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Well, this week was a bit more busy, but in a really nice way.

On Friday evening we had 21, and then afterwards Alex came round to stay for a couple of nights (he had a party near Ipswich to go to).

Anyway, on Saturday morning we did a bit of shopping and general sorting out of stuff. In the afternoon, Laura came round and we had dinner, then watched lots of various comedy things (as well as the Doctor Who episode ‘Blink’). It was a really nice evening!

Then, on Sunday we went to church in the morning, then had some lunch with Alex, and then went to Sunday@6 in the evening. So not a very exciting day but quite relaxing!

Not much else to say at the moment. We started the Moore Course last week, we’re doing Ephesians this year. I keep seeing Ephesians everywhere – at the prayer meeting last week, on someone’s blog! Strange. As well as reading through the course notes, I’ve also bought a couple of commentaries on Ephesians and will be reading through them as well.

Over the past few years we’ve been using an Ikea mattress. However, the past few months it’s been getting more and more saggy. We decided to buy a new mattress, and so in September (when we were on holiday) we popped into Benson’s in Colchester.

We bought a new Relyon mattress – expensive, but hopefully will last a long time! Phil’s parents have always had Relyong mattresses and they swear by them. Also we have a Relyon bed in our spare room and it’s pretty good, so we thought we were on safe ground!

Anyway, we’ve had the mattress now for over a week. It’s a combined memory foam and sprung mattress. It has taken a fair old while to get used to! In fact, to be honest, there was one night I just couldn’t get comfortable – I had to go and sleep in the spare room!

But the past couple of nights have been much better, I think I’m getting used to it now and it’s pretty comfortable. The only thing is, memory foam does seem to retain the heat more than usual mattresses, which seems like it will be good for winter but bad for the summer! But I’ll reserve judgement on that until the summer.

Anyway, Liz said to me on Facebook that new mattresses can take up to three months to become comfortable so I’m hoping that this one will settle down and be fantastic! I’m sure it wouldn’t take much to be better than the old Ikea mattress we had.

A few weeks ago, Muse released their new album “The Resistance”. I have avoided commenting on it thus far because I wanted to give it a proper listen. I find the problem with albums is that my opinion can change over the course of time, so I want to try and give it as long as possible before commenting!

This is why it’s been a while for me to mention this. But now I’ve given it a proper listen through. This album is GENIUS. It’s the best album Muse have ever put out, a seminal work which one day may be looked on in the same way that Sergeant Pepper is looked at today. Well, perhaps not quite Sergeant Pepper, but – this is good. Very, very good.

What I’m going to do is go through all the tracks and make a few comments about each one.

(more…)

This weekend was quite a nice one! On Friday night we helped out at 21, and I did the talk. This week, it was on the parable of the sower. The kids all seemed knackered, but I think they took at least some of it in!

On Saturday we spent the day doing shopping and various things that needed to be done. Then, in the evening we headed round to AJ and Jen’s house for a games night. We all ate together, and then played a variety of games. It was really good – quite a few people from Fordham were there: apart from AJ and Jen and Phil and I, there was also Laura, Pete, Rachel, and James and Tash. We played “Pass the Bomb” to start with, which went down pretty well. Then we played the hat game (guessing the names of celebrities people write down and put in a hat), and then we played the Pit game. I can’t exactly remember what it was called, but it was about trading cards to get all of a particular set and score points. Fun, although I wasn’t very good (although James and I did come second, so perhaps we weren’t that bad).

Anyway, that was all good fun… hope we have another one sometime in the not too distant future! On Sunday morning we went to church as per usual. In the afternoon I spent some time looking at the Moore Course (we’re doing Ephesians this term), then went to Sunday@6. Afterwards we watched “The World is Not Enough”, which I haven’t seen in ages!

So that’s pretty much it for the weekend.

This weekend was relatively busy, things are picking up after the summer and we’re now virtually back to a full schedule. On Friday night we helped out at 21 as per usual. Then on Saturday morning we did some shopping, and then in the afternoon popped round to see Jo and David’s new flat.

Then we went to Colchester Baptist Church for a performance of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”. Anne-Marie was singing and narrating (not at the same time), so we went there and joined Sarah to watch it. It was a really good performance, took me right back to primary school (I was in a performance of it then, although we didn’t do all the songs). The band and singers were all great, with the exception of one poor girl who got so nervous she had a little trouble keeping time! Afterwards A-M and Sarah came round for a cup of hot chocolate.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning as per usual. And then in the evening I went off to Sunday@6! After that we came home and watched “The Boat that Rocked”.

