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Well, it’s now official 2010 (and has been for a few days now), so I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all my loyal blog readers a happy new year! (All my unloyal blog readers can take a running jump :p)

It’s been a good new year for us. We came back home on the Tuesday after Christmas, after which I proceeded to get a nasty cold :( Well, it left me in bed for a day or so. But apart from that, New Year’s Eve went well – we had over a whole bunch of people for a mini party. Kirsty, Sarah, Anne-Marie, Alex and Heather all came round and we played some silly games, at lots of food, and generally chatted.

We didn’t get to bed until late that night (or early that morning, I should say) so we didn’t do much on New Year’s Day in the morning! In the evening we headed round to Anne-Marie’s for dinner and Doctor Who. We did enjoy the last episode of DW, although – to be honest – I’m not sad to see the back of Russell T. Davies. The episode was good although I did feel it went on a bit too long at the end, how much can you drag that kind of thing out? Still, seemed a fitting end for what is really the end of an era. All hail Stephen Moffat, though, I see the weeping angels are back for the next series so that’s something to look forward to!

On Saturday we did a bit of shopping for various random things, and then in the evening went to the pub with Alex, Tom and Heather. Then we went on for a curry at the Ashiana, before heading back to ours to watch some random DVDs.

I think that’s pretty much all that happened in terms of new year festivities… in general, it’s nice to get back to work for a bit of a rest ;) But here’s to 2010, hopefully it will bring many good things!

Speaking of which – I’ve just sent off an email to the Diocesan Warden of Ordinands. Basically that’s the first step on the rung of becoming an ordained Church of England minister. Scary stuff! But exciting, too – hopefully I will hear something back about that soon. I will keep you posted.

This weekend was pretty busy, but it felt longer because we had Friday afternoon off. The reason? We were going to see Muse at the O2 :-) We left mid afternoon and got there in good time. We got free entry into the British Music Exhibition with our tickets, so we had a quick look round beforehand. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to go round the whole thing but what we did see was interesting, and we’ll have to go back and check it out more next time! They have a roomful of guitars / drums / pianos you can play around on which was pretty cool.

Anyway. The support act were called The Big Pink, who we’d never heard of before. They were OK – quite dramatic music and I liked the arrangements, but unfortunately it seemed a bit too loud and the tunes weren’t very strong. Still, I did check them out on Spotify afterwards so they must have done something right!

After that, Muse came on. They were amazing. Really, really good live. We were saying afterwards, it’s the knid of music that lends itself very well to being played live: Keane pretty much played their songs as they were on the album, Coldplay were a bit different, but Muse really rocked out. Brilliant stuff. They started out with ‘Uprising’, then ‘Resistance’, and then played a selection of new songs mixed with a few from ‘Black Holes and Revelations’ and their previous albums. I was quite pleased with how many older songs they did play actually, it was so great to hear them live. There were a few surprises in there. I didn’t think they’d play ‘Supermassive Black Hole’, ‘Cave’ (from the first album) or ‘Hysteria’ but all three went down really well.

It was a shame they didn’t play ‘Space Dementia’ or ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’ but you can’t have everything! They finished with ‘Knights of Cydonia’ which was amaaaaaazing live and had everyone going. All in all, it was worth every penny and I’d definitely love to see them again.

Anyway, so. That was a good evening :) On Saturday afternoon we headed down to stay with Philippa’s parents overnight. It was a horrible day (the Dartford Bridge was closed, they diverted the traffic through one of the tunnels instead) but we got there safely. Then on Sunday morning we drove down to Reading to see Phil’s sister Roz.

Roz is engaged to be married, and although we had met her fiance (obviously) we hadn’t met the rest of his family. So we went to Roz’s church in the morning, and then afterwards went round to their house for lunch.

It was a really nice lunch and a very enjoyable time. Matt’s family all seem nice, and they seem to get on well with each other which strikes me as being a good sign! So that was a lovely time.

Then we came back home and watched Top Gear and “The Waters of Mars”, the new Doctor Who special. It was indeed a good episode – probably one of the best that Russell T. Davies has written. I like it when they show a slightly darker side to the Doctor, show that he isn’t invulnerable. The ending of the episode was actually quite unsettling. I’m looking forward to the last two episodes of Tennant’s Doctor now, I think it’s going to be interesting what they do with the character! If anything, though, that episode proved (as if you need any more proof) that Doctor Who is not just a kids’ show.

