phillsacre.me.uk

It’s been a busy old couple of months! I think of the past two months, we’ve had one weekend where we weren’t out on the Saturday doing something. This Saturday was the last ‘big’ date we had in the diary: we travelled up to Northampton for a family birthday party (Phil’s family). Anyway, it was a nice day, I feel like I’m gradually beginning to get to know Phil’s family after seeing them a few times now! And our journey to and from the party was pretty good.

Anyway, apart from that, not much else to say. Went to St Andrews on Greenstead on Sunday morning and I now have a few dates booked in to go and observe (did I mention my observation placement last time? No? Well, I might have to do a separate blog post about that at some point). In the afternoon we went to a leaving picnic for Laura and James, the apprentices at church. They will be very much missed at church, not just because of what they do (which is a lot) but because they’ve been such good friends to many of us.

Anyway, in the evening we went to Sunday@6, and then afterwards wandered round to see Sarah and watch “Sherlock”. Sherlock was amazing – very clever, very funny, and somehow managed to update the Sherlock Holmes story while at the same time staying true to the original characters. (Not that I’ve read or watched any Sherlock Holmes stories in a while, but from what I remember they seemed to do pretty well).

And the story seemed very Conan Doyle like as well, at least the last half-hour or so. All in all, I’m really looking forward to next week’s episode! ;)

Well I feel like a bit of a social butterfly after the weekend we’ve just had!

On Friday night we enjoyed not having 21 by inviting Anne-Marie and Sarah round for dinner and general watching of things (The IT Crowd, I Claudius…). Then on Saturday we headed down to Kent for Alex’s housewarming / birthday BBQ. Despite the M25 being about the worst I’ve ever seen it (it took about 1.5 hours to do the ten miles between the A12 and the Dartford Crossing) we got there in the end and had a really good time. It was nice to see a few friends again who I haven’t seen in a while too. The time we had was all too short but fortunately the drive back was quick and uneventful!

We had to drive back that evening because on Sunday morning we were out to see Makaila Pepper-Bradbeer’s christening. It was a lovely service, Makaila even smiled during the christening! – and I think everyone enjoyed it. Afterwards there was a bring and share lunch, so we stayed for that too.

That concludes a rather rapid round-up of what’s been going on! To be honest it’s a bit too hot to go into more detail… it was apparently 32 degrees on my way back from work today (according to the car at least!) – it seems to have cooled down a bit now but that’s still pretty warm. Hopefully it will cool down a bit tomorrow. That’s pretty much all for now!

Well it’s that time of year again! The summer holidays are upon us … to an extent. Last Friday we had the last 21 of the term, which was basically a social and a goodbye party for Laura. It was her last youth club with us, which was sad, but at the same time she has a new job to look forward to which is good! Anyway I think it was a good send-off for her, and next year she’s only going to be in London so we will still get to see her :)

On Saturday we met up with Phil’s parents at Chappell Railway Station and had a look round the East Anglian Railway Museum. It wasn’t a huge place but it was very interesting – there are lots of trains and things being restored, and I enjoyed looking round the old station buildings! I have a couple of photos on my phone which I will upload when I get around to it. It’s well worth visiting anyway, if you’re into trains!

After that we came back home and had dinner with Phil’s parents, then they headed off and we wandered over to Anne-Marie and Sarah’s for a bit.

Sunday was a pretty ordinary Sunday for us – church in the morning, lunch / chilling in the afternoon, then another service in the evening! Things might change a bit over the summer though – as part of the ordination process the DDO has asked me to undertake a placement at St Andrews, Greenstead. It’s basically just an observation placement so I wouldn’t actually be involved as such, but it should be an interesting experience nonetheless.

Anyway. This week has been much quieter than the last few weeks, which I am very grateful for! We’ve had a chance just to chillout a bit and catch up with a few people. Right, that’s all for now. The weather is cooler now, which I’m very grateful for as I think the heat was beginning to drive me insane! Apologies if this blog still reads like it’s fairly insane, though…

You know it’s going to be a ‘heavy’ blog post with those three words in the title! I’ve seen a couple of things recently which have been bugging me, a kind of ‘cognitive itch’ if you will. As the best way of dealing with a cognitive itch is to write a blog post, that’s what I’ve decided to do!

So here we are. Thing number one which has been annoying me: a few weeks ago, someone I follow on Twitter posted up the following tweet: “Between religion and science, science is willing to change and review, whereas change in religion is tantamount to heresy.” This is a claim which I often hear as a criticism against religion. On the surface I think it may even look vaguely passable as an argument. However I think it’s a pretty bad argument to make, and here’s why:

Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend was a hot one! On Friday it got up to about 30 degrees, which for these parts is pretty hot! I don’t deal well with the heat – I’m glad that I don’t live in a country which gets much hotter temperatures! And I’m particularly thankful that they have air conditioning at work – at the first place I worked at out of uni, the office was sweltering in the summer and it was very difficult to get anything done!