I quite enjoyed the film although it was a bit long. It was a “Who’s Who” of British comedy, part of the fun of the film was trying to identify all the actors! One thing I wondered about was that the soundtrack contained absolutely no Beatles songs. Given that it was set in 1966/67, I found that quite strange. At the end a lot of album covers were shown, and “Sergeant Pepper” was one of them. I thought perhaps the Beatles hadn’t given permission for their songs to be used, but can’t find anything about it on the internet.

Anyway, that was our weekend!

You may have already seen this, but this article is worth a read: 50 things that are being killed by the internet. It makes interesting and, at times, thought-provoking reading.

One of the things I’ve thought about modern culture recently is that people (including myself) don’t seem to “live in the moment”. In other words, we’re all too busy thinking about how we’re going to capture the moment on our camera phones (or whatever) that we actually fail to just let go and enjoy it.

I was thinking of this at the Coldplay concert the other night. There were some lads in front of us who seemed to spent quite a lot of time taking pictures – while the concert was happening! I’m sure they enjoyed it, but it does seem that something has been lost if we all need to feel every single good moment of our lives must be documented so we will remember it.

I think I have a new resolution: if I see a beautiful scene, or go to a good concert, or whatever – I’m just going to try and enjoy it. After all, these things never translate into pictures very well. Just sit still and be quiet for a while, medidate even, and let the moment wash over me. That way I might be able to remember it much better than with a picture!

This weekend started off fairly normally: 21 has started again for the autumn term so we were helping out there on Friday night.

On Saturday we did a bit of shopping – a Waitrose has opened up in Colchester, fairly near us, so we went there for the first time. It was incredibly busy, but looks like it will be a good place to shop. Phil was very excited as she is a big fan of Waitrose, I think we will be back there fairly often!

After lunch we headed down to Wembley Stadium to see Coldplay. They were on at 9PM, but there were a few support acts beforehand. We got there one or two songs into White Lies’ set. They were pretty good, although I didn’t really know much of their music. Ditto for Girls Aloud, and Jay-Z. I must say I’m not really a fan of rap music, but Jay-Z seemed pretty good at what he did and I enjoyed it even if it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.

Coldplay were brilliant. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but they played most of their well-known songs, a few older songs such as The Scientist, and quite a lot of their newer songs (from Viva la Vida and Prospekt’s March). Chris Martin seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time wriggling round on the floor, which was quite amusing although a bit strange! I laughed when he got half way through playing ‘The Hardest Part’ on the piano and then said ‘Oh wait, that’s wrong’ and had to correct himself as well.

My favourite song of the evening – well, couldn’t really say, but ‘Glass of Water’ and ‘Life in Technicolor ii’ were both great to hear live. The latter is probably one of mine and Phil’s favourite newer songs of theirs.

The only downside was that we were quite a long way up – a long way from the band! They did have screens up, but it wasn’t quite the same. When we were at the Keane gig in February we were standing quite close to the stage. Although there are pros and cons to that as well, I think in general you get more atmosphere down there. Still, we got into it and had a good time nonetheless.

The real problems started after the gig. Coldplay finished at 11PM, and our train was at 00:18. It took us about 10 minutes to get out of the stadium, and then about half an hour to get to the tube. At this stage we were a bit worried, but thought we could just about make it. Then the tube train only went two stops (to Baker St) before turning round and going back. So we had to jump on another tube train – but unfortunately the next one only went to Moorgate (i.e. one stop before Liverpool St)! Long story short, we missed the last train back to Colchester.

We basically just spent the night wandering around London, which was quite fun in a surreal kind of way! And then we caught the first train back at about 4:10AM. Unfortunately (again), due to engineering works we couldn’t go directly to Colchester. We had to go to Stansted and then catch the bus. Ah well, chalk it all up to experience! If we go to Wembley again we will know what to expect. We finally got home at about 7AM!

Not surprisingly, we didn’t do much on Sunday! Phil went to church in the morning and I went to Sunday@6, but nothing much to report apart from that.

