And it's been ages again...

Been busy, been to Summer School, been on holiday, been saddened, been back to work, been amused by this video I've added on the right:

Sorry if that doesn't count as a post, but enjoy anyway!

Didn't we have a lovely time the day we biked round Essex...

As promised, now that our total has frankly obliterated the £600 barrier (including Gift Aid...), here are some pictures with an account of the day:

We set off about 8.50, a frankly ridiculous time to be getting on a bike on a Saturday morning, following a send-off from Graeme, Melissa and the girls, and quickly made our way into the 'péloton' heading back up towards Rayleigh Weir and into Rayleigh itself, skilfully negotiating the main roundabout with ease, if some fear and trepidation on my part, though V was far braver and headed straight up the hill!

Marshalls had been placed along the route, ostensibly to show you the way, obviously, but also to provide encouragement and, later in the day, tell you just how much of this absurdly-long ride you'd got left. The first one, in Rayleigh, was incredibly enthusiastic when we passed her. Whether she remained so later in the day or whether the Red Bull had worn off I cannot tell you.

So, we soon settled into a pattern, V setting the pace and me behind, winding through some of the towns and out into the Essex countryside. Thankfully the weather was great: a bit of sun but not too hot, and no wind to speak of. After about 20 or so miles we had our first minor altercation, when my front wheel clipped V's back wheel as we headed round a corner, and I failed to stick to my aim of avoiding falling off. Battle scars to prove it in the attached photo...

A few miles later and we picked up what I guess was the cycling equivalent of a casual jogger in the middle of a marathon, with some bloke cycling back from work in Danbury to Maldon. We chatted as we rode the 4 and a half miles into Maldon town centre before he departed and after 31 miles we stopped off for lunch, randomly some morris dancing and some much-needed treatment for my very poorly knee...

In fact I actually felt a bit sorry for the poor St. John ambulance folk: I was their first casualty of the day and all I wanted was just a wipe to clean up the graze and my tears, but they had to fill out an A3 sheet detailing exactly what treatment they'd given me just so I couldn't then go back and sue them!

After fuelling up on fruit and chocolate, we started the homeward leg of the journey, by which point the early sun had gone into hiding to be replaced by a bit of a breeze and grey skies. Thankfully though, there was no rain, and the sun later came back out to such an extent that I got sunburnt arms and V sunburnt hands (as she was wearing her ever-protective fluorescent jacket!).

I got a little bit ahead of myself when we got back to the Rettendon turnpike, remembering it had only taken us about 30 minutes on the way out before realising, 30 minutes later when we still weren't back at Little Havens, that we weren't going back exactly the same way we'd come out. Curses.

After what seemed like an interminable climb back up the many hills of Leigh-on-Sea and the outskirts of Southend (no, I never knew there were many either) and nearly getting lost with about a mile to go as we got confused by the lack of signage to take us around, instead of through, the local golf course, we eventually pulled back into Daws Heath Road, thinking we were home and dry...

Unfortunately, neither of us had realised that there was still a bit of uphill to go. Now, at this point it's probably worth acknowledging that this was hardly the Tour de France, and we weren't exactly scaling the Pyrenees, but after 59 miles, knowing you'd only got about one mile left to go, to find out that was uphill, albeit a fairly minor climb, is pretty disheartening!

But eventually we turned back into Little Havens and crossed the start/finish line, in a total cycling time of 6 hours and 6 minutes.

Although I might have made this sound harder than it was, I think I can speak for both of us (and I'm sure I'll be corrected if not!) that we really enjoyed the opportunity to see some of the beautiful countryside and were more than willing to suffer sore knees and behinds to raise some money for what is a very worthwhile cause.

Many, many, many thanks to all those of you who sponsored us for the ride - give yourselves a very big pat on the back!

If you're reading this and haven't done so, you can still get to the sponsorship page by clicking 'donate' on the widget on the right. The page will be there for a little while longer.

To placate the restless readers...

OK, so I know it's been a while yet again, and for that, well, really, I'm not going to apologise. I said a while ago I hadn't had much to say, and the same applies here, so I've not said much. At least I'm consistent.

But, because someone has yet again complained about my lack of bloggage, here I am. Why other people don't get this grief I don't know.

Anyway, just to let you know that I am unavailable for late bookings for weddings and bar mitzvahs this Saturday.

Go on, click on that last one, you know it makes sense.

Tell you what, if the money goes past £600 I'll put pictures on after we've done the bike ride so you can all have a laugh at the state of me. Who says I never give you anything?

Can't win...

OK so again I haven't posted in a while. Is it 'cos my rock'n'roll lifestyle demands I fill my days with things to such an extent I have no time to write anything?

No, of course not. I just can't think of much that I think you'd be interested in (whoever you might actually be).

The thing of greatest interest to myself and dare I say my good lady wife is that we've had more work done on the house. But given the fearful mocking I got last time I mentioned something like this I decided to steer clear.

We've now got rid of all the nasty old windows on the house and replaced them with double glazing. And put in a set of doors in the lounge.

Oh. Wow.

I figure I can't win. If I don't blog, I get moaned at. If I do blog this, I'll get moaned at for being boring.

Can't win.

Widgety goodness...

The more astute among you will notice on the right I've inserted a widget for my justgiving.com page to sponsor me for the 60-mile bike ride V and I are doing in July to raise money for Little Havens Children's Hospice.

To go straight to the page on justgiving.com click here.

To find out more about Little Havens Children's Hospice click here.

Thanks!

A year ago today...

OK, so welcome back.  I've been on holiday for a week and couldn't be bothered with blogging, frankly.  Not done too much, a bit here and there and mostly slept.  Wonderful.

But now I'm heading back to work I can't get to sleep.  In any case, it struck me recently that it was coming up to a year since we went to China, and also that I'd never actually got round to blogging our journal from then, so now it's up on a separate blog (yes Glyn, all for you).

The link is here and should be on the right-hand side too so do enjoy...

Fame at last...

I had a mail from a Canadian friend of mine the other day, informing me that my outstanding contribution to her country had now been formalised by there being a road named after me.

Not before time, it has to be said...

Can any (either) of my readership lay claim to such a proud boast?

Probably not. Let's be honest, it's not everyday you get a road named after you in a place you've never been (or even heard of)...

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.