General Easter Update

It's been a while and we're off on holiday tomorrow so here's a few thoughts to jot down before I go.

Easter and "The Passion"

It's Easter Sunday. Easter is obviously a hijacked pagan festival - witness the eggs and bunnies that symbolise new life as spring approaches - heck the date of easter even changes with the lunar cycle! But, regardless of that, this is the time when Christians celebrate that Jesus rose from the dead and brought us a new and different sort of life. God has forgiven us of the wrong we've done and we can follow Jesus in faith knowing that he died and was brought back from the dead to live forever. I join with the many today who shout "Hallelujah" - Praise the Lord!

It's been a good time of reflecting on what Jesus did and why it means so much to us. It
saddens me that people have so little understanding of the man at the centre of the Christian faith. I'm not the sort to ram it down people throats, but if they ask I'll happily explain, and highly recommend, my faith, that I have come to see as the truth. But the
occasions to explain to people are sadly limited, even at this time of the year.

Encouragingly, this year, the BBC has done a screening of a 4-part film of "The Passion" - the events of the last few days of Jesus' life. This has been very interesting to watch. Many have tried to interpret the events in their own ways down the years. I like the BBC's attempt. It feels quite real and give you a good sense of what Jerusalem was like at the time, and some insight into why certain people may have done what they did on that first Easter. What it lacked for me was a spiritual element - little prayer, no angels, no miracles, no fear of God. I thought the pharisees more interested in what was going on that then disciples. It felt earthly, lacking a heavenly God. A tale told, but somehow lacking the essence of what was really going on. A political revolution was definitely going on, but the "kingdom of God" seemed relegated to little more than a nice-to-have desire of the heart. I think it lacked...well...passion!

But good on the Beeb for showing such a thing. And don't get me wrong - it was a REALLY good re-enactment of what happened - captivating and compelling. It was just very non-committal too.

Oh, and there seems to have been a lot of chocolate around. Not sure what that's about.

Small Group Leading

I attend a thing called a "Small Group". This is a group of about 10 people from church who meet during the week to chat, pray, study the bible and share news together. Small groups are an important part of church life as they enable people to connect and meet in God's presence in a deeper way than you can in a larger group on the Sunday.

This week I led the group in a study. It was the first time I'd done this for a long time and it seemed to go down well, but I'm not entirely sure. It's always hard to judge how these things look from the other side. I really enjoy preparing and leading groups like this and I hope I'll get to do it again.

Garden

With 3 days off before our trip away, we were meant to be gardening. Both digging and planting. But the weather's been AWFUL. Snow, sleet, hail, rain, gales, freezing temperatures. So that'll have to wait. Longer days are coming so I suspect some evening digging may be required. We've not planted a thing yet and only have a small patch of weedless garden.

House

So instead we've been concentrating on the house. Sally's a star with painting and has made great progress on the dining room. We've committed quite a lot of the last couple of days to tidying up the edges and we're VERY nearly done. Here's the before and after:

As well as painting we've also put up another nice light. I confess, I thought this was a bit over the top for the small room, but Sally loves it and it is a beautiful thing and we got it for half price.

Wiring the new light in was interesting (as are most thing involving the electrics in our house). We have "loop in" wiring, so three cables come in from the ceiling; power in, power out, and the loop to the switch. This makes for a complicated bit of wiring to get the light connected up. However, in this fitting, the live and neutrals seemed to be wired backwards. All the black cables were where the reds should be, and vice versa. A quick chat with my dad and a few diagrams later and it appeared to be safe. After all, the previous fitting worked!

It seems that normally you have the three live wires tied together with power coming back from the switch to the light on the "spare" neutral cable. In our case, we had the three neutrals tied together with the spare live coming back from the switch. From a "logical" circuit point of view this means that the switch is on the neutral side of the light, rather than the live. There was no reason why it shouldn't work. And, indeed, it does!