Anyway. Quick update about what we’ve been up to the past few days. On Friday night we had 21 as per usual – it was the last teaching session before the summer holiday. On Saturday we headed off to Bradwell-on-Sea with Anne-Marie and Sarah. Each year there is an ecumenical pilgrimage there, to St. Peter’s Chapel. Instead of describing it here you can read all about it on its own website.

This year, Archbishop John Sentamu was there and he did a talk. It was very good – all about the good Samaritan (although I shouldn’t call him a “good” Samaritan, not because he wasn’t, but … well, I won’t go into it here). But the talk was interesting and held everybody’s attention, he is obviously a gifted speaker!

The time went pretty quickly, and by the time we needed to head off at around 3PM – despite being quite tired – it didn’t feel like we’d been there for long at all. Anyway, we did head off, and got back to Colchester without issue. In the evening we went to Colchester Baptist Church for a talent show that Anne-Marie was helping to organise. It was very good – lots of talent there, even if the odd item was a little dubious (not as dubious as the CU talent shows though). Anne-Marie’s poetry reading was very good!

So that’s pretty much our Saturday. On Sunday I went to church morning and evening, and in the afternoon we watched the Wimbledon men’s tennis final. It wasn’t an electrifying match like the Federer vs Nadal match a couple of years before. I felt like Berdych could have really threatened Nadal but he made way too many unforced errors. Still, it was his first time in a major final so it’s probably not too surprising that Nadal won.

In the evening we watched Top Gear, which was really good – again! I think they’ve toned it down a little bit from the excesses of last series, and it’s paid off: I’ve enjoyed the first couple of episodes of this series much more than I did last year. So… there you go! From the Bradwell Pilgrimage to Top Gear, on opposite ends of the spectrum I think…

Well that went quickly. The whole month of June seemed to go by in a flash! A lot seemed to happen this weekend. Apart from the 21 weekend away – more on that in a minute – there was the Doctor Who finale, a new series of the IT Crowd, a new series of Futurama, AND a new series of Top Gear!

How’s that for a weekend of televisual feasting? OK, I’m not a TV addict, but all those things I watch pretty much religiously. Unfortunately, due to the weekend away, we were a little delayed in watching most of them – but first things first.

The weekend away went well. We went to Assington Hall, where we had full use of the annexe this time round (last year we had to have a marquee because another group were using the annexe on the Saturday). It was so much better having the annexe rather than having to do things in the marquee!

I won’t go into the details of the weekend, but it seemed to go pretty well. The teaching was on 1 Corinthians 1-3, which is actually a pretty hard part of the Bible to teach to a youth group! I did a session on chapter 3 which I think went down OK, although it’s very difficult to tell. We shall see.

We spent the weekend doing a variety of games and activities, archery was good fun although I always feel like I’d like to do more of it! – my performance was quite, shall we say, variable. We had a camp fire on Saturday night which was nice, although it was a slight worry that one of the kids was going to set themselves on fire. That didn’t happen though – in fact, during the weekend there were remarkably few injuries… and no deaths! Always a positive for a youth weekend away.

Anyway, I think in general the kids enjoyed it, the leaders enjoyed it, and it was a successful weekend (if that’s the right word). It was very tiring though – I had the day off on Monday to recuperate!

So. That leaves us with TV: the Doctor Who finale. It was great! I really enjoyed it. Although it was not without plot holes, it was done in such a charming, humorous way that I was quite prepared to overlook them. It was just a very heartwarming, amusing, entertaining hour of television which – to my mind at least – put to bed the ridiculous finales of the RTD era!

The IT Crowd started up again as well. Great opener to the new series, look forward to seeing the rest! I haven’t yet seen Futurama, although I have it *cough* downloaded *cough* (yes, will buy the DVDs when they come out…) so will watch that soon. Top Gear also was good, I know it was a setup but Jeremy rolling over the Robin Reliant every time he went round a corner really made me laugh.

Right, I think I’m done for now anyway. Apologies for this blog not being very interesting recently (or ever, to be honest) – but then, it’s me, what did you expect? ;)

This month has turned out to be a pretty busy one for various reasons! We were quite grateful to have a bit of a break on Friday night actually – there was 21, but instead of having our usual meeting some of us were watching the England football match. I didn’t see the previous England match, but I have to say this match was probably one of the worst performances I’ve seen by England – ever. Absolutely pathetic really! Still, that’s England for you I suppose! It wouldn’t be the world cup if we weren’t all disappointed.

