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Yes, that’s right! I’m eschewing a weekend type update for a “midweek” update. In which I tell you about what’s been going on, mostly at the weekend, But hey ho, never mind.

The past three week nights we’ve been out for dinner with people from church: on Friday night we went round to James and Tash’s for dinner, and we had a very nice BBQ and spent some time with them. Then on Monday night we went round to Tim and Katie’s for dinner. Tim is our home group leader, and they live not far away from us, so that was also a very pleasant evening. Then, last night, we went round to John and Christine’s, where James and Tash were also having dinner! So that’s been three nights out with people from church – bliss. (Or, perhaps, bless, whichever is more appropriate).

Aaaaanyway. Apart from being out to dinner several times, on Saturday we spent a fair amount of the day preparing for the arrival of Peter, Martina and Albert – our friends from Germany. They arrived late afternoon / early evening kind of time. Albert is now 17 months old and he’s quite lively – he’s at the age where buttons are fascinating, and it was quite a challenge watching out that he didn’t (a) harm himself; (b) wreck the place! Still both Albert and our stuff managed to survive.

On Sunday we went to Fordham in the morning, to both services, and then came back for lunch. In the afternoon we had a few people from church round who wanted to catch up with Peter and Martina (Peter was formerly the apprentice at Fordham). After dinner, Sarah came round and we all watched “Sherlock” together.

I didn’t think this week’s episode was quite as good as last week’s but it was still very good and we really enjoyed it. I really hope they make some more episodes, it’s just been so enjoyable it would be a real shame if they never made any more!

I feel like most of my life I’ve spent catching up. When I was growing up, a lot of popular culture seemed to pass me by. I was quite content just to mess around with a computer, or go out and play football, without really getting into films, TV, music, that kind of thing. I used to be really into kids books before I was a teenager (mainly Enid Blyton…) but when I’d grown out of those books I never really started reading anything else to replace it.

On top of all that, when I finally did get into music (I bought my first CD aged 15), it was mainly dance music. I would sometimes listen to the radio – I have fond memories of listening to the radio while revising in the summer, the radio made it somewhat bearable! – but my tastes were actually pretty narrow and so I didn’t really like the same kind of music that everyone else liked.

As a result of all this, a lot of “firsts” happened at uni for me:

• I first saw Star Wars (the original trilogy, not that there are any other Star Wars films of course… 😉 in my first year at uni;
• I caught up with a whole load of pop music I never listened to the first time round – at cheesy tunes, to start with, quite a few of the songs I didn’t really know! (although at the time I was too scared too admit it… fortunately they played the same ones a lot, so after a few weeks I knew them pretty well!)
• I first listened to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the whole radio series) in my second year at uni, and then read the books the following year.

Anyway, I feel like I missed out on a lot when I was growing up – not really through any fault of my own, but these things just passed me by – but these days I feel like I’ve pretty much caught up. There are still “classic” films I need to see and so on, but I’m getting there.

All that said, there is still one thing which has been niggling at me like a sore thumb (yes, I know I’m kind of mixing my metaphors there…) It’s something which virtually every single one of my friends (and I do mean that literally) is into. I’ve never read any Terry Pratchett.

There were people who were into Terry Pratchett at school, but I just never got round to reading any of his books. Then I had friends who liked his books at uni, but – again – I just never read them. It’s something I’ve kind of been putting off for a long time, and there were a lot of other things to catch up on, so it’s just lingered there without me really thinking about it.

Anyway, I finished my reading list recently (amazingly enough), and I decided to start reading some Terry Pratchett: the prevarication will continue no longer! Phil has got three of the Pratchett books, and I am currently working my way through “Lords and Ladies”. It’s not the ideal place to start because it’s in the middle of a series, but I’m enjoying it so far!

He seems to have a brilliant sense of humour – just right for me to appreciate: quite witty, understated, very English! – and very tongue in cheek. In short, I’m enjoying it so far!

So long may the journey continue. I’m hoping to eventually read all of the Discworld books, although that will take some time. Still, good things come to those who… read Terry Pratchett books. If they enjoy them.

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:

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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 🙂