That was 2008

A year of changes, many of which I've written about, but here's a gap filler, which hopefully will mean something to those from Ferndown.

January found me sat in one of those corporate meetings that you dread, where you can tell from the first slide of the Powerpoint presentation that bad news is coming. And it was - 38 jobs were going at NXP Southampton. Except for me this was perfect - I knew I would have been handing my notice in anyway. I was temporarily quite annoying as I left that meeting beaming from ear to ear, knowing that the following day I would be applying for voluntary redundancy. Meanwhile Beth and Isaac went to Disneyland, a Christmas present from their grandparents.

In February I remodelled the Youth Room at St Mary's, just in time for the Youth Alpha course - our biggest and best yet. Then there was the dark and cold Prayer Walk around Ferndown with the Police - wearing my hoodie I nearly got moved on by concerned theatre staff.

March greeted the arrival of a niece, Martin Howard's institution as Rector of Ferndown, and Helen Miller's wedding, despite the fact that she's still only 9 in my eyes.

April as ever saw a wife's birthday, a review and handover of geeky stuff at St Mary's (has Martin bought those new lights yet?), and Ferndown's saddest event - the funeral of 22 year old Marine John Thornton, killed on active service in Afghanistan. 1500 people, a huge screen, sniffer dogs, a Red Arrow, a Sea Harrier, and an unknowing encounter with Marine Fred Frederick, who now shares my staircase at Ridley. My calendar also informs me that we took small pots to church - I'm sure it meant something at the time!

May was the month I left NXP, and we took the last big family holiday for a few years - Venice beckoned.

I spent most of June and July fixing the house ready for new tenants, and then I started the blog. All too soon came the leaving parties, fun and tears.

August had us saying "no we haven't gone yet" - after several rounds of goodbyes we refused to move until it was actually time to do so. And then we went. All 2500 cubic feet of furniture, books and plants.

September - acclimatisation to Cambridge, new schools and back to school for me. End of reliance on NXP money as the grant arrived, but at the same time having to get used to pay days only coming round once every three months now...

October, only 3 weeks into term, I find myself facing a chapel of ordinands and leading them in prayer on the morning that Mark Autherson died.

November disappeared in a blur of lectures and reading, and distractions on Facebook.

December saw the end of term, 6000 words of worry, and a packed house at Christmas. Now on New Year's Eve I'm being reminded that it's time to go - a party beckons.

Goodbye 2008. For me 2009 is fairly certain - lots more Ridley. For you it may be less certain but I pray that you'll see God's guiding hand in your life.

Kings and Queens

We had a little wander around Cambridge yesterday. Actually it was more like a route march, as the children had an urgent need to deposit their Christmas money in the tills of willing retailers. We parked at Ridley and walked into the city centre. Getting stuck behind the inevitable gaggle of tourists (yes, even in the back end of December) I took avoiding action and ducked into a side-street. But not any old side street. This was Queen's Lane - the lane on which you'll find the oldest part of Queen's College. And it's here that we were reminded that students can be silly old sausages. Here's a picture of the absent statue of the founder, Margaret of Anjou, the Queen of Henry VI. Look carefully and you'll see the modern replacement. Beside her, the equivalent statue on King's College, founded by Henry VI.

Sharper eyed viewers may have noticed that the statue is actually of Henry VIII. He finished what his ancestor started, so got to choose who the statues were of!

Cambridge is a completely different place out of term-time. Most of the students have gone home to Mater and Pater, and you can walk in pedestrianised areas without fear of being mowed down by a random cyclist. Although I did bump into my Greek teacher on Friday....

Hallelujah!

Eddie Izzard said "There's something phenomenally dreary about Christians singing....the Church of England is the only group of people that could sing Hallelujah without feeling like it's a Hallelujah thing" - watch this (but not if you're easily offended - contains language that I won't be using from the pulpit)

There's a good chance that this year's Christmas Number One will be X-factor winner Alexandra singing 'Hallelujah', a song first written by Leonard Cohen. In fact there are three versions of the song now competing in the charts, the original Cohen version, the 'definitive' Buckley version, and the Alexandra version.

Is Cohen trying his best to send us to sleep? If this song was being sung as worship to you would you feel you were being worshipped? Alexandra certainly cannot be accused of a lack of passion in this performance.

When you next 'stand before the Lord of song with nothing upon your tongue but Hallelujah' will it be in the style of Cohen or Alexandra? How much sincere passion will you put into your praise?


At this point of course the more observant amongst you will have noticed that this song isn't really that Christmassy, neither is it an act of worship, it being an express tour through some interesting Old Testament stories, starting with the musical King David watching Bathsheba's rooftop bath (if that sparks your interest in the OT, go to 2 Samuel Chapter 12 for more).

