Church life

What with Christmas and everything I never got around to blogging about the fact that before Christmas I went and met with Peter V to talk about how the church can mark the anniversary of the abolition of slavery (which was very positive - the theme for Lent will be "setting captives free" with a focus on modern slavery on 25th March) and he asked me not only if I would be willing to do a couple of the talks on the forthcoming Alpha Course, but also if I would lead on setting up something for the fourth Sunday in each month that he wants to call Conversation. I feel really excited about this - I think (hope) it is a chance collaboratively as a church to work out ways of applying the Gospel in the "real world"; I'd love to develop something peer-driven that discusses issues that people bring and creates space for people to allow God to speak to them. I need to get a couple of people together, so that it is (a) clearly not my project, which is really important for me, and (b) to help make sure that the ethos stays collaborative and peer-driven rather than directive or hierarchical. I'd really like to start this at the end of January but we'll see - probably better to start with something thought-through in March than rely on enthusiasm alone and then struggle.

Christmas pictures

A couple of quick pics:

The Lone Barn done out with thousands of tiny silver streamers

The Civic Centre in Southampton with the clock tower lit in red and green. And finally...

our house on Christmas Eve (the little socks are the gerbils' stockings).

Simplification of wishes

Earlier on today I was in WHSmith looking at a Linux magazine and wondering whether to spend £6.50 to get the new Ubuntu distro that was included with it, and thinking to myself that I really would like to learn how to be proficient in using Linux, when it occured to me that I have a full time job, a wife and five children, an Open University module starting soon and I want to brush up on my Italian before our summer holiday, plus I bought a video camera for Christmas that I don't really know how to use properly and I want to work out what to do with the editing software. I don't really have enough time for all the things I want to do, let alone anything else. So I didn't buy the magazine. And our computers will continue to run on Windows. For the time being...

Youthful armpits

I may be old but I have...

Last Saturday

Finally got a chance to post some pictures from the surprise trip to London that Katrina organised last Saturday to celebrate my birthday.

This is the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern, with the tube slides that Katrina thought would be a good way to celebrate my youth! We got tickets to go down the tallest (five storeys high) which was such good fun - especially discovering that if you sing a note the joints in the tube make it come out of the bottom as a strange ululation that gets nearer and nearer...

Life begins at 6.30am

I had a nice day yesterday, played on the computer for a bit (Benjamin bought me Might and Magic IX, but I want to complete the last level of M&M VIII first, so I have a few more monsters to kill and some odd levers and locked doors to try and sort out), had a haircut, had an excellent bacon and brie baguette at the the bakery in Park Gate, did a little light shopping and then came home for birthday tea. Once the younger children had gone to bed we started watching Munich but by about 10.30 we were too tired and turned it off. The only disappointment of the day was that Daniel's laptop came back from Medion with the screen working but with no wireless connection and with a return of the old problem that the battery won't charge from the mains. (I never did get a reply to my complaint.) I went out and bought a new Netgear wireless card which also failed to work. There seems to be a conflict between the Netgear software and the standard Windows wireless networking setup (huge thanks to Alex, who came for birthday cake and then spent ages trying to sort this for me), despite not having a problem with a Netgear wireless PC card elsewhere on my network. In the end I gave up, and we may resort to Daniel checking there's nothing on there he wouldn't want to lose, and then we'll try restoring the factory settings. If that makes the software work, we'll look at the prices of new batteries; if not, we'll have an expensive paperweight.

Anyway, I'm trying to get into the habit of treating each day as a gift from God, a fresh start and chance to do things well. I doubt I'll succeed fully every day, but it's worth a try. And I have my first session with the hypnotherapist today, so it seems like a good time to embrace the possibility of change.

It's my birthday

Which is, of course, a good thing. Why does it take a day that's all about me to remind me that a life that's happy, a life that's fulfulling, a life that's well-lived is not a life that's all about me?

