Shattered

Lack of sleep has ceased to be something to be sought after, at least for a week or two. I am seriously tired. Tis not good. Need a couple of weeks worth of rest I think. Friday was drop in and then Sammie's birthday, which involved a posse up Chinnor Hill til 4am. Had to drag myself up for the Love China festival in Oxford a few hours later, which afforded me a couple of opportunities but also a few frustrations, not least of which was getting stuck in Oxford til 6 and missing the second leg of Sammie's birthday at Wendover Woods. I did order a laptop tho! It's a long and complicated story of frustration and heart ache, which has reasched the crucial moment of what may prove to be a rash decision. However, said rash decision will now innevitably end with a stupidly awesome Macbook in my posession and the first tick off the wish list, so I'm ok with that!

For anyone who has ever sat through a oral presentation of excessive length (anyone who has heard Geoff Blease or Mal Garvin speak about anything probably comes under this category) should go to dictionary.com and look up "prolix" for a good laugh.

Happy Thursday

I decided to ride my bike to work today. By which I mean; I missed the train and had to leg it across three fields, a hedge and a herd of sheep. Mixed day of success and frustration. Feel like I am getting somewhere with my youth work, or more accurately, have got somewhere and am starting to recognise some skills within myself that I wasn't fully aware of. A nice feeling with a double edge as I seem to find these things easier working with the church and much more difficult when working for my top secret employers. Had some good ups with planning drop in, actually managed to produce a risk assessment without becoming catatonic with boredom and frustration, we're allowed outside to play football and all sorts of other fun things (last week saw me staring out the window, shifting from foot to foot like a five year old who's been told he can't go outside to play). The big frustration of the day was that I got paid, which meant that I finally have enough money to buy the mac book I've been saving for, and so went online to check it's still there only to discover that the model I was after has disappeared to be replaced by a better model which costs an unfortunate 170 pounds extra. So annoyed it's untrue. Not sure at all what to do now and I'm desperate for my savings not to melt away as they inevitably seem to do if I don't spend them decisively on the objects of my desire. Curses. Ahh well, thought it was time for a Happy Thursday as we haven't had one of them for a while. Came into Oxford for a friends birthday and now find myself staying at Guybo's as it was a more appealing option than catching a ludicrously expensive bus home tonite. Time for bed says I.

Weekend

Had a pretty big weekend. Didn't go to sleep until 7.30 this morning, good thing I did the festival on Saturday and so had today off coz I then slept til 4! Got up, cooked dinner for cell, had cell, cleared up and came home. I'm knackered and going to bed!
(Found my torch that disappeared on New Years at Heth's, Huzzah! She has free house at the mo so the better part of the weekend was spent there)

Google Maps

Thought this was definitely worth stealing when I saw it.

1. Go to www.google.com

2. Click on maps

3. Click on get directions

4. Go from "new york" to "paris, france"

5. Scroll down in the directions to number 24 and read

6. Laugh

School

I was in the School in Riboro all day yesterday, this meant getting up at stupid o'clock to be there on time and make a good impression, totally not worth it. Sleep is an undervalued commodity. Was quite a good day, got involved in a game of Bulldog with some boys at lunch before being informed that "the children are not allowed to play bulldog" by the teacher on duty... whoops!
Jordy is providing me much entertainment as he msn's me about the female species "if we ever had a war with them they'd kick our sorry arses" all too true...

Roll on the Summer

The summer has begun! Well the spring really, but England only has two seasons; summer and winter, often interspersed because basically if it's sunny in the middle of December they call it summer and if it's raining in July they call it winter. (For the antipodean readers the northern hemisphere is messed up and summer and winter are swapped around, therefore sun in December is uncommon as opposed to standard) The standard practice for celbrating any hint of sunshine in the UK is to don shorts, shirt, thongs (called flipflops as "thongs" translates to "g-string" in British society) and go sit outside and play sport for as long as the light lasts. At it's best this is until a massive 10pm, tonite we made it til quarter to 9 playing touch rugby and football on the green, it was awesome!

