Bit of a random post, this, but nonetheless it does class as a “The Weekend” post so I shall begin by talking about what we got up to this weekend 🙂
On Friday evening, we went to see “The History Boys” at the cinema. More on that later.
On Saturday, we spent most of the day in town. At Fordham, they are doing a “Christmas Box” sort of scheme which basically means that people can take a shoe box and fill it with gifts for a child. These get sent out to various countries to children who wouldn’t otherwise get any Christmas gifts. We think it’s a really good idea, and we’ve both enjoyed shopping for things which might be exciting for children who don’t usually get presents. So that was one of the things we needed to do in town!
Anyway. In the evening we had the Fordham 20s and 30s group meeting. Four of us met for a meal at Fai’s restaurant. I had sweet & sour pork, it was delicious (and quite filling!). Afterwards we went to the Purple Dog (formerly the Clarence), which is a very nice pub and not too busy. Simon joined us as well, which was nice!
Yesterday, we went to Fordham in the morning, followed by a student lunch. Although we aren’t students any more, we went to the lunch as representatives of the church (and also to help out!)… it was good to meet a few of the new students in the CU this year, as well as a few people I’ve met before. They seem to be a nice bunch! Afterwards, we went back to Ipswich to see my parents for the evening.
Aaaaanyway. As you can see, it was a relatively busy weekend! There are a couple of other things I want to mention briefly…
1. “The History Boys”. This is a really good film. It was very thought-provoking in places, and I think both of us agreed with a lot of the points they made about universities / exams etc. It was also very witty in places as well! The only thing is, there was a whole kind of “gay” sub-plot going on which we weren’t too sure about – I’m not sure exactly what it was there for! I think one could be forgiven for going away from the film believing that all pupils and teachers at an all-boys school were gay. (?!) If you can get away from that, good film though!
2. Christmas. This isn’t really about Christmas per se, but more about the commercialism surrounding it these days. When we went into town a week or two ago, the shops already had Christmas merchandise out. Some shops (I’m looking at you, Boots) already had Christmas decorations out. Now, Christmas is traditionally retail outlets’ golden period: most shops (if not all of them, certainly the big chain stores) factor Christmas into their budget. People can go crazy at Christmas with spending money. But the last few years, I’ve heard on the news that things haven’t been quite as rosy. People haven’t been spending so much. I was wondering whether shops starting to stock Christmas merchandise a full two months before Christmas was some kind of last-ditch attempt to redefine the Christmas period in order to say that they made a big profit for it…
… then it occurred to me that perhaps the reason why people weren’t buying so much was because they were totally and utterly fed up of the commercialims surrounding Christmas. I mean, for goodness’ sake, summer is a fairly recent memory! I don’t want to be thinking about buying Christmas stuff now! *sigh* … I’m just wondering how long this silliness will last. They could start putting out Christmas merchandise up in July, at the height of the summer — whether people will stand for that, I don’t know!
That’s all from me for now. This concludes my rather long blog post…
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