I'm sure I should be more scared of electricals than I am. I'll get a nasty shock one day.

Rats!

Darn it. The rats are back. We've heard vague scratchings recently and dismissed it, but they were definitely up there last night. I can only see one little hole outside that they might be getting in. We've put fresh poison down and some proper rat traps in the loft. Grrr....

Cycling

Not much going on on the cycling front. I've been doing longer trips into work and back and generally enjoying being out on the Felt. Both bikes need a good clean which I was hoping to do this weekend and haven't got around too. Oh, and I had to replace another spoke on the Raleigh. Not sure how this one broke but fixing it was easy having done it before.

Had other transport problems too when the car started spluttering a bit on the way back from the outdoors show. Kwik Fit fixed it with a new clamp on the exhaust - the existing one had come loose. They charged me £2. Bargain!

Other Developments

There are some other interesting developments going on that I can't really talk about too. These are very much connected to our spiritual and church life and involve some interesting changes that are going on around us. Some of this is stuff that we thing God has been telling us might happen in some way over the last year so it's very exciting seeing how that might come to fruition. Please, if anyone's reading, don't ask us any questions because we can't answer them. I probably shouldn't even be putting the teaser out.

More will be apparent in the coming months, I hope!

Holiday

And so to probably our most anticipated holiday so far. We're only going to York and the Lake District, but we've both had such a hard few weeks at work that we REALLY need it. We're looking forward to our first bit of fell walking on our own (how will we get on without a more experienced guide?), and we'll hopefully have a rest in there too.

I will probably be quiet for a few days, both Blog and Twitter-wise. Back with some photos on Saturday!

Songs 8 and 9: The Monkees "Daydream Believer" and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"

I've been a bit preoccupied with other things so song-learning has been top of my agenda lately, but there has been some progress.

I struggled with "Mr Jones", not with the words, as you might have expected, but with the rhythm. Singing and playing this song at the same time is really hard. So I know all the words, and I know all the music, but I can't do both at the same time!

Last week was Song 8 and I had a go at learning The Monkees "Daydream Believer". Another piece that I know all the words to already and so it should just be a case of committing the chords to memory, but again, rhythm got me stuck. This really isn't a guitar song...at least, not without some major re-arrangement. So I gave up quite quickly. I don't think I've even memorised the chords. Consider this dropped from the list!

And so I approached song 9. Leornard Cohen's "Hallelujah", which has been covered by many people in many different ways. I'm attempting a fairly standard take of it on the accoustic guitar.

I'd been simultaneously looking forward to and dreading this one. When I mentioned it to Sally she expressed some doubt about it - it sounded to her like quite a complicated piece. But I reckoned the chords weren't too difficult (I'm sufficiently musical that I can tell a complicated chord sequence). But any song that's really a melancholy piano piece that will have to be carefully picked on the guitar is gonna be a bit hard.

So I was delighted to find it not all that hard at all. OK, so I don't do it justice - it's a beautiful song and I play it clumsily - but I can play C, F, G, Em and Am, and get between them, pretty OK. I've still got some words to learn but most of them are there. And it's been a real joy to do.

I'm away on holiday next week so the next song may have to wait. I'm well behind but have nearly 10 under my belt. That's 10 songs more than I knew by heart three months ago! Yay!

Film: Run Fatboy Run

We saw the trailers for this film ages ago and, as we like Simon Pegg (of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), we thought it would be worth a bash. But we totally missed it at the cinema.

However, Sally's borrowed it from a friend and so we sat down with a curry after a long, hard week, and watched it as light entertainment.

It was a slight disappointment. Pegg plays a security guard who's low in self esteem and fitness. It's 5 years since he chickened out of marrying his pregnant girlfriend and ran off and he's trying to get her back. But she's found anther man. And so the fight is on.

Pegg's character trys to redeem himself, and find himself, through running. The ex's boyfriend is running a marathon and Pegg promises lots of people that he will run it. He has three weeks to go from being able to run half way up the street, to being able to run 26 miles. Not likely.

