Happy birthday to blog...

So today's the first birthday of my blog... and what an exciting year's it's been in blogging terms, with literally... erm... about 35 posts. Wow.

Keep reading though for further adventures. Hmm.

The gift that kept on giving...

...as some of you may know, yesterday was my birthday. So V and I had booked the day off and were looking forward to a relaxing day, heading up to Flatford and Dedham to take in the sights of Constable Country, but yesterday morning when I came down into the kitchen I noticed, with my incredible powers of perception, that something was wrong... there was water all over the floor.

We'd put the washing machine on overnight and it had decided that this would be an opportune moment to break, covering the floor with water. Not entirely sure what went wrong, suffice to say that when I tripped the switch and the machine whirred into life again, it just continued to spit water out of its left-hand side.

So instead of having a nice relaxing start to my birthday, a lot of the morning was spent cleaning up my kitchen floor. Man alive, I know how to live...

Eventually we did get out and drove to Flatford and Dedham etc, and in the evening we had Cell Group round at ours and everything and it was all good.

And when people came to Cell I realised my day could have been a lot worse... As I write, the person who did have a worse day than mine hasn't blogged about it and I don't want to spoil the story too much but when they do I'll link to it...

My unfortunate doppelgänger...

Apologies for the lack of bloggage... again... but basically I haven't had much to say and, well, I can't  be bothered.   But then today something happened...

Following on from Katie's recent post about lookalikes I've, erm, managed to come up with one of my own.  Or rather I didn't, but just as we got home today and were about to get out of the car, V pointed out to me that the light was casting a shadow across the rearview mirror onto my face in an unfortunate way...

...leaving me looking like Hitler.  Hmm.

Meet Megg and Mogg...

OK, so here are the new arrivals. This is Megg, a 6-year-old tortoiseshell, and below (actually, that's assuming Blogger has displayed them correctly) is Mogg, Megg's 5-year-old daughter.

We adopted them from a cat sanctuary at the weekend and they're lovely... albeit very very very timid. Megg has only emerged from under her bed this morning for the first time since arriving at ours on Sunday, while Mogg has got a bit more adventurous and will now let you stroke her and feed her from hand... and then probably go and hide again.

They were called Tootsie and Splodge but, well, y'know, we just didn't consider ourselves Tootsie and Splodge people, so Megg and Mogg it is.

Photos aren't, I'll admit, the greatest, but that was the closest I was able to get to them at the time (and I haven't quite figured out the light settings on my new phone yet either). Hopefully we'll have some more pics of them soon when they've settled in a bit more and won't go and hide when you look at them...

It's been ages. Again...

Sorry, just a very brief one. Know this doesn't count as a post as such but just wanted to wish every and anyone who reads this a very Happy New Year!

Not exactly a New Year's resolution as such but I'll try to blog more often in 2008!

Looks like I can avoid it no longer...

...but Christmas is nearly upon us. I feel I've done pretty well to ignore its commercial existence and hold out until now, but it's now dawned on me, bah humbug, that there's not much time left.

Now at this point I want to make something fairly clear - I love Christmas. Me and the wife celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary this year, just two days before Christmas, we loved the idea of getting all our friends, as well as family, together around then and getting married and then having a Christmas dinner with both our families the day before Christmas, so did just that.

What I don't like is when shops start putting up their decorations in August. It just annoys me. It's got nothing to do with Christmas and everything to do with commercialism. I realise this is no astounding new insight for anyone but it just annoys me.

But the other day V told me she wanted to get out the CDs of carols to listen to. So while she's off Christmas shopping today with her Dad and I'm out at work she's got my iPod with the carols CDs on them, 'cos she loves them so much.

So here we go then, the mad rush finally commences!

So hang me for treason...

...but I'm kinda glad England lost last night and don't now qualify for Euro 2008.  Glad because, amongst other things, it'll mean (or at least should mean) that we're spared all the jingoism, flag-waving, so-called patriotism that we get EVERY FLIPPING TIME the football team qualifies for a tournament.

I'm also glad because hopefully, surely now the FA will have to look at the whole set-up, top to bottom, and actually do something to earn the unfeasibly large amounts of cash they receive.  The whole thing about imposing quotas on foreign players is a smokescreen, just put up so there's another scapegoat for failure to qualify.   Hopefully people will see past it.

