Category: Uncategorized

As of the time of writing, it’s Christmas Eve. I wasn’t really sure what to write about, because there are so many things one could write about. So many things have been said about Christmas, what can be said that hasn’t already? But then I thought… hmmm…. well, why not say something which has been said by someone else already? After all, the reason they said it is because they probably had something to say (unlike me!)

So, I shall give to you the lyrics of one of my favourite hymns, which we sang at the carol service this evening. It’s an unusual Christmas carol, but it is certainly a very beautiful one. It’s based on the words to 2 Corinthians 8:9.

So, without further ado, here it is:

Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour,
All for love’s sake becamest poor;
Thrones for a manger didst surrender,
Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor.
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour,
All for love’s sake becomes poor.

Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love’s sake becamest man;
Stooping so low, but sinners raising
Heavenwards by thine eternal plan.
Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love’s sake becamest man.

Thou who art love beyond all telling,
Saviour and King, we worship thee.
Emmanuel, within us dwelling,
Make us what thou wouldst have us be.
Thou who art love beyond all telling,
Saviour and King, we worship thee.

Frank Houghton (1894-1972)

So remember, this Christmas, we celebrate something that happened all for love’s sake. All for love’s sake… for us.

Happy Christmas to all my blog readers, and I shall catch up with you soon! We’re off to see my parents tomorrow, and then Phil’s parents on Wednesday, so I probably won’t update until next weekend. Au revoir…

I have finally joined MySpace. well actually, I joined a month ago just so I could post comments on Kevvy B’s blog, but now I have actually created a page and everything. Well, um, edited the page that I did have so that there is actually stuff on there.

Ah well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!

So, last night I watched this week’s Torchwood. Beforehand, I thought “Yep, tomorrow I’ll be writing up my usual blog rant about it…” but actually, I thought the episode was probably one of the best of the series.

I think it was handled quite sensitively, enough though it didn’t actually involve any aliens. Come to think of it, I think it was probably the better for the fact that they didn’t try and do any “alien” stuff – they always mess up when they do 😉

But I rather enjoyed that one. There, you can pick yourselves up of the floor now that you’ve got over the shock!

So… what went on at the weekend, then? Well. On Friday night… we didn’t do very much. No surprises there!

On Saturday, we went into town in the morning, and then in the afternoon Phil went to Fordham to play her Clarinet for Tim & Katie’s wedding, and I went into town to do a few odd bits of shopping. Afterwards, Simon came back with Phil to have a cup of tea, and then (on the spur of the moment) we decided to go to the new curry place down the road from us (called Mirchi Rasoi, or something like that?), and invited Matthew as well. The curry itself was absolutely delicious – and I think everyone else enjoyed theirs! Mine was fairly spicy. However, the service was pretty slow – it’s not the kind of place you’d want to go if you were in a hurry! Still, at least it showed that they were cooking it properly, which is always a good thing. They’ve only been open two weeks, so I think I’ll reserve judgement on the place until we’ve been there again! – the food was good enough to want to go back, so we will probably go there sometime in the new year.

Yesterday, we went to the carol service in the morning, came back, had lunch, went for a walk, and then went for the carol service in the evening! Oh, the fun.

And, actually, I think that’s just about everything! All for now…

Just a quick update — Simon has for a long time had his website under protection of a username and password. This basically means that although his website does publish an RSS feed, many RSS readers can’t use it.

I have found a way round this, however, a solution which will work on *any* RSS reader you care to mention (I use it on Google Reader just fine!).

If you would like to add Simon’s entertaining, witty, dazzling and generally fantabulous blog onto your blog reading application, then please leave a comment and I will give you the details 🙂

Christmas music is torture.

Well, not really, but according to an article on The Register, there are similarities:

“If people don’t want it and if they have a negative response to it and if they’re exposed to something continually, the same songs over and over, it’s no different to being tortured, it’s the same reaction, the body will react in the same way,” said Val Weedon, national coordinator of the UK Noise Association.

Now, if only I can find a way of getting the government to ban anyone playing “So here it is, Merry Christmas…” more than once in the Christmas period…

I was watching the news tonight, and the top story is that five prostitutes have been killed, and found in various locations around Ipswich (including Hintlesham, which I used to drive to on the way to work – scary stuff!) I don’t really want to comment on the tragedy as such, but one of the things the newsreaders said: this incident has apparently brought up the issue again of whether brothels should be legalised.