I won't tell you if he makes it (no spoilers here!). But the file was vaguely entertaining - Pegg and his fellow actors are high on physical comedy and that alone carried the film for me. But it was sorely disappointing in other places. The plot was cheesy and the script pretty awful - though there were some nice scenes and certain themes that ran through the film worked well. I felt I should have been more emotionally involved with the characters than I was - perhaps the comedy got in the way of that. I didn't notice bad acting or direction so maybe it wasn't there, but there was nothing startling either. Oh, and the product placement was pretty blatent! Grrr.

So, all in all, a mildly funny and entertaining rom-com (the "run-com" pun doesn't quite work), but definitely not Pegg's best.

Music: Free albums!!!

We've discovered a great way to use our thousands of accumulated Nectar Points (Supermarket Loyalty Card points)...we can use them to buy CDs!

We recently got three in this way that I'll just give a little write up of. I'm not the best music reviewer, but here are my thoughts.

Amy Winehouse: Back to Black

I confess that it was Sally that wanted a Winehouse album, not me, and so I've not heard it much. I also confess that I'm strangely prejudiced against Winehouse's music because of what I hear about her in the news.

I was surprised, therefore, to find myself thinking that her songs, music and voice were all very good. Certainly not what I'd normally listen to, but pretty cool stuff none the less.

I'll maybe write more when I've heard the album some more.

Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler: Private Investigations - The Best Of

Sally and I went to the cinema a while back and an advert for this "Best Of" came on. At the end of the advert we turned to each other and at the same time said, sheepishly, "I'd quite like to get that".

And so we have a classic Dad-rock album. A load of tunes that we mostly already know really well but never realised were by Dire Straits. Some awesome guitar solos, some classic lyrics, and a great variety of music too, from upbeat rock and roll through blues, to some lilting ballads, but all done with great style and a very high level of musical skill.

Oddly, it gets boring quite quickly, but we're glad to have it in our collection.

Newton Faulkner: Hand Built By Robots

We're not really very up-to-date with new band and artists. For some reason that neihter of us could pin down, we wanted to give Newton Faulkner a try.

And we're glad we did!

Mostly low-key, bluesy, indie guitar music, there's a lot of variety on this album. It reminds me, at times, of plently of other artists - from the swinging accoustic guitar and laid-back melodies of Jack Johnson, to the cheeky pop-rap of Barenaked Ladies.

The album meanders slightly and seems a bit aimless at times, but it's a good, summery, feel-good pop record.

The Ordnance Survey Outdoors Show

Today we attended the Ordnance Survey Outdoors Show 2008 at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. We mostly went because Sally was working on the National Trust stand and she got me a free "VIP" ticket.

It was an interesting day with many contrasts.

• I got lots of free stuff. And I bought some expensive technical clothing.
• I felt inspired about the Great Outdoors. Yet I felt sad at the trashiness and commercialisation of it all.
• I had a fun and interesting day. I had a long and tiring day.
• I could have stayed for many hours. But I was kinda done and wanted to go home after two or three.
• There were some really neat and simple inventions for the outdoors enthusiast. And there was Ford trying to sell big 4x4's.
  
• It was an outdoors show. It was primarily indoors.
  

See what I mean?

It was interesting to see how much was on offer. Holidays, courses, bikes, canoes, volunteering, cars, careers, clothing, gadgets and so on. I confess that we're sucked in slightly to the commercial aspect, but we do also love the outdoors and there are plenty of people trying to make walking/hiking/cycling/etc. accessible and take out some of the difficulties that the Joe Bloggs on the street might have.

I enjoyed it. But I don't think I'd have paid £12 or £16 quid to go + fuel + £8 parking. Maybe next year I'll volunteer to help on the National Trust stand, get in for free, have a good couple of hours to look around and encourage people to give a little back to nature as well as just taking from it.