You need to question why such immoral amounts of money are being paid for and to English/British players first before you start looking at the foreign imports.  If someone becomes a millionaire aged 20/21, by and large on the basis of the fortune of their nationality, hardly too surprising if they lose motivation.

Heard a few interesting theories.  We've got a plumber working at our house today and one of his suggestions was to pay players a basic wage, say £10k a week (it's outrageous but just go with me for now).  For a striker, you say you only get to keep that money if you score.  Go 3-4 games without a goal and I take 25% of your salary back.  For a 'keeper, it's based on clean sheets.  Concede goals, you lose money.

Of course, as with a quota system, it's pie in the sky and most probably illegal.

The other idea I like is one put forward, I think, by Danny Baker years ago.  It was simply this:  players get paid, in cash (obviously deduct all their taxes etc, not talking that kind of cash payment!) after each match.  But here's the catch: they have to go on the pitch and collect their wages in front of their paymasters - the fans.  Would be interesting to see how many of them had the brass neck to go and pick up £100k per week for being average when 50,000 pairs of eyes are trained on them...

The one where Andy gets on his soapbox...

So I get in to work this morning to be confronted by a couple of articles cut out from a recent copy of 'The Guardian' on my desk. I've managed to find the on-line version of one but not the other. And that's a shame, as the second kind of complements the first.

They're both about languages, one about translating, the other about their teaching. The first one is something which makes me smile but simultaneously reassures me that, as a translator, I'll likely have work for a reasonable amount of time. It's from Wednesday's edition, is written by Jon Henley (click link for original, mine's a summary) and goes like this:

Babel Fish, the online translation site, has nearly caused a diplomatic row after a group of Israeli journalists decided to use it to address some questions to officials at the Dutch foreign ministry, rather than get the work done professionally by translators.

If any of you have ever used Babel Fish you'll know just how spectacularly bad it can be. Indeed online translation machines like this are so bad one was used to form the basis of a game played on Radio 1 where a song lyric would be put, in English, into one of these things, translated through at least one foreign language before being put back into English. The results were almost always completely incomprehensible and bore no relation to the original song.

I also know (and have told some of you the story) of one company who used one of these sites to translate all their promotional material into French and German, then wondered why they'd not heard anything from any of the people they sent the stuff to, in French- and German-speaking countries.

So the upshot of this first article is that I can sleep a little easier knowing I might be in work for a little while to come. But the second article (which I can't find online), by Marcel Berlins, discusses the poor quality of language teaching in schools, the government's 2003 decision to abandon compulsory language teaching in secondary schools, and the fact that all this comes at a time when the world is becoming more and more open to communication and with it learning foreign languages, while the UK is by and large burying its head in the sand and resolutely sticking to its arrogant belief that the rest of the world speaks English so why bother learning another language.

Great for me, professionally, but sad. I now do a little bit of tutoring to an AS level student of French and I was stunned to see the gaps in knowledge of certain things (not her fault, a fault of the teaching she's had), fairly basic, and the errors in the materials she's been given to study French. But I was equally amazed at the fact that at the same time as she has those gaps in knowledge about France and quirky bits of culture specific to France (in this case the 'départements') she is expected to debate all the kinds of issues I remember having to discuss in my GCSE English Oral Exam (euthanasia, abortion, homosexuality etc). Surely to learn a language it's of benefit to know a bit about the country before being expected to discuss its social issues in depth?

OK, rant over...

12/11/07 - UPDATE: I've now found the second article on-line. It's here, the fourth paragraph being the start of the relevant bit.

Enjoy the silence...

...sorry I've been a bit quiet recently. I'm just thinking a lot and as such haven't really got anything I want to write about.

In the meantime just enjoy the fact I've shut up for once.

Apologies if this doesn't constitute a blog but it's about the best I can muster at present.

RIP little man...

...just a quick one as I still feel a bit numb about it all.

Our belovèd cat, Bob, was killed yesterday after being run over.

He was absolutely beautiful and very friendly and a real character and we both miss him terribly.

I actually feel really very sad writing this, but at the same time feel a bit of a fraud. After all, he was just a cat, wasn't he?

Well, those of you who had the good fortune to have met him and the even luckier ones of you who'd spent just a little time with him would have know that he was much more to us than "just a cat".

