This is not a "niche" blog. This is everything that makes me, me - or at least the bits I write down. There's no such thing as a "niche" person.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Sport is good for your health

Except if you're South African

Monday, January 29, 2007

An apology

For anybody who reads this blog on a regular or even occasional basis: sorry! I've not posted much because I've been ill and busy, and though I'm starting to feel a little better, I'm going to get to be even more busy over the next few weeks. I will post when I can - I really want to keep this going, as much for a reflective tool as anything else - but there's other stuff that takes priority, and I'm going to have to be pretty ruthless in allocating time and making myself get stuff done. So if the quantity/quality of posts on here declines, I promise that things will get better again; it might just take a while.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

The non-attractiveness of ownership

As I was walking through town today a woman with a clipboard resolutely ignored my lack of eye contact with her and asked me if I could answer three questions. I thought that actually three questions would be OK, so I agreed. She asked me "If I could do any job, what would I do?" (she sneaked in a supplementary question by then asking "Is that what you do now?"), "What would you most like to change about yourself?" and "If you could own anything in the world, what would you like?". Now call me weird, but this last one really stumped me. There I lots of things that I see in shops that I think I'd like to own, like books or DVDs or some clothes, and sometimes I see a sports car and think "I want one of those", but when it comes down to it there's nothing that I really desperately want, certainly not in a "more than anything else in the world" sense. The way she phrased the question kind of excluded metaphysical answers like "What I want most is world peace" or "God's Kingdom to come", and I ended up walking away feeling slightly odd about my lack of participation in the consumerist ethos.

Mind you, I'm having an introspective and unsettled day anyway. Maybe if she'd caught me at a different time I wouldn't have given it a second thought.

Monday, January 22, 2007

I don't know a lot about art...

...but I know a good way of spending a Saturday morning. Benjamin and I spent the morning at a still life masterclass at Wildern, run by Anthony Kawalski, and jolly good fun it was too. Very relaxed (so that's what Saturday mornings are supposed to be like!) and non-threatening, nobody being critical or telling you what you ought to be doing, just a small canvas, a choice of paints or pencils and a selection of objects to draw. In the end I opted to draw some of the contents of my pockets, and ended up with this:
My phone is in the picture (resting on the gloves) but I took it out of the arrangement to take the photo!
However, on our way over to the D@rt centre for a mid morning cup of coffee, there was something better than any of us could have drawn: grafitti made of light:
The metal letters on the wall were reflecting the sunlight, but what appeared on the ground were strange alien squiggles that changed and disappeared as you walked past them. Fabulous!

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Winter flowers


This is now my phone background - took this last night because I was so struck by the scattered white flowers on the bare branches against the night sky. The first one I took was really orange because it was lit by the streetlamp (you can still see the orange glow on the side of the picture) so I tried again using the light on the phone and got something much closer to what I wanted.

Sooner or later...

...you're going to have to stop being middle of the road

Today's cartoon

cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com

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

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Colgate

A news story about something that has annoyed me for ages. Colgate have been advertising their toothpaste as "recommended by 8 out of 10 dentists" on a series of billboard posters. I often walk past one of these posters, and noticed that there was small print at the bottom of the picture saying "data on file". This really bugged me. What data? On file where? This sounds as though they're saying "This is all totally genuine, we're not just making it up", but "data on file" is not anything I can check to see if it's true. Anyway, there's a story on the BBC today that they have been forbidden from making this claim in future. It turns out that they conducted a phone survey, asking dentists what toothpaste they would recommend. Sure enough, 80% said they would recommend Colgate, BUT about the same number also recommended a rival toothpaste: they were not restricted to one choice of brand. In a fairly small market, it's pretty likely that if you ask someone to name several brands they would consider using, it wouldn't be surprising if they named one of the top brands in most cases. I think Colgate should be worried about the fact that even though they had plenty of opportunity, 20% of dentists wouldn't recommend Colgate at all!

Friday, January 12, 2007

Feasting and fasting

So as Tesco stock the shelves on one side of the aisle with cut price tree chocolates and the other side with Easter eggs, and the Creme Egg posters have been up for at least a week, I'm reminded of what Steve Tomkins wrote in Advent. Feasting means less without fasting first.

Christians and homophobia

I've resisted posting anything on this, not because I don't have strong feelings about it, but precisely because I do have strong feelings. I was amused by Dave's rather barbed cartoon, but I really appreciated this quite balanced post. I guess that I have two questions: what can we do as christians to change the world's opinion of us (not that the world's opinion matters, but it would be encouraging if christians were generally seen as spiritual, prayerful, trustworthy, etc. rather than bigoted and homophobic); and if some sections of the church have decided that our LGBT brothers and sisters are the enemy, when are they going to treat them as they should?