It’s been a fairly busy week! I’ll try and remember what we’ve been up to… on Friday night we helped out at ‘21′. That was the penultimate study for this term – the last one will be on Friday, which we are leading (scary!).

On Saturday evening we went round to Anne-Marie’s to watch the final part of this year’s Doctor Who – “Journey’s End”. I really enjoyed it – they haven’t been particularly kind on the Behind the Sofa blog, but I really enjoyed watching. (Note: if you haven’t seen it, this may contain a few spoilers…) Donna has definitely been my favourite of the new companions, and her story at the end was just heartbreaking. Catherine Tate really silenced all her critics, she was absolutely “fantastic”! Bernard Cribbins has been a real asset throughout the series as well – I never realised before how good an actor he was! He really nailed the scenes, particularly memorable to me are in the first episode, the scene with him and Donna; in ‘Turn Left’ with “That’s what they called them before”; and in the final episode on the doorstep. Oh, and Julian Bleach was fantastic as Davros.

Right, that’s enough Doctor Who for now, roll on the Christmas Special!

Aaaaanyway. After Doctor Who we went to Zizzi’s in town for a meal with Alex, Elisa, Dan, Alison and Tom. It was sort of a celebratory meal because Alex has got a promotion at work (well done, Alex!), and sort of a “catch up as we haven’t seen each other in ages” kind of meal. It was a good time anyway, and the food was delicious!

On Sunday we went to Fordham in the morning, and came back home to watch the Wimbledon men’s tennis final in the afternoon. Unfortunately we missed the third and fourth sets because we were out at a youth service (again at Fordham), but — what a match! I’m so glad that Nadal won, he had worked so hard and really deserved it. Federer, too, played an excellent match – I hope we see more of them both in the future!

For those of you not in the know (which included me up until a couple of days ago), a ‘Macro’ is apparently a new word for images which have got text superimposed on them – usually for humurous effect. So, basically captions, except written on the image.

Apparently there are a lot of these with Doctor Who – see Anne-Marie’s post here for a few good ones.

I decided to have a go, because… well, I just can’t resist a bandwagon.

Can’t wait for the next episode :-)

The title says it all really! On Friday evening went to help out with ‘21′, the Fordham youth group, which was good fun. On Saturday morning, we went to Colchester Food & Drink festival in Castle Park. It was packed with stalls selling lots of lovely things – we managed to spend quite a bit of money almost by accident! We bought some lovely cheeses, including one which was tomato and basil flavour, also root ginger! So we’re looking forward to having those. We also bought some chocolate, an organic veg box which is going to be delivered on Wednesday, a couple of loafs of unusual bread, and a few other bits and pieces. All in all it was a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday morning!

On Saturday afternoon we went to Anne-Marie’s to watch this week’s Doctor Who, ‘The Stolen Earth’. Wow, what an episode that was! I know the guys at Behind the Sofa have highlighted a few flaws in the episode… still, wow. I can’t wait for the conclusion, I really don’t know how they’re going to get the Doctor out of the predicament he’s in! All I can say is: “I’m Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister”… “YES, WE KNOW!!!” And, of course: “TO. BE. CONTNUED”…. sweeeet.

Aaaanyway. On Sunday morning we went to Fordham, and we heard Mike speaking about Proverbs 31 (the passage beginning “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.”) I thought Mike’s talk was excellent, and conveniently enough it’s now located on the Fordham Website so if you’re into that kind of thing it would be worth a listen.

In the evening we went round to see Matthew and watch Top Gear. Top Gear was very funny, as usual! And then we spent a bit of time discussing a new website which Matthew and I have planned. Nothing solid on it as yet, but watch this space!

Right, that’s enough for the time being. I’m off to se what people think is going to happen to Doctor Who…

This weekend was fairly pleasant! We helped out at ‘21′ on Friday evening, which went well. On Saturday morning I popped into town to get a few bits and pieces, and then in the afternoon we went round to Anne-Marie’s to watch Doctor Who.

I thought this week’s episode was really good (again!) – Russell T. Davies’ scripts have been a bit hit-and-miss sometimes, but it looks like he’s really found his feet with the scripts for the past couple of weeks.

