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Well, Wednesday night was the last meeting of this year’s Moore Course module. We’ve been studying Ephesians, as I’ve mentioned before. (Well, I think I’ve mentioned it… can’t be bothered to go back and check now!)

I don’t know why but I feel like it’s not been quite as good as previous Moore Course modules that we’ve done. It just seemed to be based around a particular commentary a little too much. Sometimes the book would make statements which didn’t seem to be backed up by any of the verses it quoted – which I think is probably because the line of argument was traced through properly in the commentary, but not in the book.

Either way, I’m not sure about it. My exam marks over the past few years have been going steadily down – the weird thing is, I’ve been putting more time into revising since the first one! So this year I don’t know what I should do, perhaps if I spend less time revising I’ll do better… the exam is on 27th, so we have a little while anyway. No reason to stress about it either, whatever happens – whether I pass or fail – it’s not going to really affect my life in any meaningful way!

So, quick update as to what was going on this weekend. On Friday night we helped out at 21 (back after half-term), and then went to the pub with most of the 21 crew (AJ, Laura, Jen and her sister, and James and Tash). It’s nice to have so many friends from church at the moment – especially with so many Colchester people moving away … *sob*. Aaaaanyway!

On Saturday morning, Sam Norton (the Diocesan Warden of Ordinands, who I mentioned before) came round to chat to Phil and I about ministry. It went well, and what I need to do now is send off my form and he will forward it on to the Diocesan Director of Ordinands! I won’t go into the way the CofE ordination process works, but it basically means I’m sort of on the next rung of the ladder. So that’s exciting anyway 🙂

In the afternoon we did a bit of shopping and saw Alex for a cup of tea. Then we headed round to Tom’s for the “Great Essex Feast”. Basically the idea was a fund-raising exercise for the Essex Air Ambulance and Friends of Essex Churches charities. Someone (in this case, Tom) would donate the food, and people would then come round, eat the food, and donate money to the charity. It was a great evening and I think we raised a decent amount! I drank and ate an awful lot and felt a bit groggy on Sunday morning, but not too bad.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then were invited out to the Carmels for lunch with some of the students. We had a good lunch there, and then stayed most of the afternoon chatting and playing on the Wii! Then we went out to Sunday@6, where I was leading the music for the first time. That seemed to go well although there weren’t so many people there, think we had a few regulars missing.

And then we came back and watched ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’, which is pretty much everything that happened this weekend!

I should also mention – last week we watched ‘500 Days of Summer’ which is a good film and very cleverly written. However, I wasn’t sure about the conclusion… I wasn’t sure whether it was saying the normal Hollywood thing of “You just have to find the right person” or not. (And I can say that without giving anything away, because the ending is probably not what you’d expect). So, it’s worth watching, but I don’t think it’s one I’d watch again.

A while back I wrote a blog post ‘about’ feminism. Well, sort of, more about the lad’s mag culture and what have you.

Anyway, I’ve just read a very interesting article which deals with a similar theme. The general idea is that our culture seems to believe that feminism has done its work – women have equal rights. In that kind of society sexism can thrive because it’s seen as ‘ironic’ or something like that.

Because women are now “equal” and the battle is over and won, we are now free to embrace things we used to see as sexist, including hypergirliness. In fact, this is supposed to be a relief.

Thank God girls and women can turn their backs on stick-in-the-mud, curdled feminism and now we can jiggle our way into that awesome party. Now that women allegedly have the same sexual freedom as men, they actually prefer to be sex objects because it’s liberating. According to enlightened sexism, women today have a choice between feminism and antifeminism, and they just naturally and happily choose the latter because, well, antifeminism has become cool, even hip.

It’s well worth reading!

Just a quick post to let you know what happened on the second half of the weekend! Most of Saturday was taken up with sessions – two in the morning and one group session in the evening. In the afternoon we went on a walk in the nearby countryside, alongside a canal, which was a very pleasant way to spend a sunny afternoon.

On Sunday morning we had another two sessions, followed by a roast dinner, which was very nice. The food over the whole weekend was great, actually – I ate far too much but still! After that came the drive home, which passed by pretty uneventfully with very little traffic. I slowed down a little bit on the way home as well, and it certainly affected the petrol consumption – the needle moved noticeably more slowly!

After that we headed out to Sunday@6, then came back home and watched ‘Lark Rise’.