Instant theology

I was having a healthy lunch yesterday when an idea came to me that I have decided to call Pot Noodle theology. The reasoning goes like this:
When you take off the lid of a Pot Noodle the contents look strange and unappetizing, even if you are really in the mood for a Pot Noodle at the time; similarly if you get to know people they're often pretty strange creatures, with some quite unattractive qualities, even if you quite like people generally.
This is strange, because a Pot Noodle contains all the ingredients, but in dried form; they just don't look great. People, we're assured, are made in the image of God; it's hard to see that sometimes.
When you add hot water and stir, a change occurs: suddenly the Pot Noodle looks attractive, and what's more, tastes great (if you really dislike Pot Noodles you may disagree with this). When God pours his Spirit out on people, suddenly you can see how the idea of them being made in the image of God makes sense really, and you can start talking about food-related metaphors like fruit or, er, fruit (if you really dislike christians you may disagree with this)
So there we are. A popular snack food shows how God makes us into who we really are (especially if we're prepared for some hot water)

Monday, January 08, 2007

Slippery thoughts

Two late nights in a row and I'm discovering an unfortunate side-effect of not enough sleep: thoughts become increasingly slippery. I went to bed late on Saturday night because I was playing The Sims and by the time I went upstairs Katrina was asleep and so I just said very quick and quiet prayers and (ahem) skipped reading the Bible. Then last night Katrina was playing The Sims and I was so determined not to miss out on sharing Bible reading and prayers that I stayed awake and so today I'm suffering from an inability to sit in warm rooms reading dull documents for more than 23 seconds without falling asleep. Nothing terribly unusual there, but the sad (for me at least) thing is that I had an insightful and original thought at some time today when I was nowhere near a computer or even a pencil and paper, but I said to myself "It's OK, I will remember this thought, because it is a Thought of Beauty and Originality, and will not just disappear." How wrong I was. I can remember having the thought, but the content of it, in all its clarity and profundity, is lurking at the back of my mind, and the more I try to get hold of it, the harder it is to grasp, so I must accept the fact that it is gone forever.

On the other hand it probably wasn't that amazing, while on the other Dave Sharps did a great talk at Celebration last night, based on Psalm 23:6 where he spoke about "the pursuing God": God who unfailingly, passionately pursues us in order to bless us. Good stuff.

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Twelfth Night

So it's Saturday morning, it's pouring with rain, I've taken Rachel to dancing and Daniel to Winchester and now I'm putting off taking down the Christmas decorations for another year. It doesn't matter that I know the point of a celebration is that it is a marker, a defined point in time to note transition or difference, or that the reason that we are very traditional and have don't decorate until Christmas Eve and then take them down for Twelfth Night is because we want to celebrate Christmas at Christmas, not celebrate during Advent and then give up and act as though it doesn't matter as soon as we go back to work or school; I still hate taking down the Christmas decorations and having the house looking suddenly bare and plain and... ordinary.

I guess that that's part of the meaning of Christmas for christians: it's really easy to get excited about the Incarnation, about the possibility of Christ being born into our lives, about the promise of new life in him, just as it's easy to get excited about the birth of any baby. And just as with any baby, for the first couple of weeks there's a sense of amazement, of wonder; but wonder wears off and life becomes sleepless nights and nappy changing and feeding, and we have to make a conscious effort to look at our children and think "You are an amazing thing: a completely separate life that somehow I helped to make".

So here's a Twelfth Night challenge: to take down the decorations, to end the celebration of birth, but to keep hold of the wonder, and daily to see Christ present in our sometimes bare and plain and ordinary lives.

Monday, January 01, 2007

Happy New Year!

Here's hoping for a good 2007, with a clear idea of what God wants us to do, and enough grace and courage to do it!

Had a nice little get-together last night, Amanda and Alex and Ellie came round with their respective children and though I had a moment of grumpiness when I was being sober and setting off fireworks that nobody seemed bothered about while everyone else was drinking and/or doing something warmer and more fun, I managed to get over it and just enjoyed being with people to watch Big Ben striking on BBC1 and set off party poppers. Thankfully nobody was interested in the usually obligatory round of kissing everyone else (and there wasn't even a suggestion of singing "Auld Lang Syne" - possibly because we were watching the London fireworks for 10 mins). Of course I completely forget to take any photos or video. Duh!