So, Bob, RIP little man. Sleep peacefully.

Whatever you did for the least of these...

...I'm pretty sure most (both?) of you who read this will know how that particular Biblical reference ends. Tonight I had a weird experience. To make some sense of it I need to go back a few days.

Like many others (Kirsty, Liz, Matt, to name but three of those who've blogged a bit about it) I was at The Main Event this past weekend. One of the things that struck me was when the speaker in the Youth Venue, Paul Flavel (or was it a young Alan Hansen?) quoted the above Bible verse (a quick bit of research tells me it's from Matthew 25:40).

It didn't really strike me at the time but it came back to me this evening. See, about 6.55 tonight there was a knock on the door. So I went to open it as you would, to be confronted by a woman in her late 50s/early 60s, in slippers, seriously out of breath, and sporting the after-effects of a nasty cut on her nose.

Before I could say anything like ask who she was and what the heck she thought she was doing darkening my (already very dark) doorstep at that time she asked if I could call her a cab. This threw me a little and immediately I started wondering if this was some elaborate plan to burgle me (you'd be amazed the speed with which my mind runs to this kind of conclusion) by distracting me for long enough for someone to sneak in through the unlocked back door and make away with all my worldly goods... without my noticing of course. Anyway, she asked me to call a cab so I said I didn't know any numbers of cab firms and could she provide me with any. She was clearly distressed (apart from the obvious shortage of breath) and went rifling through her bag and mumbling some phone numbers, two of which she said were her daughter's home phone number, both of which were wrong, and eventually we managed to get a cab firm number from her mobile.

So I called for the cab, all the while suspicious as to this lady's motives, and when he said he'd be there in 15 minutes I decided to invite her in. She'd already requested a glass of water to take some medication and I asked if I could get her anything else so she and I had a cup of tea.

It was such a surreal experience but throughout it all I couldn't help but go over the words of the above verse. Because, when everything within me was screaming that I should not be letting this potential (albeit very wheezy) axe-murdering villain into my house, there I was drinking tea with her.

She told me that she'd been at the hospital just down the road but the cab she'd ordered for there had never turned up so she'd started walking up the hill and that was why she was so out of breath. She said she'd been at the hospital for an asthma appointment but hadn't got her inhaler with her. She told me she suffered wih MS and had had a stroke recently which affected her hands and various other things, which had led to her falling and suffering the pretty nasty cut on her nose. I've no idea if any or all of these were true but I couldn't help but go over and over and over the words of this verse.

So, for 20 of the most surreal minutes of my entire life, this evening I invited a stranger into my house and had tea with her while we waited for the cab to arrive. I'm still not entirely sure the whole thing didn't happen in some sort of dream...

...but it just felt like the right thing to do. I had absolutely nothing to gain, my fear and insecurity about strangers and dark nights (even wheezy old ladies with poor memory wearing fluffy slippers) was screaming to me that I had everything to lose, but I did it. I'm not after any kind of plaudits, congratulations, anything. I just thought you might be interested to know... both of you.

Weird, huh?

The twilight zone of the freelance translator...

So, last night was my first venture into the world of Continuous Professional Development when I attended a seminar relating to my chosen profession - for those of you who don't know and are still even remotely interested, it's translation.

I went up to London with my colleague, Anne, and we attended a seminar which sounded interesting and should have been useful, blah, blah, blah...

...but it was rubbish. The guy who did the presentation wasn't exactly the human dynamo, the way the presentation was, erm, presented, was pretty dull... but the main thing that struck me was, well, just how odd some freelancers are!

I'd been warned a bit about this before but I'd forgotten. Now, I'm all for individual expressions of fashion and taste (with my hair I'm in no position not to be) but there were some, shall we say, interesting outfits!

Anne said she thought it had a lot to do with the fact that a lot of these people... well... they just don't get out much, don't have much in the way of human interaction!.

And this is what causes another thing: man can they talk!!! I guess it's the splendid isolation of spending so much time on your own that does it.

And to think I aspired to 'go freelance' in the long term...

This was my second night out in London the trot (I know, crazy aren't I?!). On Tuesday I had the privilege of going to the new Arsenal stadium with Graeme to watch us beat the Barcodes 2-0 in the Carling Cup. It's an awesome stadium, check it out here:



Oh, and I've removed a few blogs as they don't seem to post any more...