But I hope you get my point.

Let the holidays begin

All done! Church History essay and New Testament essay finished and ready to print out and hand in.

So there will be a short bike ride a little later today to my study at Ridley to print them out, hand them in and return a huge pile of books.

After that I'm free to relax. Did I say relax? I meant to say 'do the huge list of jobs that Tasha has been preparing for me'.

Window cleaning here we come. At some point I might even get to celebrate Christmas and remember what it's all about.

One down, one to go

A milestone!

The Church History essay is finished. Well, nearly - it's written, and will now be put aside for a day or so to brew, at which point I'll go back to it, read it afresh, tweak it, and hand it in.

In the meantime I'll make a start on the New Testament one. Once I've fully recovered from the after effects of last night's Ridley Hall Christmas Party. I've never seen so much wine on one table!

Further distractions

We had a staircase breakfast and communion this morning, followed by a Hall Meeting (staff and students together, mulling over the term's events) which took us up to 11am.

I'm 2000 words into my first of two essays. The last 1000 words is going to be the difficult bit, so what better to do than get on with it, leaving the whole of next week free to polish off the second one.

Alternatively I could just check my e-mails, update my Facebook status, go for a cup of tea and have an interesting theological debate, pay a bill, meet Tasha after the spouses group and give a Christmas present. Before you know it there's only twenty minutes left before lunch, hardly worth starting now.

After lunch I hoovered my study (a very common essay avoidance tactic today, last day of term, when so many people discover where the hoover is kept), and then I thought I'd make another blog posting.

So here we are. I've run out of things to do. There's nothing now until chapel at 5.30. Three and a half hours. 1000 words. Head down, here we go.....

Avoidance Tactics

So we've got past the end of lectures, and we're now into full essay writing mode. At least, we're trying to be. Just to help us fill out our precious reading and writing time there's plenty of things to help us postpone the inevitable.

Lectures finished on Wednesday. On Thursday morning there was a short meeting about a mission trip - only an hour, but add a cup of tea at both ends and that's a good 2 hours out of the way. In the afternoon there was a meeting of all the students (known as the 'Common Room meeting'), where we discussed weighty matters such as the financial and physical state of the college punt. I just know that if I'd gone to any other college I wouldn't have had to be worried about a punt! More tea, more time taken. A bit of reading and suddenly it's time to go home.

Friday was a College Quiet Day - each staircase does something prayerful and sociable. I'll write more about that in another article, but suffice to say that a lovely day in Coventry doesn't get much essay writing done.

Saturday and Sunday being the weekend are family time, and we haven't yet got to Emergency Essay Status so it was quite easy not to work. On Saturday evening one of our lecturers was having an Advent Party so we took a car full of students who all gawped at his converted church out in the middle of nowhere - it's like something out of a magazine. We're all incredibly covetous now.

Today (Monday) we had a Short Course (all morning) on Child Protection. Kind of ironic that I left my belt at home and spent much of this course pulling my trousers up. The afternoon involved a combination of filing, e-mailing and reading. When I eventually sat down with a book I did manage to speed read a 190 page book in an afternoon. I'm now about as knowledgeable as I'd like to be about the persecution of the Christians by the Roman Empire. Until tomorrow, when after another Short Course ('Reading Scripture Out Loud') - I'll read two more books on the Romans! And after that I intend to write the essay on them.

More Greek than I thought

We had a Greek test yesterday - exam conditions for the first time in many years, even if it was only 45 minutes long.

Tensions leading up to the actual event were running high, or maybe not. I was pretty laid back about it. I wanted to make sure I did as well as I could, but after vocabulary stopped sinking in I stopped revising, deciding that if I didn't know it by now I wasn't going to know it. All through this term Greek has been the subject that's got my least attention - I'm not a natural linguist, and other subjects have captured my interest to a greater degree. At times the only thing that was keeping me going was the label in the front of my textbook reminding me that my youth group had presented it to me as a leaving present - I couldn't quit Greek and let them down!

Looking back I don't know what I was afraid of - the test was actually relatively harmless, and I don't think anybody failed. Fear of the unknown was the dominating factor.

24 hours later we got the results. At 86% my Greekness is approaching Prince Philip proportions. Our Greek teacher Mark took us to Starbucks to celebrate. 'Accompanied us' would be a more accurate description - Rebecca seemed to pay for most of the coffee!

So here's a few pictures of the celebration, I'll let you meet my new Cambridge friends:

Me in a rented hat

Chris in a rented hat

Mark and Jude (no hat)

Rebecca (no hat), Gill and Sam