Liverpool - as a tourist

This week I had some friends from home who came to stay with me in Liverpool. It was fantastic. I really enjoyed having time to hang out with people from home, especially as it's hard to get back for an extended time now. I also enjoyed it because I got to behave as a tourist for a few days, and go back to some of my favourite Liverpool places.

On Tuesday afternoon we went up to the beach at Freshfields, which is definitely one of my top places to go. I've been there in every season, during the day and at night. It is amazing! On Tuesday it was really blowing a gale, and we were pretty much the only people there. It was the kind of wind that wants to blow you over, and let you know who's boss. It was causing some good sized waves as well, and the sun was just threatening to come out from behind the clouds. It felt a bit like the beach from the beginning of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and was so much fun to race the waves and jump about like a kid!

On Wednesday we went to the cathedrals. I love the Anglican Cathedral, it always inspires me, and reminds me of the creativity that man has been given. One of these days I'm going to either move there, or build my own.

Those were definitely the highlights of this week, though it has been fun generally. Lots of good conversations, and time spent with people, which is always fun. And Liar Liar...

Different ways of doing things

British:
Crossing the Atlantic single-handed is a challenge attempted by only the greatest yachtsmen and women. The most important of these for us is the immortal Mr Sebury who made two historic attempts.
On 31 August 1986, he set sail from Newport, Gwent, in a fifteen-foot sloop specially equipped with a bucket full of cheese, five litres of orange juice and an ordnance survey map of the Welsh coast. Three days later he found himself adrift with his mast down and engine broken. He got just beyond the Bristol Channel, where he became a martyr to seasickness and moored the boat in the middle of a Royal Naval Torpedo range. When an official craft went out to warn him, they found Mr Sebury slumped on the side of the vessel shouting: 'Take me ashore and sink the boat.'
Encouraged by this, he made a second attempt to cross the Atlantic later that year and got as far as Milford Haven.

American:
The building of a new staff canteen in 1977 gave the US Department of Agriculture the opportunity to commemorate a famous nineteenth-century Colorado pioneer.
Amidst a blaze of enthusiastic publicity the Agriculture Secretary, Robert Bergland, opened 'The Alfred Packer Memorial Dining Facility', with the words 'Alfred Packer exemplifies the spirit and fare that this agriculture department cafeteria will provide.'
Several months later the cafeteria was renamed when it was discovered that Packer had been convicted of murdering and eating five prospectors in 1874.

These stories were taken from the Return of Heroic Failures, which will be available for further reading in our toilet.

Affection

"It is affection that teaches us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who 'happen to be there'. Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed" CS Lewis - The Four Loves p.46

I just finished reading The Four Loves and would recommend it to anyone. I'm a big CS Lewis fan anyway, but I thought this was brilliant. One of the big themes is 'Love, having become a god, becomes a demon', which basically means we musn't swap God is Love into Love is God, and the disasters that will follow if we do.

This part about affection is one of my favourites, because it expresses so much more clearly than I ever could something I've been discovering since I've been placed in school.

I had the luxury of reading about two thirds of it in one sitting on the train home yesterday, which means I'm now back in beautiful Hampshire. It's great to be home, my brother in law is away for the weekend so my sister is staying at my parents as well, so it's plenty of excellent family time, and more of a chance to get to know my nieces.

And so I'll stop blogging and go and see them...

5 reasons why I love Radiohead

Granted they aren't the most cheery band in the world, but they do write some fantastic lyrics. Also, I've heard some amazing versions of their songs played just using the piano, if anyone knows where I could find them again, please let me know. And now, over to Radiohead:

1: Where I end and you begin
i can watch but not take part
where i end and where you start
where you, you left me alone
you left me alone.

2: Karma Police
Karma police
arrest this girl,
her Hitler hairdo
is making me feel ill
and we have crashed her party.

3: The Bends
I need to wash myself again to hide all the dirt and pain
Cos I'd be scared that there's nothing underneath
But who are my real friends
Have they all got the bends
Am I really sinking this low

4: Myxomatosis
"now no one likes a smart arse but we all like stars"
that wasn't my intention, I did it for a reason
it must have got mixed up
strangled, beaten up
i got myxomatosis
i got myxomatosis

5: Fake plastic trees
She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love

But I can't help the feeling
I could blow through the ceiling
If I just turn and run

Art

Today I rediscovered on of my favourite websites, and I'd like to make a tribute to the everyday happenings of Weebl and sometimes Weeb's friend Bob. It is a marvellous series, starting with the ever popular pie, and containing my personal favourite art

Art is a wonderful attempt to solve the mysteries of life through the discussion of pie, a most philosophically enlightening adventure.