On Sunday morning we went to church, and then came back home for lunch before going into Wivenhoe in the afternoon: it was “Wivenhoe Open Gardens” weekend, so we had a look round about ten different gardens (there were around 34 gardens open to the public). It gave us a few ideas about what we could do with our own garden, as well as being a very relaxing afternoon!

So, I think that’s pretty much everything for now anyway…

We had quite a nice weekend this week! On Friday evening we went to see “Moths Ate my Doctor Who Scarf” in Chelmsford. It was really good, Tony Hadoke was very funny and did a great job at not isolating anyone who hadn’t watched every episode of Doctor Who about 80 times (not even A-M has seen every Doctor Who episode that many times…) All in all, if you get the chance to go and see it – go!

On Saturday we had my parents round for dinner in the evening to celebrate my Dad’s birthday. That was a rather nice evening as well – we made a three-course dinner which seemed to go down very well. Although I’m very glad we don’t make a three-course dinner very often – it’s actually quite difficult to manage the timing and everything!

On Sunday we went to Fordham in the morning, and then spent most of the afternoon preparing for Phil’s parents coming to visit for the week. They arrived at around 5:00, and we went to the Yew Tree in Great Horkesley for dinner. That was the second time we’ve been there, and it was very enjoyable again!

Oh, I almost forgot — we watched this week’s Doctor Who, “Midnight”, on Sunday. We thought it was a really good one – probably one of RTD’s best. I always like the Doctor Who’s^* that focus on character more than simply spills and thrills.

So, that was pretty much what happened at the weekend. Not very exciting, I’m afraid, but there you go…

^* I sometimes like to throw in an extra apostrophe to annoy grammar nazis.

Apologies for a very cheesy title to this post, but it’s actually quite an accurate description of the weekend. No, seriously.

On Friday morning I left home at the usual time, except this time I wasn’t going to work (in retrospect I kind of wish I was now, but still). Phil dropped me off at Fordham, from where I was able to get a lift in the minibus with James and Mike up to Sheffield. That’s right, we were doing what’s known in conservative evangelical circles as a “Mission”, where a group of Christians try to indoctrinate convert people.

We got to Sheffield in time for lunch, where we had time to meet the team and organise ourselves for the afternoon. The afternoon was mainly spent doing door-to-door work, and we had some quite good responses. I went out with somebody who has a lot of experience doing door-to-door work, but it still didn’t make it any easier – it’s actually quite tough to cold call like that. Still, most people didn’t mind and some even seemed to quite appreciate the effort, so it was a lot better than I thought it would be!

Afterwards we all came back for tea, before going out for the evening’s event: Ice Skating with the young people. Only James and I were going from the Fordham team – the idea was that afterwards James would do a short talk and I would give my testimony. I hadn’t been Ice Skating before, so I was a bit apprehensive. Suffice it to say that the apprehension was fully justified: a girl stepped out in front of me, and in trying to avoid her I somehow managed to fall over flat on my face and chip one of my front teeth. D’oh! It didn’t hurt that much though, and despite having a slight lisp (and looking like an extra from the X-Files) the rest of the evening went ahead as planned. I doubt I’ll be going Ice Skating again though, not in the near future at least! Learning to Ice Skate on a Friday night when the rink was absolutely packed out is probably not such a good idea.

On Saturday, we did door to door work in the morning again, and got a few more positive responses. In the afternoon we had “It’s a Knock Out” a family games / races tournament, which was very well attended and enjoyed by everybody. Then in the evening we had a break – I went back with my hosts (who were also hosting Roy and Janette) and we spent a pleasant evening chatting.

On Sunday I helped out with the kids group in the morning, and then after the service spent a while “jamming” with some of the other musicians from the church and from Fordham. It was really cool – they have a drummer there, which we don’t have at Fordham, and I think a lot of the newer songs really need a drummer as they were written with that sort of music group in mind. It’s not that I don’t like the music at Fordham – it’s excellent – but sometimes it would be nice to have a different style: Fordham has an ensemble with an oboe, clarinet, flute etc… classical instruments. I’d occasionally like to have a drummer, guitarist, etc – your standard fare in a lot of churches.

After lunch I headed back home on the train, which cost an absurd amount of money (over £70 for an off peak single to Colchester from Sheffield). The mission actually went on until this morning, but I needed to get back to see the dentist about my tooth!

