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We had a quieter weekend this time round! On Friday evening were at ’21′, where I was doing the talk (on Grace). It seemed to go pretty well, Grace is a very big subject but I hope that the kids understand it a bit better now :-)

On Saturday we did the usual shopping in the morning, and then spent the afternoon in the garden. I mowed the lawn, which hopefully will be the last time we have to mow it this year! In the evening we met up with Anne-Marie and Sarah and went for dinner at Sloppy Joe’s. Although it was very busy we managed to find a table and had a nice dinner, and then afterwards we went to see “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People”.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect about the film because I didn’t know much about it other than the fact that Simon Pegg was in it. It was very good – reminded me a bit of “The Devil Wears Prada”… but much funnier! There were some absolutely brilliant moments in it, although it has to be said – it wasn’t as sharp as Shaun and Hot Fuzz. In other words, it was more like “Run, Fatboy, Run” than the Simon Pegg / Edgar Wright style films. Still it was a very entertaining watch and definitely worth seeing / buying if you’re a fan of Simon Pegg :-)

Anyway. On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then went round to Simon and Lara’s for lunch. We were meeting up with a few other people to discuss the student work at Fordham over the next academic year, and it all seemed quite positive. In the evening we went to the service at Eight Ash Green, and then came back and watched “James May’s Big Ideas” on alternative energy.

I’ve been watching the news over the past few months and it does seem that we’re quite close to a breakthrough in alternative energy. I reckon in 10-20 years, 50% or more of our energy will come from renewable sources. We’re certainly closer to a viable renewable energy source than we are to Artificial Intelligence or flying cars!

Aaaaanyway. I think that’s just about it from me!

I’m getting slack with updating this blog! I do apologise… NOT!! Bwahahahaha.

Ahem. Anyway. the weekend, then… on Friday evening we helped out at 21 again. We were leading this week… it went pretty well for me – it was the first time I’ve ever played my guitar for a group of people! I only did one song but I think it went OK.

On Saturday, I picked up Jon B and we went down to The Great Lodge Experience at Great Bardfield for Andy B’s stag do. We had a look round the grounds and the vineyards, and the proprieter (Alan) explained to us the wine making process there. Then we tasted some of the wine, and had a ploughman’s lunch. All in all, it was a very enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours! The wine was really good – I didn’t buy any bottles afterwards (mainly due to lack of funds…) but will see if I can find some soon.

Afterwards we went back to Southend to see Andy B’s new house (well, bungalow). We went to the pub for a bit, then came back (getting an Indian takeaway on the way), and in the evening played a “Pub Quiz” game. Unfortunately I had to leave fairly early as I was making my way back to Colchester that night, but it was a really good day. I liked all of Andy’s friends (me and Jon being the only people there from Essex Uni apart from Andy) – although the conversation did get incredibly dodgy at times! (Even dodgier than the CU…)

On Sunday we went to Fordham in the morning, where Mike preached a very good sermon about contentment. It did rather make me feel quite guilty — I don’t think I’m very good at being contented! There’s always something that needs doing, or stuff you need to get. Doing up the bathroom, replacing the car, getting a new boiler… sometimes I think we just need to sit back and relax a bit! All of those things are or will be necessary, but we could relax a bit in the meantime.

Aaaaanyway. On Sunday afternoon we didn’t do very much (unfortunately Phil had to work), which was followed by not doing very much on Sunday evening. So now you know!

I’ve been off work today with a cold – I had it over the weekend, but I felt awful this morning. Seems to be going now though so hopefully I’ll be back in at work tomorrow. Right, that’s all from me for now!

We were doing some more entertaining this weekend! Two weekends in a row, gosh… but more of that in a moment. On Friday evening we helped out at 21 (in the new John Owen Barn at Fordham, which is very impressive). It has an earlier start time than it did last year, so we had dinner at lunchtime and then just had a light tea when we got back.

On Saturday we did a bit of shopping during the day, and I mowed the lawn. Again. (The lawn has been growing like wildfire since the GreenThumb treatment – not a bad thing, mind, as it was in a bad state – but it’s quite unusual for this time of year!).

In the evening Foz came up by train. We got a Chinese takeaway from EXP, and then watched “The Beast with a Billion Backs” which Foz hadn’t seen before. Foz stayed the night, and then in the morning we all went to Fordham.

Afterwards, we went to lunch at Bob and Ruth’s – Foz knew them from his student days (they went to the same church), but a couple of years ago they started coming to Fordham so we know them as well. We had a lovely roast dinner anyway, and a very enjoyable afternoon sitting outside in the garden.

