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.

Book: The Northern Lights (and Film: The Golden Compass)

Philip Pullman is an author with a reputation. He is the children's Dan Brown. He's known more for the controversy about what he writes than for how he writes.

I don't like Dan Brown's writing. I read the Da Vinci Code and though I thought it was gripping and exciting, it was also patronising and unbelievable. I also read the first chapter of "Angels and Demons" and decided it was the SAME book! I won't mention Brown's weird ideas about history and religion.

In contrast, though I approached the Northern Lights with scepticism due to the author's reputation for bashing religion and the church, I'm thinking that Philip Pullman is an excellent author!

I confess that I saw "The Golden Compass" - the film version of "The Northern Lights" - just before Christmas and before I read the book. It was very much a children's film, albeit quite a violent one, but an enjoyable romp with some imaginative scenery and special effects. The "daemons" were entirely believable! Though I thought the compass effect was done about three times too many.

I went to see the film with people who HAD read the book and they said that the book made much more sense.

And it did. Not only is Pullman an excellent author who provokes the imagination with enchanting descriptions and clever dialogue, he also spins a good yarn. The world(s) he has created is large, varied and yet coherant. He draws on reality but uses it flexibly to create somewhere of this world, possibly from another century, but also not of this world.

Does he attack the church? Well, I think so. Somewhat. He's certainly very political and implies that the church has lots of influence on the state and indoctrinates children with it's nasty ideas. But he's not attacking the church that I know. I don't know his background - maybe he has issues with the church - his own "demon", if you like. But I, as a member of The Church (meaning the body of people who follow Jesus Christ), didn't feel particularly put out by it. Plus, it's allegorical, so, unlike the Da Vinci Code that presents itself as almost-factual, you're free to see the church as being that of Pullman's world, not of our own.

The only REALLY weird thing was the Bible being translated into the context of Pullman's world. Oh, and his interpretation of it. Most odd and made me feel slightly uneasy.

The film and the book are a little out of synch. Having seen film 1 and then read book 1 it will be interesting to read book 2 and THEN see film 2 to see how things progress.

I found the book more grown up than the film - a better place for an adult to be. I would sincerely hope that children would be reading it too! The film - OK for kids but plain confusing for adults.

Film: Gagh, no, I can't....OK, it was "Clueless"...now let me explain

Please, bear with me. This is like admitting to enjoying watching "Spice World" (oh come on, it was worth it just for the fake bus jumping over Tower Bridge "Speed"-style). Yes, this was on TV. Yes, we recorded it. And yes, we actually sat and watched it. And, heck, it was FUN!

This is a cheesy, 90's, American movie about teenage schoolgirls... BUT!!!!! It has it's tongue firmly in it's cheek and is more than what you might think it to be.

Alicia Silverstone very cleverly plays a very kooky and spoilt American school girl who's rich daddy buys her everything she could ever want. Lots happens but, basically, for me this was the story of her finding out that there's more to life than the American Consumerist Dream.

It's not a great film but it's funny and entertaining with some great one-liners. Am I ashamed I watched it? Hell yeah! But I'm a little bit proud that I did too!

Random Food Vans

In a vague nod to my newest reader (I think I have two regulars now!), and fellow, though far superior blogger, here's something that I'm cheekily going to title: "Things Dave probably misses about England #541: Random food vans". Or possibly Beyond Random Food Vans!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so I hope he doesn't mind! :)

What is the English obsession with selling junk food at all hours in unlikely places? As I drove back from the N.E.C. today, via my lovely Grandma's for a cuppa, I noticed a Kebab van on the edge of a small town called Malmesbury (famous for it's Naked Gardeners). I think it was in this layby here:


View Larger Map

If the link to Google Maps works you should be able to zoom out and see that this is on a quiet road with...err...no houses near it at all. I imagine that quaint, antique-shoppy Malmesbury's market for kebabs is pretty small and most passing cars won't know there's greasy food and cheap coffee in polystyrene cups available until they're passed the damn thing and well on their way to Tetbury anyway.