I just wanted to mention the teaching at the weekend: it was based on Old Testament narrative – how to preach it. I think I’d feel much more confident if I had to preach and Old Testament narrative passage than I would have done before. It hasn’t made it any easier but does give me a way of breaking into the passage, and a few ideas about how to present it. Very helpful. If you’re involved with preaching or teaching the Bible, it would definitely be worth going to! Many of the people who I met had been there before, which I think just illustrates how useful it is. I will try and get there next year as well!

So, this weekend it’s the Proclamation Trust Bible Training Weekend. I’d post a link but I’M USING IE6 WHICH DOESN’T HAVE TABBED FRIGGIN BROWSING! *ahem* Apologies, it’s just that using IE6 is such an awful experience it’s actually almost painful.

Aaaaanyway. I thought I would do a bit of “Live Blogging” from the conference. Live Blogging, as defined by me, is blogging when you’re actually at the event, rather than looking back at it afterwards. That’s not the normal definition of live blogging. I don’t care. Talk to the hand…

So. As Wayne from “Wayne’s World” once said, let me bring you up to speed. I had the day off today (as I have the past couple of days). After lunch I headed over to pick up Quinlan, who I was travelling to the weekend with. Unfortunately I was about 25 minutes late (due to roadworks and getting lost, don’t ask), but we eventually headed off in his VW Beetle. Which I was driving. I think he quite likes being chauffered (he is a world-famous architect after all…) and so I drove. It was the first time I’ve driven a Beetle – new or old (this is an 04 model) and it seemed pretty nice. Standard VW really – drove well, steering felt light, decent engine. I did miss my Saab’s 2.0 litre turbocharged engine though – it really eats up the motorway miles and is pretty efficient. You could virtually see the fuel guage move on the VW!

Anyway. We got here at about 17:50, which gave me ten minutes to find my room and get to the first meeting. I managed to get there but stupidly forgot my Bible, notbook, pen, programme etc… looked over someone’s shoulder for most of it. It was OK though! The first session was from Adrian Reynolds on Ezra chapter 1, which was very interesting. Then we had dinner (Beef Chilli, nice, and some sort of chocolate cheesecake, also nice).

And then we had our second session, which was by Christopher Ash on Old Testament Narrative. I really enjoyed it actually, it gave a good taster of what we’re going to be studying this weekend. Won’t go into it now though as, well… if you’ve read this far you’re doing well.

Think that’s about it to be honest. After that I just chatted with some random people and started writing this blog… exciting stuff! To be honest I don’t have much else to say right now, so I’ll say ta-ta for now. We have some free time tomorrow aftenoon so I might update again then.

Just thought I’d post a quick update with what’s been going on here recently! We had a quieter weekend this week.

On Friday night, because it’s half-term this week, we had the 21 social. It was a cleudo-style murder mystery (well, technically a kidnap mystery), where the leaders all played suspects and the kids had to work out who did it! It was actually really fun, even though I’m not very good at that kind of thing.

On Saturday we did a bit of shopping, and then in the afternoon went round to see Jo and Evie. We took some dinner round – we cooked some Balti Butter Chicken which was absolutely delicious (even if I do say so myself. Well, Phil did most of the cooking, so it’s not like I’m praising myself anyway!) And we also played some Guitar Hero. I must say, I’m finding Guitar Hero more difficult than playing the actual guitar for some reason! Well, not more difficult as such, but it’s a completely different skill from playing the guitar. I’m sure that if you’ve never played an instrument before it would give you a bit of a leg up, but I doubt very much it would help you in any way other than rhythm, and perhaps strenthening your fingers a bit.

Anyway. On Sunday we went to church in the morning, then came back for lunch, and then went round to Jo’s again and went for a walk around Castle Park with Evie. We fed the ducks, which is something I haven’t done in a long time! The ducks didn’t seem too bothered though – maybe lots of people feed the ducks on Sunday afternoon?!

Afterwards we headed out to Sunday@6, before watching ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’. I think I’m enjoying this series less than I did the previous two… it’s kind of gone from being a quaint slice of English life to taking a few issues and hitting them with a sledgehammer. I don’t know whether the writing team has changed, but it seems this series is a bit more “hey, let’s have some social commentary in there!” than it did in the previous series.

This week is only a two-day week for us – we’ve both taken off our remaining holiday for this holiday yea, Wednesday to Friday. At the weekend I’m going away for a Bible Training weekend with the Proclamation Trust, so I’m quite looking forward to that. I’ll report back on that next week…

Last night we watched through the final episode of “Glee”. We’ve now seen all of the first series. I’m not convinced by it to be honest – there are some aspects of the series which I think are odd, and one which I actually find quite uncomfortable.

