The Father

Today is my fathers birthday! (It is also Megan's) He is 46, which makes him 26 years older than me. I think it would be fair to say that there is no one on this entire planet who is more like me than my Dad is, or probably, no one who I am more like.. he did come first therefore I am probably a model of him rather than the other way round. My Dad is my hero. When I was little he used to take me on camps with him occasionally and they are some of my favourite memories. More recently I have been helping him run/lead some camps and that has been even greater fun!
Dad was always larger than life. 6ft2in tall and built this is fairly obvious but more than just his physical presence he was always doing crazy awesome things like abseiling, bridge swinging, hiking, canoeing, and playing sport. I think he will always be in my head the immensely strong man who cared for, protected and loved me as a four year old kid.
I did not always acknowledge the level of respect I have for my father, though I think it's always been not far from the surface, and in my early teenage years we argued and fought a lot, mostly because I was vocal and ignorant (funny how they go together) and knew exactly how to push Dads buttons. As I said, we are very alike and so winding him up came naturally for me. Winding people up in general seems to be a gift of mine, however, while mostly this is a humorous trait when it came to Dad it often lacked the funny side and was more about me being counter-dependant for the sake of it.
To my great relief, I grew up a little and the respect for Dad surfaced once more. He is where I turn when I need advice, when I need help, when I have questions, and when I need money ;P He is the person I admire most in this world and he is who I model myself on, the standard against which I measure myself. I would be very happy at the end of my life if I could say nothing more than that I measured up to my Dad.
I know that Dad is getting older. Something brought into focus by my own age, which worries me so add 26 on top... And I also know that, like me, he feels younger than he is and does not like some of the changes that time is bringing. They are different changes for each of us but the affect seems to be fairly similar. Change happens and there is not much we can do about it, but to try and hold on to the past will only make it worse, it's something I'm learning to let go of and to be satisfied with where I'm at and even await the changes that the Lord will bring in me in time.. with hope. I pray the same for Dad and have a feeling that with 26 extra years of wisdom he might just!
I love you Dad. Happy Birthday!

Games in the Woods

Had a BBQ up Wendover Woods this arvo. Was really really good. Nice and chilled, played "golf" with the lads while we thought the girls were doing the BBQ ("Golf" involves getting a random selection of rugby's, football's, tennis ball's and vortex's and improvising with trees and signs and benches and basically anything you can find to make a golf course and you then use your ball to navigate the course in as few shots as possible, the winner then designs the next hole. Brilliantly simple and loads of fun) having played the front ten (needed an even nimber so our swapping of the balls would be fair) we returned to find a smoking heap of coals on the BBQ that the gorls informed us had been on fire approximately three times and had died out an equal number of times and in the course of all of this no one had thought to cook any food. A more accurate summary is probably that the girls squirted a load of lighter fluid on the BBQ and waited until it died down before repeating the process. Pete resurrected a fire from the pile of smoking coal, accompanied by a worrying comment from the girls "aren't you meant to put the kindling on top of the coals?" No, you're definitely not meant to do that, and no, you will never be touching the fire again. (Harsh but fair) We managed to cook some grub and set about eating it, this process deteriorated into an hilarious food fight after about half an hour and ended with Matt in a considerable amount of trouble with his girlfriend who he had tipped off the bench and then poured water over, from my end this was perhaps the funniest part of the nite but I can understand it was probly less amusing for her.
This fun was followed up by a game of rugby before we hid under some trees as the rain started, Heth chose this moment to pull out the cake, not bad timing really, just a little different to normal and then we sat about chatting until the rain went away and we finished with a game of ultimate vortex (like ultimate frisbee but with a vortex) The fun really started on the way out the woods, the gates are locked at nine so we had a curfew and this presented opportunity for mischief! As we got to the gate I jumped out and went to close it on Pauls car behind us, the gate was padlocked to a post, which presented little issue as I simply ripped it out the ground and dragged it along too (ok, so someone had obviously dug it out earlier, was still pretty funny) letting them through I put the pole back in the ground and turned to find the rotten sods had both driven off without me! I ran down the road and Paul drove back up to find me and then I hid in the back seat as he drove past the others and made like he hadn't been able to find me, leaving them trying to work out where I actually was. This kicked off an awesome (read: dangerous) trip home, the highlight of which was probly Paul deciding to follow Ian round the roundabout twice at the last second, jerking his Jag back onto the circle and sending Jenny sliding across the back seat into me very much like a cartoon! (Neither Jenny or I had managed to work out the seat belts in the back and so weren't strapped in, after we stopped laughing we put some effort into figuring them out and securing ourselves)
Now I'm home and rather sleepy, so I shall chip to bed.

It's all about Jo

Jo is here. She flew from Australia to see me for my birthday. What I want to know is where are the rest of you? Huh?! Huh?! Ok, so maybe Jo is on a round the world jaunt and made a slight detour to come and visit me, still, great work from her! The weather here turned on a treat yesterday, tipped it down constantly for 24 hours, Oxford was disgusting, for such a beautiful city I've never seen it look so miserable and dead. Welcome to England Jo. (Oh, forgot the explanation of the title, there is one rule with Jo, that must never ever be broken, it's all about Jo. Simple eh?)
I'm now 20. Or, as is becoming popular amongst those forced to leave their teenage years by the unstoppable force we like to call "time": Twenteen. I'm not particularly loving the idea of no longer being a teenager but I will probly get over it sometime soon. I like being the "young one", the youngest in my class, younger than people think I am, young enough to get away with some of the crazy things I do. Oddly, I am the oldest child in my family. Perhaps a contributing factor to my liking of being young and not having responsibility. Whatever the reasons, I enjoy my youth and intend to continue to make use of it, it is a significant number, but ultimately, just a number, and I have no intention of growing up anytime soon =]

Happy Birthday Mum!!!

Very nearly called mum again today before I realised that its the 7th and Mums birthday is the 8th... that would have been twice in one year... unbelievable!! Anyway, thought I'd get the happy birthday post out of the way (let me rephrase that as, on reflection, it doesnt sound so great) what I mean is let me wish Mother a Happy Birthday via the internet now so that I dont forget to do so later and I shall call her tomorow.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The weekend was quite good in the end, taught a unit and ran some games (old people are boring I have concluded and want to go back to doing youth foundations, how can you not like games?!?!) and then the lads went exploring with a couple of female admirers in tow. Originally we had intended to nip down the pub but in light of the female presence we were inspired to show off and so climbed all over and then under a bridge (have some cool photos from this Ill post as soon as I nick them off Dan) and then climbed some trees and Mim and Stu did some flips (or tried to anyway, the stacks were far more impressive than the successful ones!!)
Train home was fine until I reached Bicester, which is only 15mins from home, and the train sat at the station for half and hour and then took an hour, I kid you not, to go from Bicester to Haddenham!! (point of interest: Bicester is prounounced bis-ter as opposed to bi-cest-er) Because of the delay I missed my lift out to the 70s nite and spent a bored nite at home. (had also managed to miss-read my ticket and so was under the impression my train got in at 7:40, sitting in Birmingham at 7:15 it occurred to me that there was about a snowballs chance in hell of me getting to Haddenham in 25mins and looked at my ticket to find it actually said 8:40)
Two more days til the weekend, which looks about as restful as the last!!