Conquering the Glyders

I have now climbed three mountains!

What a weekend. We've had this trip to Snowdonia planned for ages. My sister and her boyfriend invited us to climb Snowdon the hard way (via Crib Goch) months ago and this weekend, it finally came about.

Despite the forward planning, for Sally and I it was all a bit last minute. My "post-viral fatigue" had raised questions about whether or not we would go away, let alone climb a mountain, but we decided that we would at least get out of town and spend a few nights in the company of good friends in a beautiful place.

In the event, we DID attempt to climb Snowdon. We set out on Friday morning with the aim of following the Crib-Goch-scrambling party to the start of the difficult bit, and then following an easier track (the Pyg Track) from there on our own steam.

I quite quickly gave up and didn't make it far past the point at which we split up. My legs got really tired and I just didn't feel like I'd make it very far.



However, on Saturday I tried again - the party headed out to climb Glyder Fach and Glyder Fawr - the other side of the valley from Snowdon, and I went with them with the intention of going as far as I felt comfortable. With a bit of encouragement from the others I kept on going and did a whole 7 hours walk, climbing a total of 800m over a distance of about 10km. Not bad for an invalid - climbing something higher than Scafell.



It was a good scramble. We headed up into mist at first and the unclear footpath we were trying to follow lead to some difficult, if unexposed, scrambling. However, the mist cleared once we got to the second peak and we were rewarded with some awesome views of Snowdon and

I WAS shattered today though and the drive back was very hard work.

My health is an odd thing. It feels like Friday's aborted attempt at Snowdon kickstarted my body a bit - made it realise that, at some point, it would have to stop moping around and get on and do some physical work. I'm also not sure how much of what I'm going through is psychological and how much is really physical.

Anyway, health issues aside, I've had a cracking weekend. Snowdonia is beautiful, the hostel was comfortable and the food good, we had lots of fun, and there was a bit of me that looked up at Crib Goch and REALLY wanted to climb it.

There's something in us that wants to explore, to experience danger, to go to the difficult place. We'll definitely be back at some point!

Still not right!!!

It's been nearly a month now since I was up all night being sick...the "flu-like virus" has mostly gone away but, as anyone who's been watching my Facebook status will tell you, I still have the odd bad day. Tonight has been a particularly bad evening with me collapsing in bed and feeling like I'm right back at square one.

The doctor doesn't seem surprised and a little bit of web research (dangerous as you could probably self-diagnose pretty much anything) shows that "post viral fatigue" is not uncommon and can last a long time.

But it's very frustrating. I've been surprised at how much my life is defined by physical activity. I miss my cycling and I'm unable to do much that's strenuous at all. I tried cycling yesterday, about 4 miles worth at a very slow pace. Perhaps that what's killed me off this evening?

It's stressing me out a bit as we're buying the house...probably real soon now...and I won't be up to much packing and cleaning and shifting big boxes around. Plus, I don't know what the future holds - I guess I'll slowly recover but if there is something more long-term wrong with me, is taking on a mortgage such a good thing?

Only time will tell I guess. In the meantime we press on with our plans in faith that God will stop us if we're doing the wrong thing.

Naturewatch: Web Building!

Possibly not for the arachnophobic. Some action shots of the fat spider building a web. The sun was shining down and making the web glisten so I thought I'd try and catch it on, err, well not film exactly, but you know what I mean.

The reason I'm a bit fanatical about spiders is that...well...they're just amazing. They have these 8 legs and they build this super-strong web thing with stuff that they naturally produce to catch their food. The co-ordination required to spin a web is phenomenal, combined with their apparent ability to fly between high places to put up the initial outer structure of the web. Watching it happen is just incredible.

I am someone who believes in God and, though I don't believe the literal 7-day creation, I do believe that God created the natural world around us, and when I see something like a spider spinning a web I can only watch in awe at the detail and intricacy with which God made things.

Book: Prayer by Phillip Yancey

This book was recommended as a good read on prayer but didn't live up to expectations.

Before I wrote these notes on it I did some searching and it's hard to find a bad review of the book. And I have to say that, despite the slow start to it, the book did grow on me as I read it, and it did inspire me to pray more and differently. But it was with relief that I finished it. It was just REALLY hard going.

This is probably more a reflection on me than on the book. Let me explain...

Much as my writing is very long and waffly, I like my reading to be concise and to the point. I like stories and illustrations, but they should help make the point rather than clog up the book and make it slow going and repetitive. Plus, I read non-fiction books like this slowly and carefully, taking everything in, underlining what's important, so I don't need the same point to be made several times.

You can probably work out that I thought that this book was too heavy on anecdotes, too light on simple, to-the-point theology, and too repetitive. The book IS a meandering journey rather than a write up of the destination. It's a discussion rather than a sermon.

In a book like this it is sometimes important to reinforce a point but, particularly in the early chapters, I found Yancey going round in circles without making much real progress. After reading about a third of it I wondered what I was going to get from it other than lots of questions and fairly stock answers.

I found later chapters were a bit more practical and inspiring and Yancey's honesty and openness about his struggles with prayer really make the book. By the end I has the feeling that he has somehow gained some mastery of the topic and he had managed to share it with me. I just wish it hadn't taken him so many words to do it.

I didn't find many points to disagree on, though Yancey's theology is obviously very open. He's not afraid to tackle the difficult questions, and not afraid to leave you without a firm answer either.

I'd like to see an edited version distilling his findings into a much shorter work. But worth reading if you have the time.