We left there late afternoon, dropped Foz off at the station, and then headed back home to relax for the evening. Ah, it’s a busy life – not that I’m complaining! Haven’t seen Foz in ages so it was good to catch up.

And, I think that’s pretty much everything for the weekend. Ta ta for now…

We had a couple of friends from Germany (Peter and Martina) staying this weekend. We’d been out to visit them last year, so it was good to be able to return the favour. They arrived on Saturday morning, just in time for lunch. Afterwards we headed out to Nayland for a walk around the countryside there, which was lovely (it was such a beautiful day!).

Then in the evening we went to Tenpin in Colchester with a couple of friends from church. I have to say, I am absolutely useless at bowling. I really am awful – I didn’t manage to break the 100 barrier, and we had two games! Doh! I must go again sometime soon just to get some more practice in.

On Sunday, we went to church in the morning and then came back for lunch. In the afternoon a few people came round, including Mike and Andy (the minister and assistant minister at Fordham) to catch up with Peter and Martina (Peter was the apprentice at Fordham a couple of years ago, until they moved to Leipzig in 2006).

So, that was pretty much our weekend! Very enjoyable – it’s always good to catch up with people you haven’t seen in a while. Although I’m pretty hopeless at keeping in touch with people so it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like… still, c’est la vie. must resolve to be better at keeping in touch…

Otherwise known as, ‘The Weekend’! All will become clear shortly.

So. On Friday night we didn’t do very much, as is the case these days! On Saturday we went out to do a bit of shopping in the morning, and then in the afternoon went round to Anne-Marie’s to watch some of the BBC’s version of “Pride and Prejudice” (if we’d been earlier it would have been all of P&P). Anyway, Anne-Marie very kindly cooked us a roast dinner (all six of us who were there), which was ‘scrumptious’ (sorry, I just felt the urge to include a Famous Five style word in there somewhere). And afterwards we sat around watching random YouTube clips. So it was a quite random but very enjoyable afternoon / evening! (Oh, and Anne-Marie commented that she was looking forward to the write-up of the evening on this blog. I don’t quite know what she thought I was going to say, but still…)

On Sunday, we went to church in the morning, had lunch, and then popped out for walk around Hilly Fields. We timed it well, in between rain breaks! Afterwards we made a curry (mmmm, nice) and watched ‘The Man Who Knew Too Little’, which is a comedy film from the late nineties starring Bill Murray. We really enjoyed it – it’s very silly, but good watching for a Sunday evening!

While I’m in the reviewing frame of mind, I bought a couple of new albums recently. Accelerate is the (relatively) new album from R.E.M. It weighs in pretty short in terms of length – only around 34 minutes, spread over 11 tracks. But I really like it – it’s R.E.M. back to being quite rocky. Supernatural Superserious is a cracking song.

I also bought Forth, which is the new Verve album. Love Is Noise was the title single from it, and what a tune! In my opinion, quite possibly better than Bittersweet Symphony – although probably less of a ‘classic’. I’m not too sure about the rest of the album yet. I read a review which said that the album was mostly all filler, and I think that’s very harsh – there are some good tunes on there, but it’s taking a little while to get into. Probably not as iconic as Urban Hymns but I reckon it’s still well worth listening to if you like the Verve’s style.

Well, sort of.

On Friday night we went round to our next-door-neighbour’s for dinner. We had a lovely evening – we sat outside chatting before dinner, drinking some French liquer (we didn’t realise it beforehand but apparently it was about 45% proof! – I felt a bit woozy after that…) And we had a nice chat over dinner.

Then, on Saturday morning we went shopping, and in the afternoon went round to our other next-door-neighbour’s house for tea. We stayed there until late afternoon, and then came back home to do some preparation for dinner on Sunday: we were cooking a roast for my parents!

On Sunday morning we went to church in the morning – to which my parents were able to come, the first time they’d been to a morning service at Fordham. It was a good service, they very much enjoyed it and so did we! Mike was preaching a good sermon, all about healing in James 5. Very interesting and worth a listen (needless to say it’s on the Fordham Website ;-)

After church we headed back home and made our roast. Well, to be completely honest, Phil did most of it! And I must say, did a fantastic job. For a first time doing a roast it went really rather well, I thought! After lunch we took advantage of the sun and went out for a walk around Bourne Mill.

Then my parents headed home and we cleared up and watched a couple of episodes of “Fawlty Towers”. All in all, quite a busy weekend (well, it felt quite busy) but an enjoyable one!

