An even cuter picture of me...

I look like a boy, but my hair is there - honest! It is tied back!

Tidying and reminiscing

I have sorted out my book shelves today and taken many books to the charity shop. They have been annoying me for a while, well since I returned from Lancaster actually, so about 18 months! I had too many books for my shelves since combining many belongings from 4 years cumulation in Lancaster to what I had left behind (a room full) in St Annes. Books were piled on top of books on the shelves, which looks scrufy I think. So now my shelves look ordered, hooray! In the process I also came across a handful of photographs which hadn't been filed so I have been scanning them into my computer.

This is a classic. From sports day when I was in year 7 at the High School, it was taken by a photographer from the local paper and I featured on the back page along with a report about the day. Good picture (apart from the tongue hanging out of my mouth - not good to be displayed for all to see when you are only 11) but I did attrociously at the long jump and came 9th out of 10 in my year!

Another professional job. This is my sister, cousin and I. I am wearing the dress I wore for my baptism, I loved it!

I am considering a hair chop as well. Looking back at pictures of me when my hair looked neat make me think of chin level hair again. I shall contemplate.

Cornered... no escape...

Tomorrow I am all set to meet the new Bishop of Lancaster. The vicar collared me ouside church this morning and suggested I go to the 'Welcome to Lancashire' service or 'Hello this is the Kirkham deanery' or whatever it is in Lund tomorrow evening. He said a lady from church was going and I could speak to her... I thought, mmm... then he turned away and she was there offering to pick me up at ten to seven! So no music group for me tomorrow night... and I have been instructed to make myself known. There is no escape!

Have a heavenly Christmas!

Please excuse a little pride on my behalf in this post today. Yesterday Sarah and I went to St Tees to create a giant Christmas card. The idea being that members of the congregation make a donation to Operation Christmas Child (the chosen charity) and then add to the giant card instead of sending many cards to lots of church members. The money spent goes to a good cause and there are far fewer cards being sent which pleases the environment.

The design

I borrowed inspiration for the design from the illustrations by Tim Jonke in Bob Hartman's book "A Night The Stars Danced For Joy" (which is also an amazing retelling of the Christmas story). The idea was for us to make a large angel, the angel Gabriel, to go in the centre of the display and then have many smaller angels for people to write their greetings on and then add to the display to create a 'heavenly host'.

The display board in the church is only quite small so we extended the display with the backing paper and then with the border. It took us an hour and a half just to put up the backing paper!! Having bought many different types of sparkly gold and silver paper and material we went to church yesterday to put it all together. We used an overhead of the initial angel design to project onto the board and then used that to draw around the various parts of the angel.
We then assembled all the parts of the angel on the floor so that we could work out where all of the different sections were going to fit together and in which order we would need to staple them to the board.Finally we attached the angel to the display. We added some schiffon type transparent gold material for the body tied together with ribbon to give it a 3D effect and added the greeting 'Have a heavenly Christmas' to complete the card. I think it is fabulous!!

CUs and SUs and all that

I enjoyed this cartoon today. I also enjoyed reading Yellow's Blog and his take on the matter.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Christmas shopping

Today was a day of much wandering around town. I'm not a big fan of shopping (understatement), but decided that as I am regularly unoccupied at present I might as well use my time productively and begin my Christmas shopping, normally a task reserved for the few days of panic before Christmas day. Buying earlier does have its drawbacks though - without the fear element I am more inclined to wander aimlessly without a notion of what to buy. I did make significant inroads however so came home satisfied.

I don't like the aspect of Christmas shopping whereby you have to buy something for everyone on your list... by that I mean that I don't always find something that I think someone will really love and so inevitably buy something, anything, just so that I have given them something on Christmas day. This kind of gift giving seems so wasteful. I am a big fan of alternative gifts from charities, such as a set of school books for a school child in Uganda etc. My sister bought me something similar for my birthday this year. Still, it's all very well to be bought these things, and I am sure there are people I could buy them for myself, but for most people on my gift list an alternative gift would be inappropriate. I think the whole point of giving is to find something that that person would appreciate, something personal. Buying an alternative gift for someone who would not appreciate it would be like buying a dvd that I wanted to watch and giving it to my dad... we have very different tastes in film!

Fantastic fairs...

Yes, it was the annual autumn/Christmas fair at church today, always a treat. A particular highlight this year was the tombola from which I won this amazing prize:

Half a set of plastic coasters! In fact, I know it was half a set because another lady won the other three coasters to complete the set! I do believe they truely surpassed themselves this year.