Bacon Sanwiches and Salvation

The lack of posts over easter does not reflect a lack of activity in the Posse House, in fact, it reflects a load of activity and hence a lack of opportunity to post. Easter was massively busy and massively awesome. I went through a crazy sleep pattern, not sleeping Thursday nite so that I could drive Heth to the airport at 3am (closer to 4am by the time she was actually ready to go!) and then snatching an hours nap before the Good Friday breakfast and Easter March in Risboro. Friday I slept and then Saturday was the Easter Prayer nite so I stayed up all nite praying and mucking about with a bunch of the youth from church (In order for much of the prayer nite to happen I had to fit myself, Guybo, twelve cushions, a guitar, an amp, two duvets, three boxes of art pens, two a3 pads of paper, one board game, two bags of clothes, a djambe (drum), a PA system and a data projector into the smallest Ford KA ever invented. I took a photo but it really doesn't do the magnificence of the feat justice). We then headed to the Easter Sunday service on little or no sleep (I think everyone except for Emma and myself got a little bit of sleep) and the service was really good as well. This is very possibly due to the fact that I was so tired I'd hit the hyper phase and so was being a clown, as were most of the others now that I think of it. Emma and I went up the front for one of the kids activities (two reasons for this: we had had the least sleep -namely none- and were therefore the most hyper, and to bag the free chocolate) and Guybo made me the funniest Easter card ever, it consisted of two pictures- one of him holding up the "vicar" to get the chocolate and the other with the subtitle "From the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks" (something Geoff had been talking about in the sermon) and a picture of us going crazy screaming GIVE ME CAFFIENE! We finished the service by adding to our carbon footprints and releasing some helium baloons with our names written on them, meant to symbolise something I can't remember, and then Guy and I spent an extremely hyper half hour mostly reciting lines from Cromwell a movie we have both seen multiple times (and will probably see a few more with our present work) before we headed to radnage for a BBQ with some aussie friends. Sunday nite I slept from 7pm til 10am, woke up briefly at 1am and for some reason I remember feeling better then than when I woke up in the morning. Monday I had two BBQ's, one as a late lunch in Oxford, the next more unexpected as Binnie and I had been invited to the Tippings for dinner and the girls had decided to reverse the gender roles on us and were burning the heck out of some snags and kebabs (actually they did a great job, but don't tell them that!) and we headed up Chinnor hill to chill out, which we did, both figuratively and literally until 5am when we realised Sammie had to be at work in 4hours and perhaps we should head home.
Tuesday, on not a lot of sleep, Binnie and myself drove down to Minehead for Spring Harvest. I think we had both built up unrealistic expectations in our heads (talk of staying in chalets ten mins from the beach and that kind of thing had me dreaming of an Aussie beach with large chalets just up the hill. Minehead, it turns out, is more along the lines of brown dirt beach (which to be fair is good quality in England) and rows of dorms in a tacky version of an English caravan park. Don't hear me complaining, it was actually alright and I was massively thankful for the invite, it was just not Oz. So instead Binnie and I spent the week planning a trip to Oz for about a year and a halfs time, dreaming of Augusta and Beach Mission and Kings Park and Hillary's and the beach... And we made use of the sunshine and beach whilst it was there, I won't make extravagant claims about tans or anything but I'm not feeling quite so pale as I have been the last few months! The definite highlight of the week was seeing Adrian Plass speak, he was brilliant, so good in fact that I bought his book Bacon Sandwiches and Salvation which is bringing me much entertainment. He works his way through the alphabet defining certain terms and nouns in amusing and occasionally deep ways throwing in a few stories and bits of value along the way. My favourites so far are Bless You: Clear Off and Unity: the bond that automatically joins together all those who love Jesus, definitely not an informal agreement that we all hate the Baptists. We concluded in the end that Spring Harvest was catering for old people and therefore there were snippets that we would enjoy and a lot that we wouldn't. We therefore made the best use of our time by attending things of interest - I got my text read out twice by Steve Chalke in one question/debate/talky session, never figured out why he read it the second time but I was still well proud - and spending the rest of the time chilling on the beach or practicing our left handed throws with the vortex, getting quite decent now. Friday I spent about 8hours driving. My sense of direction utterly deserted me, possibly due to fatigue, and we managed to miss the turn onto the M4, the A40 and the Gloucester slip road! So we ended up 5miles past Cheltenham and had to backtrack and cut down to the A40, where we got stuck in the most irritating traffic jam ever. Later I drove with Sammie to pick Heth up from Gatwick, adding an hour to the journey as I managed to miss the M25 both on the way there and the way back and then we nearly ran out of fuel and had to jump off the motorway at Wycome and proceeded to head towards Beaconsfield, which turns out to be the opposite direction to home, corrected this and arrived home at 2.30am as opposed to the planned 1am. Spent today bumming around and doing some work on the side.
Follow the Captain Justice link in my blog roll for Guys rather entertaining account of the Easter Prayer Nite.