Update on house buying

A while ago I mentioned that we'd had an offer accepted on a house! A quick update is due.

The process has been moving along quite well. We stalled a bit while we chose a mortgage but that's applied for, the legal stuff has all moved along as it should, the survey is now done, and it seems that nothing can now stand in the way of our purchase (famous last words...you read them here!).

My main feeling, other then excitement, is the completely overwhelming amount of information that's involved. We requested some extra reports and searches because the house:
- is near a flood plain (far enough from it to be safe though),
- is near the site of an old refuse site,
- has recently had an extension built.

So we have the following documentation:
- an environmental report,
- a water and drainage report,
- a survey and homebuyers report,
- the information pack from the seller,
- all the mortgage information,
- information on buildings and contents insurance.

In addition, today we've received a couple of quotes and information packs for life assurance and payment protection. And my brain has just overloaded. I can't take any more!!!

There's been some discussion recently about things called home information packs that the seller is supposed to put together. I believe these are becoming mandatory for 3-bedroom houses just this week (if only we'd waited!!). What a good idea this is! If our purchase had fallen through the searches we've done and paid for would have to be re-done and re-paid-for. With a Home Information Pack it's all done once and by the seller, which seems to make a whole world of sense to me.

We are excited, we are thankful for the hugely privileged position that we find ourselves in in being able to buy a house in the first place, we're particularly thankful for the house that we've found that meets our needs so well...but my brain really is quite full up now and I need a rest.

Getting used to being ill

I don't remember being ill much as a kid, teenager, or even in my early working years. But that all seems to have changed lately.

The last two weeks, since getting back from Greenbelt, have been one physical problem after another. Starting with what appeared to be food poisoning or a stomach bug of some sort, morphing into a "flu-like virus" which has kept me in bed for most of this week, and then, having finally recovered from that, I did my back in, to the extent that I could hardly move last night (and I almost certainly shouldn't be using a computer right now).

I've been sick, aching, tired, emotionally drained and now in a huge amount of pain, for nearly two weeks. Add this to the couple of weeks I had off earlier in the year for my stress/depression (I'll write a "whatever happened to post at some point"), and it's been a pretty bad year for me health-wise.

Yet, there are positives to take from all of this. When I first started having my flu-like symptoms I said to Sally "I'm not very good at being ill". By which I meant that, my response to being unwell isn't always very good. I feel like I give up quite easily, but in reality I think I push myself too hard when I'm ill. I'm NOT good at stopping and resting and doing nothing. I feel guilty about not being at work and so I throw myself back into it too quickly.

But I've been learning about these things. I started to recover last weekend and took up too much too quickly and the bug came back to get me as a result. So I had a whole week off, and even when I started to feel myself again I made use of the doctor's sick note and rested.

I've learned to leave alone things that need doing around the house (it's a bit of a tip at the moment but I don't care!!!). I've learned the pleasure of sitting still and reading a book. I've learned not to feel guilty about not being at work - the world continues to turn even when I'm sat in bed doing nothing.


I've prayed a lot, I've chilled out a lot. Sally's been fantastic, as have others who have rallied round to help me out. It's taken a long time but I do think it's nearly over and I'm looking forward to carrying on normally, but with a few lessons learned.

Naturewatch: Fat spider

I like spiders! Which is just as well as there's about a million in our garden. Probably mostly the grown up babies that I spotted back in the spring.

I just liked this one because it used to be quite a skinny spider but she (we think it's a she) has put her web in such a good place that she's had a few meals too many and got really fat!

A case of "Who ate all the flies?"

Book: The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde

I've been off sick the last few days, sleeping, resting, and taking my mind off my churning stomach by both reading and writing.

One result of which is that, after about 6 months of on-and-off reading, I've finally finished a book!

The Eyre Affair is a cleverly comic, extremely eccentric romp through time space and reality. I'm sure I missed out on a lot of gags by not being familiar with some of the literary classics on which it's quite heavily based (Bronte and Shakespear getting lots of mentions), but I still found it amusing and entertaining.

It's clever in the sense that the book mashes together reality and fiction. It's set in Swindon, but it's not quite the Swindon we know...or the United Kingdom that we know, for that matter. Names, places, events, often sound familiar, but have been taken into a slightly-alternative reality. This skipping between reality and fiction is also a topic of the book.

I'm not very good at reading, and it took so long that I'm sure I missed out on some meta-narratives, and was not able to appreciate the intricacies of the book. But it was still a very entertaining read.

Would I read it again? Or the next book in the series? Possibly, but I was troubled throughout by the fact that I wasn't quite getting it all because of my lack of literary knowledge, so I certainly won't go straight to the library. Recommend for the quirky, clever, and well-read reader.

Charity and Justice

I'd like to post a link to this article about Charity and Justice. Relevant Magazine doesn't always hit the mark (more below) but this article explains an important difference between what the author calls "charity" (giving to help people in need) and "justice" (trying to fix the things that make charity needed). It's worth reading, thinking about, and taking action on.

Having spoken at some length about "Christian" media in my Greenbelt post, I now mention Relevant Magazine again. Relevant is a very-American media company who are publishing a couple of magazines, some books and resources, and a website, mostly aimed at a Christian audience but, as with Greenbelt, you could get lots from it if you weren't following God in any kind of way.

Sometimes it misses the mark totally, but if you ignore the American-ness, the vast amounts of advertising (someone's got to pay to make these things happen), and some of the less useful articles, there's some useful, interesting, thought-provoking, and sometimes challenging stuff in there.

I hope this article was in one of those categories.