My name is Andy and I am a spiritual nomad.

There. I've said it. I'm spiritually nomadic and have been for a few months. And I don't really like it, it's just that we've not really settled into a new church since moving.

It's weird, When we left Enfield we settled into a new church in Harlow really quickly, and I guess one of the reasons this whole thing is now on my mind is 'cos we're going back there on Sunday for the dedication of a baby of a friend of mine, then on to see my folks like we used to on a Sunday when we were at Enfield.

None of the churches we've been to here in Chelmsford have felt quite right. There are a couple more to try but if I'm totally honest I'm a little apprehensive about that. Not because I don't know what to expect... it's because at at least one of them I do know what I expect. Does that make any sense? Probably not. Ah well.

You see, I miss my mates. At Enfield SA, though I had lots of lovely family, I was never blessed with a lot of friends my age, the whole time I was growing up there. And as I grew up and V and I met, grew and changed spiritually it became pretty obvious to both of us that we needed to be elsewhere. But here in Chelmsford we're blessed with loads of friends, many of whom we've got to know through the cell group from Chelmsford SA we've been going to for about a year. But due to holidays and other things we've hardly seen them since the middle of August.

I guess we didn't realise how blessed we were to find Harefield so soon and thought it would be easy when we moved. But it hasn't. And it's rubbish. One of the best things about church at its best is its fellowship, and having not settled at a church we've yet to experience the fellowship we might have done if we had settled. And we haven't seen our friends from cell due to holidays etc. and I'm missing them and feeling, well, spiritually unsettled.

Now, please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with how Enfield is or was or how I, perhaps wrongly, expect Chelmsford to be. I just know that as far as the former was concerned it wasn't what we needed spiritually and I guess I'm a bit scared that the latter won't be either, but as loads of my friends are there I desperately want it to be...

So there you go. No fireplace, no pictures, no nothing.

The wind knocked right out of my sails...

...y'see, I had all these ideas for a blog post. As I lay in bed yesterday I was thinking it was about time I wrote something new, updated you all on the fascinating developments with my fireplace, told you what a lovely time we had on Saturday with my brother, sister-in-law and niece going to see Thomas the Tank Engine and friends at Chappell/Wakes Colne, and even time I wrote something serious but then I got up and started doing stuff, then when I browsed the logs later I looked at Glyn’s latest post, forgot what I wanted to say and decided not to say much for now, firstly because I'd advise you to check out his blog/vlog/vblog or whatever he wants to call it, and secondly 'cos I then forgot what it was I wanted to say. It was something deep and meaningful though, that much I remember...

But because I can't remember everything I did want to say I'll distill it down to this:

Thank you, Rich, Nicola and Bethany for a lovely day on Saturday. We love spending time with you but probably don't tell you enough.

And so as not to disappoint all those of you desperate to know how the house is looking, here's the latest picture of the fireplace...

Totally addicted to Face(book)...

Hi there.

Well, we had a great week at Summer School but are wrecked still. Also, as the title suggests, I've got a new addiction: Facebook. Seriously, it's ridiculously addictive and I blame it for my not blogging. Well, that and Glyn. Not sure why it's Glyn's fault. But it just is...

And as I've been bugged/pestered/persuaded to blog again I thought I'd update you with a picture or two...

We're having our fireplace stripped back to its original state, having cleared off the, frankly, nasty mantelpiece we had on there before. This is how it looks at present (well, the first picture is after he stripped back the wall, the second is the later one, with the hearth bricks replaced):

Hello? (Hello, hello, hello) Anybody out there? (there, there, there...)

It seems few of my chums are still actually blogging. Shame...

Anyway, just to update you (don't pretend you're not dying to know...) I've been spending lots of time driving. Most of the weekend, in fact, it seemed like I spent behind the wheel.

But in any case, yeah, that was it. We had a staff meeting for our divisional Summer School which has given me plenty to think about (and do!) before the even itself starts two weeks from Sunday.

And today I've just had my annual review at work. Been here for three years now so it seems logical to have a review, I guess. I hate them, probably 'cos from my first proper job I used to dread them as the boss and I didn't see eye-to-eye so they never went well.

But here they've always gone well even though I approach them with the same fear and dread. Silly, really...