In other news: Marmite; you either love it or you hate it. Some people hate it because their first experience of this most lovely of God's foods is eating a whole teaspoonful of it. Sorry about that! I hadn't quite anticipated the effect it would have.

And now I'm going to run away, having successfully achieved my goal of writing a short(ish) blog entry. Hurrah!

Home Alone - with the Truman Show

Home Alone 

This weekend my housemates have all headed off to Edinburgh, so the house is very quiet. It's made me realise how much I dislike living alone, and how much I appreciate the Bulls of Bashan.

Today I have been watching the Truman Show, which is undoubtedly one of my favourite films, and it got me thinking (along 1984 lines). For me, the best part of the film comes in the interview on Trutalk, where the interviewer asks Christof (the show's creator) "Why do you think that Truman has never come close to discovering the true nature of his world, until now?". Christof replies "We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented. It's as simple as that."

Whether you agree with it or not, it is a strong statement. And in the Truman Show the problems for Christof begin when Truman begins to question the reality of the world with which he is presented. When he is no longer content to accept that this is simply the way that things are he begins to discover the truth.
In 1984 the problem that the Thought Police have with Winston is that he isn't able to simply accept as truth the pronouncements of Big Brother, but realises that the world does not necessarily correspond to the descriptions of authority.

What's the point? Well the temptation of any body in authority is to present their truth as absolute, and to resist any questioning of that truth. A recent example of that might be the war in Iraq, the Government made bold statements about the threat that Iraq posed, and the public were not supposed to question their conclusions. The Church has to put it's hand up and admit that we have not always encouraged people to question the truth that is presented in the Bible, particularly historically where people were not supposed to study the Bible individually, but rather to accept the pronouncements of those in authority, even to the extent of actively suppressing any other view.

And another case? Well perhaps the contemporary discussion of evolution. I have yet to read Richard Dawkins advocating any search for real absolute truth, I have only heard him requiring that people accept evolution as absolute truth, and that any who question that are simply wrong. Now this has nothing to do with the scientific merit of evolution, but rather an attitude that suggests that there is truth that cannot be questioned.

In other news ... I now have a timetable for which lessons I will be teaching in school, which has been fantastic as I can now get to grips with the reality of actually planning and teaching lessons. Slightly less fun is the fact that I will be teaching Reproduction to Year 7 (oh, the giggles!

Royal Opera House - scene of luxury

I was looking at various shows around London at Christmas time, and one of the shows that looked vaguely interesting was The Nutcracker, all sounds very nice, very classy very cultural!

Amazingly, there were tickets available at a bargain 15 pounds. Excellent, so I add 3 to my basket. At the next stage it tells you what seats you will be allocated, along with a hyperlink entitled 'information' which proved to be very enlightening.

It said: "Restricted: WALL/SIDE/ Tall Loose Seat - View: The view of the stage is obstructed by the WALL in front of this seat. Restricted due to a SIDE view of the stage. Seat Type: A seat about the height of a bar stool. It has a foot rest but no arm rests. It is not fixed to the floor."

In other words, you're sitting on a stool with a wall in front of you. Still, it's a Royal Opera House stool, which has got to have a much greater cultural value than almost any comparable stool.

In the end I bought tickets to Scrooge: The Musical, which frankly deserves a blog entry of it's own.

I was also treated last night to the sight of the Agape team doing skits, I'll never forget Kevin the Cheerleader. I was also treated to a trip to the Richmond Tavern with Dr Steven Attwell, a man who upon learning that i was from Hampshire (this was the first time I met him, the first day I moved into halls) declared "loads of money", rubbed his hands together and then walked off. As you can imagine, it was a most enlightening evening.

p.s. the best 'river pollution' word was liverpool, the longest is revolution.

GM enhanced conkers - the new superweapon?

Today Dick and I introduced KC to the game of conkers. It was all going so well. I managed to find a good sized screw to make holes in them, then found some string I never knew we had. Everything was set for the magical experience of a game of conkers to take place. Except for one thing...

Conkers in Liverpool are not normal conkers. They do not break under (almost) any circumstance. For well over 30 minutes Dick and KC fought a savage conker battle, and at the end of it neither had managed to emerge victorious. There were many excellent hits, each of them had their conker fall to the floor several times from the force of hits being meted out and yet the conkers remained intact. There are 3 possible explanations for this:

1) Dick and I have become much much weaker than we were at the age of 11 when we last played conkers, and hence are unable to land a killer blow (after 30 minutes I subbed in for Dick).

2) We are all incredibly bad conker players, and any assault on the world championship is destined to remain a mere dream.

3) (And by far my favourite) We encountered a rogue bunch of GM enchanced SUPER CONKERS!!!!! These are no ordinary conkers, they have been developed by the military in a top secret research project. They are intended to be an organic form of body armour, able to repel almost any projectile. Their presence in Liverpool remains somewhat of a mystery, but it is quite possible that in the post Cold-War era the military have decided to test these conkers out in a civilian environment, using an age-old game played by millions across the country.

