story to report, and, second, he was one of the few bishops prepared to talk to the media. At the end of the interview, the bishop gave me a Diocese of New Hampshire pencil, which I will add to my Sunday Sequence trophy wall.

Before the interview, while seated in the courtyard, I noticed a ring on the wedding finger of the bishop's left hand. 'Is that your wedding ring?' I asked. 'That's my civil partnership ring,' he replied. 'We'd call it a wedding ring if they'd let us have a wedding.'