Anyway, on Saturday we did a bit of shopping during the day. Then in the afternoon we headed round to Anne-Marie and Sarah’s to watch some I, Claudius and Doctor Who. This week was the penultimate Doctor Who of the season, and I really enjoyed it! I think it was left in a pretty hopeless place (in terms of bleak, not that the episode wasn’t good) but I’m really looking forward to seeing the last episode to see how it’s all resolved. After Doctor Who, however, we had to head off pretty quickly to Fordham: the Savilles are unfortunately leaving us in a few weeks, so we were having a leaving party for them. It was a really nice evening as well, a fitting send off for them I think!

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then afterwards we were round at the Savilles for lunch. We felt quite privileged to be asked actually – as mentioned they are leaving soon, so we thought they might have more important people to see or things to do than have us round for lunch! Anyway, we had a really nice afternoon there.

Afterwards we popped round to see Anne-Marie and Sarah briefly, to discuss Doctor Who and Life on Mars and various other things. Then, we came back home and… watched some Life on Mars. So that’s pretty much our weekend!

As I said at the beginning – this June has turned out to be pretty busy. This weekend wasn’t bad, but next weekend we have the 21 weekend away. That will involve camping and I’m not entirely sure I’m looking forward to it! That said, I’ve taken the Monday off work so I’ll have a bit of chance to recover. I bought a new sleeping bag a couple of months ago which is apparently rated down to -9 degrees, which should keep me nice and warm at least! – despite the month it does get quite cold in a tent overnight.

Unfortunately that does mean we will miss both the IT Crowd AND Doctor Who, but I think we’re just going to have to suck it up and catch up when we get back on Sunday. Speaking of which, I don’t think we can actually record channel 4 so I guess we’ll have to put up with the crapness of 4 on demand. Aaaanyway, I’m a bit tired, I think it’s time for bed!

This weekend was a very special weekend. Phil’s sister Roz – my sister-in-law – was getting married! Phil travelled downon Wednesday night to help set up. I stayed in Colchester for a couple of nights and then headed down on Friday morning.

I will spare you most of the details but suffice it to say that Friday was mostly spent preparing the barn for the wedding reception. I set up and tested the PA system I bought a while back, and that was working beautifully (more on that later).

In the evening we (as in me, Phil, Phil’s parents, and Roz) went to dinner with Matt’s parents and family, which was a really nice evening! Then on Saturday morning it was all go. I gave Phil and Roz a lift to the hairdresser to have their hair done fairly early morning, and after that headed back to the flat to prepare. Phil and I headed off mid-morning to the church (the wedding was at noon). Phil was playing Roz up the aisle on piano – Handel’s Largo from Xerxes (which is the same piece of music that we had :) She did a really good job, although was shaking like a leaf afterwards!

The service itself was lovely – Darius, who was leading the service, did a really good job and had a very nice manner. Matt did once make a mistake in his vows, saying ‘lawfully wedded husband’ rather than ‘wife’, which caused much amusement! But it went without a hitch. Phil and I were playing piano and clarinet together during the signing of the register, which seemed go down fairly well too. We just played a couple of nice arrangements of hymns I have.

Then, after the service, it was time for the reception. That, again, was a really lovely time – lots of catching up with friends and family we haven’t seen in a while! I’m getting to know some of Phil’s family better now so it was good to see them again. The meal was a BBQ, unusual for a wedding but absolutely perfect! Delicious food provided by the caterers (Total Hospitality, I think). Then, we had the disco. I was DJing, and I think it went down well. There weren’t many people on the dancefloor for the first hour or so – mainly because the weather outside was so nice I think people wanted to stay outside! But once it turned to dusk people came inside and the dancefloor filled up pretty quickly.

I have to say on the subject of the PA system… it was more than up to the task. It managed to fill the dancefloor without even breaking a sweat (or whatever the sound system equivalent is). I had the gain on the amplifier turned up to about half-way, and the volume control on the mixer set to about half way, and that was pretty darn loud. So I was happy!

So. Let me quickly wrap up the rest of the weekend. After Matt and Roz had left, we cleared up the barn and finally got back to bed around 1AM. On Sunday morning we drove back to Phil’s parents’ to have lunch, and then headed back home. That wasn’t the end of the weekend, though! When we got back in, we had just enough time to dump our stuff before heading out to Anne-Marie and Sarah’s. Long story short – they had been moving house all weekend, and they needed to get all of their stuff out of the old house and generally clean it up by the end of the day. Most stuff was done, but it still took the four of us until about 10:30PM to clean up and pack everything into the car (over several trips). Anyway, it was a pretty stressful time for all of us but they are eventually settled into their new house! I went round this evening to set up the TV (more on that some other time, perhaps, for reasons which will become apparently should I ever decide to write about it…) and the house was looking much more like a home and less like a dumping zone for bags of stuff.