Learning about Rwanda

I have been learning about Rwanda this evening. There is so much to take in about the history and the reasons leading up to the genocide of 1994. I have found the government's website particularly useful in its information, though endeavour to read around a bit more to get a fuller picture.

Other useful websites include:
BBC - an overview of the country
CBC - canadian news site

Not the best Taize service ever

Taize service left a little to be desired last night. Actually, that is a little unfair, it was mostly good and fairly well polished (a few slow starts but we sped up once the singers came in) but one chant in particular let us down. Near the end we sang 'veni sancte spiritus', Rachel plucked the notes on her guitar and we started, I couldn't get my note and felt myself flush very red as I shook my head in horror. We stopped and she gave us our notes again. I was singing the same notes and felt ridiculous, it didn't sound right at all but we soldiered on regardless. Fortunately for me (but not for Martin) I was not singing the first cantor part, Martin was, and he couldn't get his note either so warbled around making something up that didn't seem right at all. Then it was my turn to sing cantor (I was wildly praying someone would have stopped the whole farce before I had to embarrass myself) and a bar or two in Jane stopped us again. It turns out Rachel had given us an A minor instead of an A by accident... after getting the correct notes we started for a third time and all was well, though confidence shaken my cantor still left a little to be desired!!

Aside from that disasterous moment the service ran smoothly and I hope we were able to provide a quiet contemplative space for prayer. As a part of a group leading you never can quite judge how things have gone, I feel. No one seemed to notice that my prayers were blatantly thieved by typing 'intercessions remembrance sunday' into google, though I think I'll write my own next time then I won't feel quite so fraudulent. It's not so easy to pray when you feel like a fraud!

Prayer thievery

Is it OK to search for intercessions on the internet, snip good sentences out of them and create your own prayers entirely made up of ones you have taken from the internet, especially if these are much more articulate and eloquent than if you had written them yourself?

I suspect not because now I feel naughty.

Hooray!

I am only going to sing Dona Nobis Pacem through one more time! Hooray hooray! We have been rehearsing for 3 hours this afternoon and I am tired. I am always glad to get to the performance... the conductor can't stop us and make us go over and over and over and over a few bars...

Christian celebrations

My mum went to Preston yesterday to re-register at the university (she's in the middle of doing a masters) and was given a free academic diary. I have had a flick through it and noticed a strange thing... for each pagan festival there is a note like:
Winter solstice - Pagan Society celebrates Yule or
Pagan Society celebrates Eostre
equally there are notes like:
Baha'i Society celebrates Naw-Ruz or
Islamic Society celebrates Festival of Id al Adha
Yet for Christian festivals (and now I've had a look, Hindu and Jewish festivals) it seems that no-one is celebrating, or at least the university doesn't seem to know about it. Christmas gets:
Christmas Day - Public Holiday (though fair enough, the Christian Union or even Chaplaincy aren't likely to be holding a Christmas Day celebration, being that the students will be at home with their families) and Easter:
Easter Sunday, End of Lent.
Is there some kind of heirarchy here between who celebrates and who doesn't? Is there a member of the Pagan Society on the team for producing the diaries?
Well, at least the Christian festivals are listed I suppose.

Television star!

On Monday my granny was on the television! It was terribly exciting! She won a Christmas card competition and as one of 5 winners in different categories went down to London all expenses paid to be presented with her prize on the Paul O'Grady show! Her picture was by far the best, though I may suffer from a little bias. And if you want to buy the card they are on sale in Co-ops and the profits from their sale go to three homeless charities.

Exciting adventure here I come!

I received the details in the post yesterday about my adventure with Signpost International. I now have dates for starting training in Dundee as well as dates for going to Rwanda itself on their Going Global team. It's all starting to happen and I am most excited! I also have yet another CRB form to fill in, I think I will be able to do them with my eyes shut before long. Well, it can add to my growing collection including clearance for the Guide Association, Spring Harvest Holidays, Blackpool Borough Council and Lancashire County Council. If only these things were transferable...

Taize

Music group are leading a service on Sunday evening for Remembrance Sunday, Taize chants and war poetry. It promises to be very thoughtful and contemplative. I went to music group last night and found myself with the job of writing and leading intercessions... I'm also singing a few of the cantor parts which I have been practicing diligently this morning. I always think our music group's strength is its ability to do Taize well with the harmonies, cantor parts and a variety of instruments played by the talented musicians we have. I shall enjoy it.

Fireworks etc.