Can they make ANY money at all?

And yet - someone had stopped to buy one!

Who? And why?

Rugby and Self Belief

I'm a big rugby (UNION!!!) fan.

I don' t know why. Football is a great game; incredibly skillful, beautiful to watch, exciting, entertaining. But I just think that football players are rude and obnoxious in comparison, there's the minority of violent fans, and these external factors often ruin my enjoyment of the game.

Rugby is a game for thugs, but, even in the professional version, they remain polite and respectful throughout and the players are humble and intelligent. Plus, it's MORE beautiful to watch when played well, MORE exciting and MORE entertaining.

Only my opinions of course.

So...without a club to watch (Swindon Supermarine anybody?) I get very excited when the 6 Nations comes around each year and this year has been no exception, especially as England seem to be pulling themselves up a bit after their dismal first half of the World Cup last year.

I've been thinking recently about the big famous guy - Jonny Wilkinson. A while back, after winning the World Cup in 2003, he was injured a LOT and whenever he tried to come back to the game he got injured again. I was really thinking that his career was over.

And here he is, kicking the points that win games for England again, breaking points records, charging into wince-inducing tackles, and chucking the ball around like gravity doesn't exist. How did he get from there to here?

I've had a lot of injuries and illness lately and I'm recovering from that myself. And, I can tell you, it feels great. But at the time it was really hard on me and a lot of that was psychological.

I believe that a big part of Wilkinson's recovery is psychological. When he speaks about it, Wilkinson says that his kicking is all about his mental focus and I believe that he applied that to his recovery. In the same way he pictures the ball going between the posts from 50 metres, he pictures himself being well, recovering and playing again. And it's not just me - even the 6 Nations commentators have been talking a lot about his incredible "self belief".

I'm quite inspired by this. I know that a lot of my recovery was actually thinking I was better. Yes, I believe that God helped with my psychological process (there's a LOT of encouraging words to boost your self-esteem in the Bible), and I hope that I'm mentally a bit tougher for having gone through it. But I also see how important it is that we think positively, even when we're in pain or distress.

Having said all of that, tomorrow is the final day of this year's six nations, and I don't think any about of positive thinking on behalf of myself or Jonny Wilkinson will reduce the number of points that Wales and France have. We've no way to win.

Perhaps if I start thinking about 6 Nations 2009 now...

Simple things

Some of this DIY stuff is so much more complicated than it looks.

After a hint from a friend of ours who came for dinner a while back, we decided to finally put proper locks on our bathroom doors. Well, not locks, but little sliding latches.

"Easy", I thought. Jusy buy 'em, from B&Q, fix one bit to the door and another bit to the frame and Bob's your uncle!

Not so! Did you know that there are two types of simple sliding latch? I didn't!

The first one went on fine. More fluke than anything.

I got the first bit of the second one on and then suddenly realised that it was not going to work. I had to go and buy another latch of a slightly different type!

A quick explanation. It all depends on which side of the door you're on. From one side a door closes agains the frame. I'll call this the "outside" of the door. When the door is closed it sits behind a chunk of wood. In this case you can use a latch which slides into a hole in the frame. Like this...



If you're on the "inside" of the door, the door is flush with the frame - so you don't have the chunk of wood to drill a big hole into. So you have to have a raised "hole" for the latch to fit into. Like this...


It WELL confused me for a while. It all makes perfect sense now but why didn't we think of it before? How am I supposed to know that there's two different sorts of latch.

I believe this is what people call "trial and error". I sense there may be more of this ahead!

Song 7: Mr Jones

I have a bit of a thing about songs with complicated words. I enjoy the challenge of learning them, and I'm a bit of a show off at heart (have you noticed?) so I'd rather learn something that makes people go "You know ALL the words to that?".