… that’s actually a line from “Spaceballs” (The Movie), I thought I should probably point that out just in case you missed it. (It is a rather short quote, after all).

This weekend has been mainly very hot. So hot in fact, that we didn’t really do much over the weekend! on Friday evening we went round to my parents’ for a BBQ, which was lovely.

Then on Saturday we did a bit of shopping in the morning and then not much for the rest of the day. On Sunday we went to church in the morning (nice and cool inside the church), and then came back home and crashed out for pretty much the rest of the day! It was far too hot to do anything. I did spend a fair bit of time playing the guitar (not much energy needed – not the way I play it anyway!).

I feel like I’m gradually getting there with the guitar… bar chords still a bit iffy but I’ve been focussing more on fingerpicking the past few days.

We also watched “Black Gold”, which is a documentary style film about the coffee trade, from an Ethiopian point of view. Ethiopia are one of the world’s biggest producers of coffee beans, but their farmers are paid a pittance. Apparently the coffee roasters will buy a kilo of coffee for around $0.30. One kilo of coffee beans will make about 80 cups of coffee – each cup retailing for about $2.00 or so. You do the math.

I still can’t believe in this day and age farmers are still being treated so unethically – we’ve been buying fair trade tea and coffee (as well as other things) for a few years now, I would highly recommend others to do the same, if you don’t already :-)

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!

This weekend turned out to be fairly quiet, for a change!

On Friday evening we helped out at ’21′, which went well. On Saturday we went out to a BBQ at Roy and Janette’s (friends from home group).

Afterwards we headed over to Wivenhoe to watch the new Doctor Who (“The Doctor’s Daughter”). It was a pretty good episode, but there were a few things that bothered me somewhat:

• If the ‘clones’ (for want of a better word – the output of the machine) couldn’t create clones from clones, how come they’d managed to survive through generations?
• How come the general was so comparitively old? Unless they just had a shorter life-cycle, but that wasn’t suggested by anything else.
• The death scene with Jenny, and then the coming back. It was a little cheesy… to put it mildly.

Still. Afterwards we watched Nancy and Pushing Daisies (which I’m liking more and more with each episode).

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then headed out to Mersea: one of Phil’s colleagues was opening a gym there, and it was the “grand opening” on Sunday. After popping in, we had lunch at the Art Cafe, which was delicious. Then we headed back home and did a bit of gardening (well, Phil did at least!)

In the evening we went to “Sunday @ 7″ at Fordham, where Andy Saville was talking about the Divinity of Christ. It was a really interesting talk, and most of it will be available to download from the Fordham Website shortly (unfortunately the mic gave out five minutes before the end, doh!)

After the service we came back home and watched “Wild Hogs”. I quite enjoyed it – it wasn’t the best film in the world ever, but it was quite entertaining and good fun to watch. If you’re in a video rental store of an evening and don’t know what to get, I can recommend it.

Well, it was a less “Weddingy” weekend this time round!

On Friday night we helped out at ’21′, a youth group at Fordham for those in school years 7-8 (or something like that). It went pretty well, although I was a little apprehensive because I haven’t done any youth work before at all. We’ll be helping out there every fortnight for the time being, so hopefully I’ll get more confident with it as time goes on!

On Saturday I spent the day not doing very much! – Phil was out sorting out wedding stuff with one of her work colleagues, so I stayed around and did a bit of gardening, playing the guitar etc. In the evening we went round to Anne-Marie’s and watched Doctor Who – and I must say, I rather enjoyed it! It was probably the best Helen Raynor episode to date, although there were a few things that were a little cliched: villains wanting to take over / threatening the whole world, check. People all over the planet buying the same piece of technology, check. Still, it was well paced and written with some humourous moments – I loved the “explosion” of the SatNav unit!

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then came back home to sort out a few bits and pieces for various weddings! – it turns out that we have been invited to the wedding of one of Phil’s cousins which is happening in May (the day after Phil and Esther’s wedding!). This means that we’re now going to have three weddings in May, the total for this year being seven so far. Anyway, there wasn’t much to do – just research transport!

In the evening we went to the “firm foundations” course at Fordham, led by Andy Saville, where he was speaking about the evidence for Jesus. It was a really good talk, but unfortunately it wasn’t recorded because Andy wasn’t miked up. Still, it’s good to know that there is enough evidence for believe in Jesus to be rational, even if it isn’t coercive!

And that pretty much brings us up to date.