I had a very lovely day on Saturday. I had planned a while back with Jenn, my old house mate, that we would come up for the fireworks in Lancaster and Jenn, being the organised person that she is, arranged for a few others to come up too for a mini reunion. I awaited her phone call on Saturday morning to find out when we would be meeting in Lancaster. I got bored waiting and decided to go up anyway and to drop in on some folk whilst I was waiting. I parked outside Sarah's thinking she would be in, but she wasn't so I went round to the Boyd's. It was very lovely to see them and chat and have lunch and then went back to the Evans' for a little while (driving Sarah to babysitting before returning to chat to Kieron!). Eventually I got the phone call and met the others in town. We had a lovely time! We went out for tea to the Water Witch which was particularly disappointing in its level of service (but my sandwich was rather gorgeous) before going up to the castle to see the fireworks.

The rubbish service at the pub meant that we were running rather late to see the display and were sent a ridiculous way down and back up the hill in the dark along with hundred's of others and only just got to the bottom of the hill by the Priory when they started. Amazing display though, even if we were too far away from the speakers to hear the patriotic music. Despite clambering over walls and up hills we got a good spot to see the fireworks without too many heads in the way. I embarrassed myself by loudly exclaiming, 'oh don't stand there!' when someone moved right into my line of view...who then turned around, apologised and knelt down for the rest of the display! It was definately one of those did I really say that out loud? moments!!

I am always very impressed that Lancaster can provide such a fantastic display of fireworks and not charge for entry at all. There must have been thousands there on Saturday night. Still, town is absolutely chocka block afterwards so they must get some decent tourist revenue from it. I suspect it may have something to do with there not being all that many gardens in Lancaster with the rows and rows of Victorian terraced housing. Discouraging home done firework displays when everyone lives in such close quarters is always going to be a good plan. Well done Lancaster.

I think I am sometimes spoilt by dividing my time between 2 places (not often, just sometimes) and on Sunday went with mum and Sophie to see the Rotary Firework Display in Lytham St Anne's as well. These ones were particularly rubbish after the far superior display the day before. It seemed that they had bought a job lot of one type of rocket which we got again and again and again! We're hoping for better next year.

Jogging - what's that all about then?

I went for a jog yesterday. Please try not to look too surprised. My friend Jo invited me to join her as she goes for a jog fairly regularly. I was not entirely looking forward to it, I can't remember the last time I did exercise, though I think it was probably some point around about 4 years ago when I was a member of the gym at college. Actually I used to be quite good at running and ran cross country representing our school when I was in about year 10. I may have represented the school, but I did come second to last...!! I blame the bogginess of the field at Preesall, my feet were more accustomed to sandy St. Anne's soil. Still, I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when I did not die on our jog, nor even stop. I may make a long distance runner yet. London Marathon 2020 here I come.

Daylight saving?

This article has made me angry today. Mike Rutherford has said that the clocks shouldn't go back because it would be safer for children coming home from school. Sounds good enough at first, almost plausible, then he makes ridiculous statements like:

"Better still, so that they can commute more safely during light mornings AND light afternoons, why not shorten the school day in winter and make up for lost time in the balmy summer months? For heaven's sake, Scotland - with its proud, independent heritage and its very own Parliament - could even have its own time zone if that’s what the majority of its residents want."

Now I don't live in Scotland but that comment really makes me irate. How ridiculously ludicrous to suggest that the school day should alter in length according to the time of year, have an hour or two less in winter and then extend them in summer by the same amount. How is that even vaguely workable? And as for his comments about Scotland, they seem like closeted racism to me, he's saying 'who gives a monkeys about Scotland? If they don't like the dark let them live in the sun-blessed south'. The truth is, changing the day to make it sunnier in the afternoon instead of the morning doesn't mean the sun shines any longer. There are going to be accidents on the roads when there are children about, whether that is in the morning or the afternoon. Besides which, as schools finish at around 3 o'clock now anyway, most children should be home or nearly so before darkness falls. Change that time to the morning and it will certainly be dark when the children are arriving, come December it will only just be light by the beginning of the school day as it is.

Addition -
GreenwichMeanTime.co.uk say this about an experiment in the 60s to do away with daylight saving:

"In 1968 to 1971 Britain tried the experiment of keeping BST - to be called British Standard Time - throughout the year, largely for commercial reasons because Britain would then conform to the time kept by other European Countries. This was not good for the school children of Scotland as it meant they had to always go to School in the dark. The experiment was eventually abandoned in 1972, Britain has kept GMT in winter and BST in summer."