In other news, I have decided that falling asleep with my music on is a bad idea (sorry Danny!), Britney M Lenhoff is composing a poem based on the theme of river pollution, a British accent will always carry an argument, and that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina George W Bush has added God to the Axis of Evil, along with Iran, Syria, and France.

1966 and all that

Wow. I've discovered that life sometimes gets busy enough that blogging can't happen. I think this is a good thing. The eagle has landed. I've also found myself thinking of events as potential blog entries, which is really odd.

School this week has been an odd mix of things. On Thursday I was shadowing a student for the whole day, so I went to my first geography lesson for 10 years, The starter activity was to make as many 4-or-more letter words as possible from 'river pollution'. The best I could come up with was a 10 letter word, come on guys, make me proud, answers on a comment!
The evenings have been a good mix of things, with the start of Christianity Explored, and a very long trip to Kensington which left Steve Atwell sat in the pub on his own for half an hour with only two drinks to keep him company.

Today has been really cool. I met up with Jack this morning, which was cool. It was great to have a chance to catch up, eat some breakfast, and pray. Also went to the Maritime Museum for the first time, which had guns and torpedoes, always a good sign for any museum.

It has been excellent to talk about 1984 with KC, and consider what freedom means, and also the comparisons from Big Brother to God and Satan. The big thing i've been thinking about now is that it would be hard to say that Winston was free, the observations by Big Brother allowed them to manipulate every event in his life. As Christians we believe that God observes every action in our life, and has the ability to intervene in the world in any way that he chooses. Are we then truly free? And yet that is what the Bible affirms. It has started to make sense. If we really believe that God sees everything that we do, and that it matters, and that he has sent his Son to die for us, then this should affect how we behave. However we are free to deny God, to pretend that he isn't there, or to pretend that what we do doesn't matter. So that's the challenge, do we accept the external reality that 2+2=4, that God is watching, and what we do does matter, or we can create our own subjective reality in which we deny these things, which might be pleasing/easy at the time, but ultimately means living a lie.
Sorry for the excessive stream of conciousness there, I hope it didn't contain too much heresy.

And now I'm going to run away. The iron is hot!

Super Gran

For the past few years my parents have gone away on holiday with my grandma and grandpa. Grandpa was always a bit of a traditionalist (for example he carried on calling countries the names the Brits had given them) and so they would go to places like France and Switzerland. Grandpa died in February, but my parents decided to ask if grandma would like to go away somewhere anyway. So, after thinking about it for a while, she decided that a trip to the USA was what she'd really like to do, and so my parents and grandma have been doing a road trip from San Francisco to LA over the last two weeks.

I was talking to my parents last night after they got back, and I'd like to share with you one highlight that I consider worthy of special mention:
They went to Universal Studios and my grandma, who is 82, went on a rollercoaster for the first time in her life. What's more, she enjoyed it enough to go on several others as well. I really hope they took pictures. This is why I nominate her as Super Gran.


In Liverpool life is quiet. Today I've been feeling particularly infectious (stupid kids and their stupid germs), so I ended up getting a chance to finish reading 1984 by George Orwell. I have to say I didn't enjoy it as much as the first time I read it, but it's still a cracking book. A most scary picture of life as it might have been, the idea that history is whatever people believe it to be, and if you can control the written records and peoples minds then that is absolute power. It's amazing how the concept has been trivialised into Big Brother, although interesting that not only does Big Brother have control over the housemates, he also has control over what we know about their world through choosing what to show us.

And on that note I'm off to check the house for hidden microphones (does anyone else think they're living in the Truman Show?)

The wise man goes when he can

Having allowed a period of 2 and a half months to pass without developing a blog obsession i feel it may now be safe to write another entry. The problem is, I'm not really sure what to write about.

This entry will contain nothing relating to it's title, but will in fact contain a bit of a rant about my day. This morning we had a two and a half hour session on classroom management, during which i learnt precisely nothing (not being big headed but we'd done exactly the same thing the week before!) Add to that the fact that I was very undisciplined last night and stayed up till past 1 on MSN (which was most entertaining), and today was most painful.

It has however been made better this afternoon. We had MENS TIME, which involved eating chicken burgers and looking at Psalms 1 and 2. It was brilliant to have time to reflect on God's word, and to see that the blessed man is the one who meditates on God's word and trusts in God's anointed king. Also to see that God is sovereign over all things, and though all the nations and kings may conspire against him God can sit in heaven laughing at them.

And on that note I'll finish. I would appreciate any comments, and suggestions for things that I could write about.