Knut

I love Polar Bears. They are my favourite animals. I love their strength and beauty and the "personality" that I still attribute to them even tho I know that they are animals and therefore don't have "personalities" as such. However, in my head: they do. (Also in my head animals could talk in the garden of Eden and will be able to talk again in the new heaven and earth, Im not arguing this as correct theology but it's how my head works so don't mess with it) A friend sent me this link to a video of the cutest baby Polar Bear called "Knut" (no idea of the pronunciation there) and I instantly decided he would be an addition to the fictional floating house Marigold that I have decided to write stories about due to the difficulties in actually building a floating house and filling it with various animals and people.

Celebrated the summer sunshine by playing football for two hours this afternoon. Was meant to go rock climbing with Ebbie but had overlooked good friday being a bank holiday and so had to "settle" for football. First ten minutes were apalling, everyone was massively rusty and so played like a bunch of year 8 school girls until we got back into it and started playing some decent football. On the way to take Ebbie home he announced that the run down church we were passing was going to be his in nine years time, when asked for more details about this he gave some explanation that sounded vaguely like squatters rights and conning the council out of it basically. What started as an outlandish claim proceeded to become a hilarious cock and bull fantasy when we reached the crux of it. Binnie and I spent the rest of the trip laughing as Ebbie continued to expound his idea reaching new heights of fantasy and moving further and further away from reality with each new sentence, providing me with the best laugh I've had all week I believe. I love that boy!

Numb

I woke up early this morning with my right arm uncomfortably numb, not an unheard of phenomenon but this morning was a little different. I sat up to shake some blood back into it and found it hanging limp at my side. I tried to lift it but it just hung there. Slightly confused and still half asleep I picked it up with my left hand and dropped it in my lap. Still limp. Not good. My mind was beginning to wake up at this point and an edge of fear was creeping in as I was getting zippo response from my right arm. I stood up and managed to move my hand, flexed my fingers a few times and began to slowly regain the use of my arm. A couple of minutes later the numbness was fading and my arm appeared to be back to normal. The edge of fear was still there as I thought about what it must be like to be paralysed. To not be able to move you limbs despite all effort. To sit there, helpless. And all of a sudden I can empathise just a little. This afternoon I am going to visit a young guy who was paralysed a couple of years ago. I've not met him before but have been told he is a remarkable person and that I will get at least as much out of the visit as he will. I go with a new perspective; just ever so slightly knowing the tiniest smidge of what his life must be like.

Cell

Had an amazing nite! Binnie and I cooked for no less than 15 people (and did a pretty sweet job of it as well) and I had so much fun cooking and messing about and chatting and just serving, I really love doing stuff, I seriously don't think I would have had even half as much fun if I'd been sat in the dining room with the others chatting, but I had an awesome time cooking and washing up and just serving. Then we had cell and then I messed about a bit more with Binnie before we kicked ourselves out to leave the Childs' in peace. Can't wait for Spring Harvest next week, it's gonna be amazing, get four days next to the beach to chill with Binnie and the family and just live it up!

Spring Harvest

Got invited to go with Binnie's family to Spring Harvest over easter, had no idea what it was really but sounded like a good laugh and they had a free place so I thought why not. Just had the "briefing" about it, turns out this thing is awesome! It's across the road from the beach (and it's in Devon so I'm expecting a real beach not one of these pathetic pebble wastes of coast line) it has a whole stack of different seminars and stuff on the go, and it has entertainment options such as a cinema, football, basketball, go-karts, and quad bikes!!!! Thankyou Lord!!!! And I get to spend the whole time there with one of my best mates plus a couple of other friends who I don't get to see that often, soooooo good. I'm taking the dubious risk of driving Heths car down there as shes in Gambia for a week. My record with people lending cars in the last couple of months has not been good by any measure but Heths car is a fair bit newer and a lot less likely to break down... I hope.
Everyones back from uni at the moment, it's really cool to see people and catch up, the suns out again, weathers turned for the better, everythings falling into place for one sweet summer. The only slight downer is that my knee decided to start playing up and Binnie's injured as well so we're holding off the sport for another week or so (praying hard that we're both fit for spring harvest) but we both managed a bike ride that took us the better part of 30miles yesterday so I think we should be right.
Bit of work to get done this week so I can really enjoy the holiday, shouldn't be a worry!