It feels like winter today, temperature is hovering around the freezing mark! Still, it’s a beautiful day at least.
Category: Uncategorized
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Day 95: Wintery Scene
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Day 94: Frosty Bridge
A bridge with frost on it. The winter is coming fast!
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Day 93: Seed Heads
These look like dandelion seed heads but they’re not dandelions. Don’t actually know what they are but I think it made for a decent photo anyway!
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Do I know you?
Last night Phil and I went to Ipswich Regent to see Mark Watson. His show is called “Do I know you?”, and it is loosely based around the idea that lots of people come up to him asking him “Do I know you?” because he’s been on various different TV programmes (Mock the Week, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You etc) but isn’t sufficiently famous for people to really recognise him.
Anyway, the show was absolutely hilarious. Probably even better than the last time. About ten minutes before the show started he came onto the stage and starting talking to the audience via a laptop (he was typing stuff out). That was good fun. Then the first half was quite random – he spent quite a lot of time in the audience chasing someone, or at least, trying to find out why someone had left! And a lot of time trying to backpedal about places which he’d been to but found out people in the audience were from. As with before, when you go to see Mark Watson you feel like you’re not going to see a polished performance – but in a good way. It’s much more personal. He said he didn’t do much of the planned material for the first half, but actually I quite like that – you get a unique show, rather than a pre-packaged thing. In that case you might as well buy the DVD. (That said, I think I’d always prefer live comedy to comedy on DVD.)
The only ‘problem’ I found wasn’t really a problem, but he didn’t have a warm-up act. I think this did mean that people took a little bit longer to get into, the first half hour or so was a bit quiet, but then people got warmed up and the laughter came much more easily. The second half was brilliant – he talked about becoming a dad which had me almost literally rolling around on the floor laughing. All in all it was a top night – hilarious!
Afterwards he was signing copies of his book (‘Eleven’ – a very good read, by the way, I don’t think I’ve reviewed it here but well worth getting) in the foyer, so we stuck around to get my copy signed. When we got to the front of the queue, I said to him that I’d been reading his blog from day one, and gave him a biro (Phil also had a biro for him too). He seemed to appreciate it! Then, when he asked for my name to sign the book… he remembered my surname! I comment on his blog from time to time, and he actually remembered that my name has two ‘L’s and what my surname was. What a nice guy. This is one of the reasons Phil and I like him so much – he’s not only very funny, he seems like the kind of guy who we would naturally get on very well with. Maybe one day we’ll get to have a chat, that would be really cool. Just from reading his blog I feel like I know him pretty well, which is something you don’t get with many comedians.
Anyway, that’s all from me. If you do get a chance to see him, he’s on tour over the next few weeks – do make the effort, it will be worth it! (Well, it will if you have a similar sense of humour to me anyway). And there you have it 🙂
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Day 92: Orchid
Phil has an Orchid she was given a while ago. The flower died a couple of weeks ago but grew back in the last day or two. I decided to forego usage of the flash and use a separate light source. Quite liked this one.
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Visitors
We had visitors this weekend 🙂 Matthew and Ellie came up on Friday night, with Samuel (now 11 months old! – he’s walking and everything. Scary). It was great fun anyway, we had to go out to 21 but we came back to find Anne-Marie and Sarah round as well having a great old chat.
On Saturday we didn’t do much in the morning, then in the afternoon we had lunch and then went out to Fordham for the re-opening of the church: the church building has been closed for the last few months for refurbishment, and it opened up last weekend. You can see a couple of pictures of the new church on my Flickr page.
Then, we came back home and found our house overflowing with people! Well, not really, but in addition to Matthew, Ellie, Samuel, Anne-Marie and Sarah, we also had Phil, George and Makaila round. We had some tea with them and generally chatted the night away, occasionally watching random YouTube clips. It was very funny, just like old times – except, as Matthew pointed out on Twitter – half of us now have babies. Scary. Still, c’est la vie – life changes!
On Sunday morning Matthew, Ellie and Samuel had to leave so we said our goodbyes and went to church. It was the first morning service in the new church building and things went well, aside from a few problems with the PA system (for some reason the wireless lapel mic didn’t want to transmit all the way to the other side of the church. Strange). After that we came back home briefly, and then went back out again for another event at Fordham to do with the re-opening! Then it was the youth service, which went well, and then back home to watch the final episode of “Pillars of the Earth”.
I really enjoyed Pillars of the Earth – I’d recommend it to anyone for an interesting story which has a fair few Biblical themes in it. It reminded me a little bit of what the Apostle Paul wrote: “do not overcome evil with evil, but overcome evil with good” (from memory so might not be exact). I’d quite like to read the book as well now, but I don’t know when I will have the time!
So, in a nutshell, that was our weekend. Now I did have a rant all ready to go here about Christianity, Christian Voice, and the law – but I think that can wait for another time!
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Forbidding Sky
Lots going on in the clouds today! Quite like the desolation in this scene, even if it’s not far from civilisation (or the A12…)
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Lots of Colleges
Apologies for not updating here much the past few days! I’ve still been uploading photos to Flickr but haven’t got around to actually updating this blog with anything much. The reason is (and if you’re my boss, this would be a good time to look away now) – we’ve been busy, specifically busy looking at colleges.
On Saturday we went down to London – specifically, Southgate – for the open morning at Oak Hill Theological College. I won’t say too much about it on here but suffice it to say we very much enjoyed the experience 🙂 And on Tuesday we went to Oxford for the open day at Wycliffe Hall. Apart from the journey there and back (both were pretty bad – the M25 was terrible traffic-wise!), that was also very enjoyable. Much to think about and pray about over the next few weeks and months methinks… I haven’t got any more visits lined up as yet, but I’m hoping to see Trinity Bristol in January if possible.
Anyway: to fill you in on the rest of the news, on Monday night I was out at a work quiz night. It was good fun, and my team didn’t come last for once! Admittedly we were second last but still, it wasn’t bad.
Um, and… I think that’s just about it for news. That’s all from me, for now!
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Day 86: Leafy Grove
I think this one came out particularly well. I love the sunlight and the shadows on the ground.
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Day 82: Winter Flowering Jasmine
A picture of the winter flowering Jasmine in our garden. The colouring came out a bit weird because of the light conditions but actually I rather like this. I did enhance it slightly but it did have a very blue sort of tone in the background. The flowers generally look much more yellow!