Also note that this post will contain a few spoilers, so if you haven’t seen Glee but want to, you may want to leave this post until you have seen it.

First things first though, the positive aspects. I do like the music – although I didn’t know all the songs I felt like the ones that they did do were well done. I was quite impressed with the way they covered some of the pop songs such as Queen’s “Somebody to Love”: most of the time I think covers of iconic songs shouldn’t be done, because they rarely do the original justice. But in this instance they made the cover version different enough from the original to make it good in its own right – rather than just ripping off the genius of Queen.

I also liked their characterisation: I mentioned last time that all the characters were essentially pantomime characters. This wasn’t true for the whole series – all the characters (even Sue Sylvester) were made into more 3D characters, and were well portrayed on screen. I particularly liked the relationship between Will, Terri and Emma – I actually thought it was quite untypical for American TV, a lot of the scenes they had were quite simple, without any background music, just them with nothing else to heighten the drama.

That said… there were some aspects of Glee I didn’t like.

The main one was Sue Sylvester. Although the writers did make her character more sympathetic, she was just too pantomime for me. The show had some really nice moments, some good drama, some good humour – but Sue just was completely over the top for me. It seemed like the show was a little schizophrenic about whether to be a comedy or a drama, and it just didn’t quite work for me.

Part of the problem is, Sue was just such an unlikeable character I didn’t see how she couldn’t still have been working at the school without being fired. If I was Will Schuester, I wouldn’t have given her the time of day. If she’d started talking to me, I would have walked off!

I think part of the problem is, everyone was treating her as a ‘serious’ character. I compared Glee to Green Wing in my last post, and there are similarities: it has serious moments but it also has some very random, funny moments. (Yeah, that’s about where the similarities end, but still). Alan Statham and Sue White are two examples of characters in Green Wing who are completely bizarre, and yet somehow it seems quite normal in the world they created. It doesn’t seem out of place. Sue Sylvester, on the other hand, seems out of place. Anyway, I’ve rambled on about that for long enough.

The other thing which didn’t sit right with me is the ‘adultery’ storyline (apologies for slightly dramatic language, but that’s what it is): everyone was behaving pretty badly to each other in the show – what with Terri lying to Will, Quinn and Puck lying to Finn etc, but Will’s behaviour really seemed out of order. If you’re married, falling in love with someone else isn’t something which you should really do. It’s not just when you’ve got the feeling you can’t help but do anything about it! It’s just presenting, to my mind, another flawed version of love to the world.

Still, all in all, it was quite watchable and hopefully they’ll improve things a little next season. Who knows! That’s all from me anyway…

Last Thursday it was Phil’s birthday. Her parents came up for the day (Phil had the day off), and then in the evening we all had dinner together. It was rather nice! The first of three birthday meals we’ve had over the past few days… but I’ll come onto that in a minute.

On Friday night we went to 21, as per usual. Then afterwards we headed over to the Three Horseshoes for a drink with Laura, Pete, AJ and Jen. It was cool to be able to spend time with them socially as we don’t usually have time, and we all get on well. So hopefully we’ll get to do it again soon!

On Saturday we spent the morning doing various random things in town. Then in the afternoon we went out for a walk round Castle Park with Jo and Evie. Jo had an ice cream, which I think was rather brave – although it was sunny it was still a bit chilly! We also saw the floor of the Roman house near to the Castle, which is fascinating. It’s the remains of a Roman house – just the flooring is left. It’s lasted pretty well given it’s about 1800 years old! And although we’ve been in Colchester for ages we’ve never seen it before for some strange reason. Afterwards we headed over to Ipswich to have dinner with my parents (birthday meal #2!) and enjoyed that.

Then on Sunday we went to church in the morning, and then out to the Yew Tree at Great Horkesley for lunch. We’ve been there a few times before. This time we had a “buy one main course get another free” voucher (you can get them if you sign up to the mailing list), so we had a relatively cheap and very tasty roast dinner! The service was a bit slow but they were very busy so I can forgive them for that.

Afterwards we headed out to Sunday@6, and then came back to see Jo and Evie for a bit. I played some more of Guitar Hero (Jo has a Wii, and it’s great fun. I wouldn’t like to get one though – I’d probably spend all my time on that rather than learning that actual guitar, which wouldn’t be good). And then we watched ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’, which was a nice gentle way to finish the weekend.