There's a couple of these on my list - Nothing Ever Happens turned out to be one! And here's another - Counting Crows' "Mr Jones".

I discovered Counting Crows a bit later than my contemporaries. Their debut was, I believe, released in the 90's but I only found them through Sally's record collection a couple of years back. And they're awesome!

A friend of mine who is a very good musician, and who's musical opinion I very much respect, has Counting Crows' "August and Everything After" album on his list of top albums of the 90's, and I really do agree - it's an album I've listened to again and again and again and never grown bored of. In fact, I keep finding more and more intricacies to keep me interested. For example, the song "Anna Begins" was usually skipped over at first, but it's a true gem that I choose to listen to now.

Anyway - Mr Jones is a great song. A poem set to music. It's rousing, thoughtful, interesting, and dynamic. But it's a complicated one. I HAVE already learned all the words. I will probably not be able to get them in the right order. I know that the music contains d-minor's - my least favourite chord. But it shouldn't be too hard to learn.

I'm falling a bit behind again. This is week 10, so I've skipped 3 songs. But never mind. So I really only have until Tuesday to learn this! Eeek!

Song 6: Breakfast at Tiffany's

If I was embarrassed about song 5 because it's such a bog-standard anthemic piece of indie pop. Song 6 (last week's song) fills me with even more dread!

I can't even remember why Deep Blue Something's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" became popular. It has very little going for it. It contains no more than three guitar chords. The words are...well, they make sense but why you'd write it I don't know. And it's just cheesy jangly guitar pop.

Yet, I'm sure many many people know it, so it's on my list. Its also ridiculously easy to play, I already know the words, and it's another one that I've tried to learn before, so it's just a case of cementing the chords in my head. Should be an easy one to fit into a busy week.

Digging it.

Mud

Glorious mud.

That's what's at the end of our fairly large garden!

Oh, and weeds. Creeping buttercup apparently. The queen of weeds in the Wintle garden.

Our Garden

One big reason for buying the house that we bought was the c. 100ft garden. For a nearly-town house this is HUGE! And it's nicely split with some lawn, some patio and a vegetable patch.

There are numerous reasons why we think a veg patch is great:

1. It's OH SO ENGLISH!
2. We believe in buying locally
3. We're trying to be sustainable (might not achieve that this year but hope to in future years!)
4. We hate supermarket food packaging
   
5. Gardening is fun, and a good team-building opportunity
6. It will help us keep fit
7. Food will taste better
8. Eating vegetables will be SO much more satisfying knowing that we've grown them ourselves.
   

Oh and we've already decided that there's no point resisting the fact that we're turning into our parents so there's not real excuse NOT to get into gardening.

Preparing the Soil

Now, we bought the house in October and it took us a while to move and unpack and settle, so we've only really just seriously started thinking about the garden and from what we gather, all the weed killing processes (mulching, rotavating, poisoning and so on) start in the autumn and progress over the winter.

Failed Cardboard Mulching and so on...

We DID originally try laying lots of cardboard over the patch. This would remove the light and air and kill the plants and they would then rot into the ground! But this has only been a little bit successful. We didn't really have enough cardboard and it kept blowing away - you need LOTS of BIG boxes and heavy things to hold them down - fabric pegs are not strong enough. This probably works if you have lots of old carpet or something but just cardboard boxes really didn't do it.

The idea with rotavating is very similar - you chop everything up and over the winter it rots into the ground. We didn't do this. It would probably have worked better.

We didn't try herbicides as we're TRYING to be organic and not cover our nice veggies with nasty chemicals.

Digging

And so we find ourselves in the spring with a garden full of weeds. The only route...manual eradication! Yes, down on our hands and knees pulling up us much as we can, roots and all.

It's slow, back breaking work. But it's working. We're adding in some compost to our very-clay'y (?) soil and it's actually looking like something might grow in it! In fact, I'm quite encouraged by how much the weeds like the soil!

And our veggies will taste all the better for it!