Lacking inspiration...

As is seemingly the case with lots of other people on my blog roll I'm really lacking inspiration for a post.

So, as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and that doesn't really apply here, allow me to point you towards a couple of interesting posts:

Rich has blogged about some of the work he's been doing and ideas he has in the pipelines. I would love to have creative ideas like this. Rich is one of the guys I've had the privilege of working with at Summer School and look forward to doing so again.

Kirsty is hosting a discussion about performance/worship. As ever it's nothing if not thought-provoking.

And although Glyn hasn't posted anything in a couple of weeks it's his birthday today so go and wish him happy birthday.

"For greater love hath no man than this, that he should promote other people's blogs" (this may have been adapted from somewhere, can't quite put my finger on where though).

Update:

Not at all spurred on by the fact she got mock 'umpy with me in her comment I should also point you towards Liz's blog where she's telling the world about the miracle of creation!

A murderer in our midst

So we're now settling into the house, enjoying the vista, sometimes even occasionally with sun but we've discovered a slight new problem: our cat's a murderous assassin.

Where we used to live was on a new development so the amount of local wildlife was negligible. Now, however, with a garden backing onto fields and the catflap installed (to the relief of myself and the cat as he'd started to take exception to being kept inside after the move and was scratching and biting the jiggery out of my limbs), what we assumed to be a sweet, innocent, cute-looking moggy has turned into a predatory monster.

Don't get me wrong, he's still capable of being enormously cute, in fact most of the time he is enormously cute, but on Friday night he started to show us what we've not seen for the past year he's been with us.

Those of you of a squeamish or vegetarian nature (like V, not that she reads this), you might want to turn away now. Those of you still reading, don't say you haven't been warned.

We'd decided to keep him (Bob, the cat, obviously) inside until such time as his new ID tags arrived and I had a chance to fit the catflap. This opportunity duly presented itself on Friday night so in it went, and out he went... but within 30 seconds he'd returned, complete with half-dead bird in his mouth. To cut a long story short he then proceeded to play with it until it was dead, then eat some of it and leave the rest for us. This was followed over the course of the next 24 hours by a fully-dead bird, couple of fieldmice and a vole, the last of which he actually brought upstairs to show us just what a good hunter he is.

As we'd not previously experienced this it all came as a bit of a shock, but I guess it's just in his nature and, having previously tried (and failed) to reason with him about not climbing on the sofa when he was wet and dirty, I decided not to waste my energy on it this time.

Problem is I now find myself in a bit of a quandry. Having defended cats when Chell blogged about it, I'm now facing up to the fact I live with a murderer. I feel so tortured... still, could be worse, I could have been that half-dead bird in his jaws...

Sometimes you go to write something and then decide to check it first.

We've finally moved house. FINALLY! So we now live in a little village on the outskirts of Chelmsford, wake up to a beautiful countryside view, etc etc etc blah blah blah but for the most part, since moving in last Wednesday we've just enjoyed the wonderful vista... in the rain.

On the whole the move itself went fine, but particular highlights included:

• having to do half the journey from Harlow to Chelmsford with the car windows wide open as the cat was a bit poorly on the way (poor thing, he wasn't best pleased at being put in his basket then into the car and showed it).
• trying to get the sofa into the lounge. And failing. Instead, making do with putting the sofa upstairs in a spare bedroom, scuffing paintwork and plaster on the way, and vowing to get this rectified asap.
• erm, that's it. Only two points. I'd make a rubbish officer.

But now we're settling in nicely but are still up to our ears in boxes etc.

So the title of this post. Do you ever get that, when you're just about to write or say something then you think "I'd better just check exactly what this means" and actually do check it?

Just had that. Was gonna call this post 'Like Flynn' (as in the phrase 'In like Flynn') but then checked it out. Google it for yourself if you can be bothered then realise why I scrapped it.

Hopefully I’ll get hooked up to t’interweb at home soon and stop being such a Luddite, then I can post more often. You can hardly wait. Go on, admit it...

Even more so than usual...

We're out of the loop at the moment: we're no longer at our old address, but don't move into our new house until the middle of next week. If you desperately, urgently need to get in touch with either of us, e-mail or call/text us on our mobiles. If you haven't got the numbers, try asking someone who you think will!