Speaking of which, I went to see the dentist this morning (for the first time with this particular dentist – I haven’t been to a dentist’s for five years…) It was fairly typical of a dentist: you go in with one problem, you come out with five! Apparently I need various bits of work doing to my teeth. She also strongly recommended to me that I have my wisdom teeth out – apparently they are ‘highly impacted’, which means that if I leave it for too long they will cause serious problems. Having my wisdom teeth out would be a preventative measure. Anyway, I’m going back in tomorrow to have my broken tooth fixed, and I don’t know when the other work will be done.

All in all, what with the train ticket and the dentists, this has turned out to be a rather expensive weekend! Still, as they say, these things do happen…

There is one thing left to say though, on a more positive note: I watched “Forest of the Dead” yesterday, the conclusion of the Doctor Who two-parter by Steven Moffat. How good was that episode? I said last week that I thought this episode would be better than the first one, and I was right :-) (Well, it makes a change, doesn’t it?) I’m really looking forward to the next series of DW, under the leadership of Steven Moffat – he really seems to have the knack of writing a powerful script which doesn’t disappoint the fans as well as being cracking good stories. I hope that script editing for a whole series won’t dilute the genius too much, but even if it does at least we have the episodes he’s written so far to go back to!

*phew*… sorry that was such a long post. I promise next time it won’t be such a self-pitying whine! Well, not so much of a self-pitying whine. Well, alright, will contain just a little bit less of a self-pitying whine. But not much less. What’s that, you say you don’t want to read my self-pitying whines?

I should demand your money back :p

Such was the weekend for us! On Friday we went up to Cromer for Phil and Esther’s wedding. We travelled up by train, it took about two hours. We got there in plenty of time and had lunch at a little cafe near to the church. The service was at Cromer Parish Church – St Peter and St Paul’s. It was a really beautiful church, apparently it has the highest tower in the county! The service went really well and we very much enjoyed it.

The reception was held at a place in North Walsham. The meal was lovely and we had a good chat on our table, but unfortunately we couldn’t stay for the dancing afterwards because we had to catch a train. The journey back home was fairly uneventful!

On Saturday we got up bright and early for the journey out to Stroud, near Gloucester. Phil’s cousin Steve was getting married – it was only a registry office ceremony which we didn’t get to (it was quite early on in the day, and also they didn’t want to have loads of people there because of limited space), we just went to the reception afterwards.

I think the highlight of the afternoon for me was Mitch Benn: Steve is apparently a big fan of his, and emailed him on the off chance about doing a little gig at the wedding. Anyway, he came and did a 15 minutes set during the afternoon – some of his songs are absolutely hilarious! My favourite was probably the epic symphonic rock version of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, but the Ikea song was also brilliant.

Aaaanyway. Nothing much else happened for the rest of the weekend, probably the only other thing that happened of note was watching “Silence in the Library” – this week’s Doctor Who, written by the newly-named successor to Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat. I thought it was a great episode – not surprisingly from Steven Moffat, probably one of the best so far in this series. In fact I would even venture to say that the second part will be better than the first, which is unusual for two-parters… but then I could be wrong! Can’t wait for next week…

I thought I’d probably better get around to posting up what we got up to this weekend before I forget! On Friday night, we went to a music practice at Fordham, and then afterwards stopped in at Tesco to get the week’s shopping.

On Saturday, Phil’s parents came up with a few bits of furniture Phil used to have in her room at home – namely, a desk and a couple of shelving units. They’re now installed in our spare room, which now looks much more like a proper room and less like a dumping ground for anything we couldn’t find a place for when we moved in! In fact, the spare room is probably the best-looking room in the house at the moment.

After setting up the furniture there, we took the bed that used to be in there down to my parents’ in Ipswich, and took their old bed to the tip. So it was quite a lot of moving around, but didn’t take too long in the end!

In the evening we had dinner with Phil’s parents, and watched “Doctor Who”. I wasn’t so impressed with the Doctor Who this week – probably a bit better than “The Doctor’s Daughter” and good fun, but a fairly light and silly story line! Still, the Stephen Moffat episode is coming up the week after next, and it looks really good. Looks like we’ll be behind the sofas cowering in fear at… shadows! (First children with gas masks, then statues, now shadows. What next? Air? — oh no, they’ve already done that one this season.)

Aaaaanyway. On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then afterwards were invited out to John and Irene’s for lunch. We had a really nice afternoon there, and got back home late afternoon. We spent most of the rest of the evening “chilling out”!

So that was our weekend!