Right, that’s pretty much it for the time being. That was our weekend! Many congratulations to Matt and Roz, and also best wishes to A-M and Sarah for the new house :)

Cooling down – something I’ve felt like I needed to do a fair bit of the past few days! It’s got warm – and not just warm, but muggy. (Well, it was warm at least, before all the rain we’ve had the past couple of days…)

It was half-term last week, so no 21 for us on Friday night! So we had a night off, and watched some Life on Mars (the Blu-Ray versions of which arrived that day).

Then on Saturday we did a bit of shopping in the morning, and after lunch went down to Colchester Arts Centre for the beer festival. It was an absolutely beautiful afternoon – the perfect day to be sitting outside with a nice glass of ale! After a while Alex joined us, and then a bit later on Tom, Cliff, Dan and Alison came down as well. It was nice to see everyone again – apart from Alex we hadn’t really seen many people in a while so we spent some time catching up!

After that we caught the bus down to Wivenhoe to watch Doctor Who with Anne-Marie and Sarah. I must admit, I quite liked the episode: it was a bit different, kind of quirky, but actually quite moving. It bore all the hallmarks of Richard Curtis! – but not in a bad way. An entertaining 45 minutes worth of entertainment, even if it’s not an instant classic.

So. On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and afterwards met up with Sarah and Anne-Marie to go to this year’s Oyster Fair in Castle Park. I have no idea why it’s called an Oyster Fair – it’s basically a medieval fair with lots of people selling, um, medieval things. Or at least, you know, bows and arrows, leather products, hog roasts, that sort of thing. It was a good afternoon anyway, we spent a few hours there just wandering around!

After that we went out to Sunday@6, and then came back home and watched some more Life on Mars. All in all, not a bad weekend really!

So, last weekend was the second of the two May bank holiday weekends. It was a pretty good weekend as they go, it felt like we got a fair bit done!

On Friday evening we had 21 as per usual, but then there was no Ashes to Ashes afterwards :-( We did spend an hour chatting to Anne-Marie and Sarah over Skype though, mainly about Doctor Who / Ashes, so it softened the blow a little!

On Saturday we did a bit of shopping in the morning, and various jobs that needed to be done. Then in the evening we headed round to Anne-Marie and Sarah’s to watch Doctor Who. After the rather unpromising start last week, I have to say it didn’t really improve! A few things didn’t really make sense to me, and it just … well, I don’t know, didn’t grab me. Can’t quite put my finger on it but I tend to agree with A-M on this series of Doctor Who: it just hasn’t grabbed me in the same way that previous years have. I think part of the reason is that it’s actually quite difficult these days to do a Doctor Who story which hasn’t been done before. I really like Matt Smith as the Doctor, and I think there are some episodes which have been well written and executed, but in general I don’t really quite look forward to it in the same way I looked forward to Ashes to Ashes. (Quite possibly because the two have been running on parallel and, frankly, I looked forward to watching Ashes far more than DW).

Speaking of Ashes… I’ve ordered the Blu-Ray versions of both series of Life on Mars. Amazingly, it was cheaper to order the two series separately as Blu-Ray discs rather than order the DVD boxset of series 1 and 2! (The Blu-Ray series were also one £1 more expensive than the DVD versions, which I thought was a pretty good deal. Especially when the likes of Star Trek is still ridiculously expensive to buy on Blu-Ray).

On Sunday we had church in the morning, and then went round to my parents for lunch. My sister was there, and we had a good afternoon chatting and catching up. Afterwards we came back for Sunday@6, and then home to watch ‘High Fidelity’. (A good film, by the way, would definitely recommend it to anyone).

Then on Bank Holiday Monday we went round to Phil and Jenny’s briefly to see them and meet the three-week-old Makaila. She was beautiful, although I don’t think she particularly enjoyed being held by me! Then we went round to Anne-Marie and Sarah’s, as it was A-M’s birthday. We had a nice picnic lunch (inside, because of the weather, but we did get our picnic hamper and mat out so it wasn’t a dead loss!)

In the afternoon we wandered down to Wivenhoe May Fair, which was pretty good although we didn’t spend a huge amount of time there. After that we all came back and watched ‘Einstein & Eddington’ (which I really enjoyed), and then just chatted for a while.

So, there you have it! In a nutshell, that’s what we’ve been up to. Tonight, if the weather is good, I think we’re going to meet Alex and a few other people for chips on Wivenhoe quayside. Which should be fun.