So, there you have it! Action-packed, as it were.

This started out as a comment on Matthew’s blog post, but I then hit the word limit and decided that it probably worked better as a proper blog post!

So, if you haven’t already, go and read Matthew’s blog post, and then pretend that you’re reading a comment on his blog. (Except that here it’s not in a really tiny font which you need a magnifying glass to see 😉

Gosh, I didn’t realise you were so judgemental – how awful 😉 Seriously though, I do the same kind of thing. I think driving brings out the worst in people – when I’m driving I’m irritable, short-tempered, impatient, selfish etc. Don’t really know what it is, but driving definitely has some kind of effect me on other things don’t!

I think it’s something to do with stress levels – driving is actually quite a stressful experience for me. There’s something about always having to be alert and watching out for all the other idiots on the road which raises the stress levels.

Having said all that, to mention a few of your points… there are good reasons for not doing 70mph, mainly petrol consumption. I think the ideal speed for petrol usage is around 56mph. Although I do sit around 70 on the motorway! I do go faster occasionally, mainly when overtaking (if a car is doing slightly less than what I want to do, I will speed up so I don’t hold up the cars behind me).

I also feel the need to defend my choice of car. I own a Saab 9-3 which has a 2.0 litre turbocharged engine, producing about 154bhp. It’s not exactly a monster, petrol-guzzling engine but it’s probably more than I need. The petrol consumption isn’t too bad if you get going – I reckon around 40mpg on the motorway, 30-35 otherwise. (It usually hovers around 35 on the computer thingum).

So why do I drive it then? Well, because it’s a good, reliable car which will hopefully last. Recent problems aside, Saabs are generally known for lasting a long time – apparently the guy who services my car said he services another similar 9-3 which has done over 400,000 miles!

To my mind it was more environmentally sound to buy a car that had already been made (it was second-hand), almost ten years old, but still had plenty of life left in it – even if it wasn’t quite as efficient as a smaller, more modern car. [Apparently building a car accounts for 1/3 of the carbon emissions of its lifetime!] And it is a very comfortable car, well-designed and made, which despite its age is still in very good condition.

Aaaaanyway. I pretty much agree on all the other points – a pet peeve of mine is people who drive inconsiderately. But yes, I am guilty of being judgemental when driving, and that’s not a good thing 🙁

I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but over the past week or so there’s been a bit of an outcry about a website called “Marital Affairs”. Well, it wasn’t actually the website itself, it was an advert for the website which as far as I can tell has been posted up nationwide.

Anyway, someone wrote a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about it, the ASA rejected the complaint, someone set up a Facebook group, etc etc. If you’ve not heard it already, you can read the background here.

Anyway, apparently the ASA have now upheld the complaint and taken the adverts down (see the Church Times article). One thing I wanted to pick up on is the ASA’s response after giving in and ordering the adverts to be taken down. They said: “people have the right to choose their own lifestyle” – which presumably is why they didn’t take the adverts down in the first place.

Now, I wouldn’t consider myself ultra-conservative or anything. But that statement strikes me as being a bit odd: Yes, people can choose their own lifestyles. But would you allow advertising that positively encouraged bad traits – such as breaking promises, letting other people down, acting selfishly? Because that’s effectively what they’re doing with the Marital Affairs advert – by allowing it they are tacitly saying, “It’s OK. Go on, have an affair. It’s your lifestyle, after all.”

My view is, when two people get married, they make a commitment to each other. If you get married in a church (specifically CofE, I think the wording is very similar in other churches) you agree to be faithful to each other for as long as you both shall live. I think those are beautiful words, but they are not just words: it’s a promise you make. If you go into marriage thinking that you’re not going to be able to keep that promise, you might as well not bother.

Adultery, or marital infidelity, whatever you want to call it, wrecks marriages. Even if the couple manage to stay together things can rarely be the same. It’s not just a broken promise, it’s actually potentially wrecking people’s lives.

And, given how the tabloids react when a famous person gets caught having an affair (for a recent example see Tiger Woods), I think most people would go one further and say that having an affair is actually an immoral action.

So, come on ASA, for goodness’ sake, what the heck are you playing at? Yes, people can choose their own lifestyles, and having an affair isn’t (and shouldn’t be) illegal, but it’s hardly advisable to promote a website which allows people to indulge in such a thing is it?

Here endeth the rant…