Just thought I’d better post up a quick update on our holiday last week! We caught the train up to Edinburgh on Monday morning. The journey was straightforward, and we got into Edinburgh on time at about 1:30 PM. The flat itself was very comfortable – we were staying in a National Trust property called Gladstone’s Land (there are a couple of flats above the touristy bit – Phil’s parents were staying in one, and we were staying in the other). We were very glad to be travelling light though – we were on the sixth floor of a 15th century building which was accessed via a spiral staircase! But I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting a self-catering place in the centre of Edinburgh. It was very conveniently placed.

I’m not going to do a full day-by-day breakdown of everything that we did, but here’s a quick summary:

• Walked up to Arthur’s seat. The views are spectacular from the top.
• Walked around the Royal Mile, including the Scottish Parliament building. Although the building looks weird at first, it grew on me. I do like the debating chamber.
• Visited the Royal Yacht Brittania. Well worth a visit. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it was really interesting.
• Had dinner with Naomi and Ran, who we hadn’t seen since Andy B and Helen’s wedding last year!
• Went to a midday service at St Giles’ Cathedral.
• Visited Mary King’s Close – the underground streets. Again, very interesting and worth a visit.
• Had a look round Gladstone’s Land (but then, we got in free because we were staying upstairs!)
• Went over to Glasgow to have dinner with one of Phil’s friends
• Did an “Alexander McCall Smith” tour of the New Town
• Went all the way up Walter Scott’s monument
• Walked over the Forth road bridge, and then came back by rail over the Forth railway bridge

I think that’s pretty much it. We packed in a fair bit over the week, as you can see! Overall, we both really enjoyed our time there. Edinburgh is a great city – it has a very distinctive character. And despite the size (it’s very compact), there is plenty to see and do. If you haven’t been it’s worth exploring for sure.

I’ve spent a fairly large sum of money over the past couple of days, without really intending to! I bought a new phone – a Samsung S5600. I wanted something which could do basic internet (i.e., view and update Google Calendar), something which could take photos, and something which could do basic emails. The S5600 hits those criteria, and it wasn’t too expensive, so I went for it instead of a more expensive model.

It’s a decent phone as well. The touchscreen is responsive for the most part, although I do occasionally have problems when browsing when the phone browser will try and zoom out to fit the whole page in, and I’m not completely sure why it does that. It supports IMAP and secure SMTP which makes me happy, as it means I can use GMail with it.

The camera on it is only 3 megapixel, but to be honest I always laugh when seeing these “8 megapixel” cameras on mobile phones – the lens it what really makes a difference in order to take quality pictures. It seems perfectly adequate to take the odd snap when I’ve forgotten my actual camera – even with a built in LED flash! (Not that I’ve used it much yet).

I can also use it to update Twitter, which is a novel experience, but quite cool (for a geeky person like me, that is). It also supports MSN Messenger, although I haven’t tried it yet because I’m not sure whether I really want to use it on the go! Nice to have the option though.

The only real issue at the moment is that I can’t synchronise it with Google Calendar. This is because the software provided is… well, it’s standard bloatware which these mobile phone companies pump out. It will only synchronise the calendar with Microsoft Outlook, and – as I don’t have Outlook – I can’t synchronise. I have no doubt there is (or will be soon) software available that can fix this issue, so I’m not too worried.

In the meantime I can use Google Calendar via the web browser, so not a real problem.

All in all, it’s a pretty decent little phone which seems to give good value for money. Not perfect, but I think it will do for my needs quite nicely!

The second thing I bought which was quite expensive was a new electric razor. My old one was about eight years old (I got it before going to uni!) so it was desperately in need of replacing. I actually didn’t realise how expensive electric razors were, some of the ones in the shop were nearly £200! Mine was less than half that, but it still felt a bit wrong to be paying that much for what seems like a fairly simple bit of kit. Hopefully it will last as long as my previous one though (a Philips Philishave – what else?) so I’ll get my money’s worth.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it for now. We’re off to Edinburgh at some ridiculous hour of the morning tomorrow, so I won’t be updating the blog this week. But I will probably update my Twitter from time to time. That’s all for now!

My first article in the Crossring “Mark Marathon” has been published. It is entitled “Is Jesus Calling You Today?” and may be read here. The passage is Mark 1:14-20, although I spend most of the time dealing with the first couple of verses!