I think the idea is, prostitution is a very risky, um, profession – if they were safely in brothels, they wouldn’t be so at risk of getting murdered. And let me say at this point, for that reason legalising brothels would probably be beneficial. But I don’t think that they’re really dealing with the root problem.

I don’t think any girls really want to become prostitutes… they do it because they need the money for some reason. They have dependants who need feeding, they have a drug addiction – they don’t think they have a choice. So, if you legalise brothels, you might make sure that they are safe, but it doesn’t really solve the problem that they’re doing something they never really wanted to do in the first place!

You could say that the root problem is never going to be solved, so therefore you might as well attempt to solve the problems which you can solve. I think that’s a tad defeatist, but still… I think solving the root problem should at least be given a shot!

Note how I deftly avoided mentioning any of the moral issues there. In a post with the word “brothel” in the title that’s not bad going!

Firstly, I would like to apologise for the rather uninteresting nature of this blog of late. In fact, not just of late – in general. Particularly boring of late, maybe I should say. Anyway. There’s not much I can do about this, short of becoming James Bond (and the last time I did that I nearly got myself killed, so perhaps I shouldn’t), so … um … yeah. Blah.

On Friday, I did not do very much^TM. On Saturday, we went into town for a bit, Phil went out to Fordham for a music practice, um… not a particularly interesting day to anyone else really! Yesterday, we went to Fordham in the morning (I don’t really need to say that anymore, do I?) and then Phil’s parents came round for lunch and stayed for the afternoon. It was a good afternoon, we enjoyed it!

And in the evening we went round to Alex’s where we had dinner, watched some scrubs / Torchwood and generally chatted.

Right, I think that’s about it for the time being. I’ll try and be less boring next time (that’s not a guarantee, by the way!)

Ok. Step one: read my previous rants on Torchwood. Step two: watch the current Torchwood (about the guy who died but is now a ghost). Step three: fill in the following for yourself:

(insert stupid things about the episode here)

Seriously though, these guys are just making it too easy! This episode actually self-destructed. It was going so well, too — although it was basically a Torchwood clone of the Doctor Who episode “Love and Monsters”, I still thought it was a good episode in its own right. And then… the last minute or two. WHAT?!?!?!

Once again — I really wouldn’t mind the plots not actually making sense or them not explaining anything at all, if Torchwood didn’t take itself so seriously!

I’ll stop ranting about Torchwood when they stop making it an easy target. Could possibly be ranting about it until the end of the series, then!…

Apologies for this blog seeming to become the “rant about Torchwood” blog… but it just provides so much food for thought and / or criticism!

This week’s episode (‘They Keep Killing Suzie’) was quite a good one, I thought. Having said that, there were one or two things which the entire episode hinged around which didn’t really make sense. Namely:

1. So, Suzie set up the whole thing. Great. But… how did she know that Gwen would actually be able to resurrect her? If Gwen wasn’t able to resurrect her, then it would have been a tad pointless, wouldn’t it? Which brings me on to the second thing.
2. Why didn’t she just not kill herself in the first instance? She could then have gone and killed her father or whatever she wanted to do without having to go through being brought back to life! I think perhaps (a) she wanted to experience what it was like to be dead (but why?), or (b) wanted to have eternal life. If (b), then I’m not sure how that was supposed to work… the glove allowed Suzie to live off Gwen’s ‘life-force’ — but Gwen’s life force is surely not infinite, so Suzie would just have had a normal life?! Again, absolutely no reason to kill herself and be resurrected.

Sorry to go on about these things – I wouldn’t be so pedantic if Torchwood didn’t take itself so seriously! That’s the difference between Doctor Who and Torchwood – Doctor Who is quite light-hearted and fun, whereas Torchwood tries to make itself all serious and dramatic. The only problem is, when you try and make something more serious, you have to make it a bit more believable in order to stop pedants like me from moaning about it on their blogs (yeah, like that’s an incentive to make better stories!).

Anyway. I did think Gwen & Suzie’s discussion about the afterlife was interesting – they did it very cleverly so that practically any religious / theological framework could be accommodated!

Oh yes, and on a very minor note – I liked the fact that they used ‘Gorecki’ by Lamb right at the end. It’s a beautiful song! However, I just don’t think it was appropriate given the context. It’s a love song really, and … well, was Gwen in love? Was that what they were trying to convey? Do you think “If I should die this very moment / I wouldn’t fear” was an appropriate first line given that one person had just died trying to desperately cling on to life? Ah well, it’s just good to see Lamb getting some recognition 🙂

Anyway, that’s all for me for the time being…