I just opened my first e-card of the day, from Katrina, which made me laugh till I cried. The reason to celebrate is not that I'm a particular age, but that I'm alive at all.

Work shoes are not very comfortable

I want a job where I can wear slippers

Civil liberties in an information society (2)

E-health insider reports on the story I blogged about a while back. The Department of Health has written to all the people who sent in The Guardian's opt-out coupon, explaining that they don't have the right not to have their information added to the NHS Care Records Service (full text of the DH letter here). As is pointed out in the comments on the E-health insider page, the Data Protection Act doesn't stop organisations holding the information about you that they need to conduct their business, it only gives you the right of access to that information in order to ascertain that it is accurate and up to date, and places a duty on organisations to prevent unauthorised access to your information (i.e. to protect your data). Scaremongering? No thanks. Campaigns for better information security? Ooh yes please!

Thirtysomething

Today is my last day of being thirtyanything; I don't feel quite as bad as I did but I'm still feeling kind of hopeless and what's-the-pointish. I'm at work today, having had two days off with stomach cramps and diarrhoea, and I'm looking at all the various stuff I've got to do and thinking how little I care about it. I'm sure that I can talk myself into seeing that doing these things will be useful for someone; it's just that my main (or only) motivation is to not get sacked because we need the money. I'm not sure how long it's possible to sustain working in a job that (a) I don't care about and (b) makes me feel physically sick with anxiety when I come into the building. I had a plan to try and earn money from creative writing, and once I had found someone who would pay me, to give up some hours in this job to have more time to write, etc; unfortunately I'm too busy/tired/miserable to get on with the writing, meaning that that plan may be a non-starter.

I'm going to see a hypnotherapist on Friday, who was recommended by my chiropractor; we'll see if his optimism is justified - he reckons he can have me feeling more positive in 5 or 6 sessions. Maybe just getting past the 40 barrier tomorrow will help; I've got a list of things I'd like to achieve, though I'm struggling to believe that I'll ever turn them from "things I'd like to do" to "things I've done".

From "The Drum Major Instinct"

If you want to be important—wonderful.
If you want to be recognized—wonderful.
If you want to be great—wonderful.
But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.

You don't have to have a college degree to serve.
You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve.
You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.
You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve.
You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.

You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

- Martin Luther King

Hear it here

6.53am

I don't like my job much, but I'm not the guy who was emptying the bins in Tesco car park in the dark and the rain at 6.53 this morning.

Laptop

Over a month ago I sent Daniel's laptop to Medion for repair or replacement, as it was less than a year old and had gone wrong (for the second time). I had phoned their customer service line several times - they never ever phoned me despite promising someone would call me back - and run up phone bills listening to their choice of queuing music, as well as repeatedly emailing them a scan of the receipt (which at first they denied receiving - they don't reply to emails either) to prove that the laptop was less than a year old. Eventually they conceded that the screen being completely white wasn't something they could sort out over the phone and Parcelforce took it away. I called again two weeks ago to find out what was happening and was told that they had replaced the keyboard (why?) but it had failed testing because the screen was white, so they'd ordered a new screen. I called again this morning and was told that two weeks ago they'd replaced the main board (aha - so not the keyboard then) but it had failed testing because the screen was white and so they'd ordered a new screen. I pointed out that this was two weeks ago, but the lady in their call centre explained there was nothing she could do except email someone to point out that the new screen hadn't arrived. Given Medion's record on emails, I wasn't hopeful, so asked who I called to complain. I was told that complaints have to be in writing - presumably nobody wants to talk to angry customers. She did give me an email address, to which I will send a copy of this blog post, in the hope that I can find out

• why it has taken so long to diagnose the problem with this, given that I gave them a full description over the phone and simply trying to switch on the laptop on the day it was delivered would have given them a clue
• whether in fact the delay is due to the incredibly high number of faulty machines sent back to Medion or to their underinvestment in tech staff
• why it takes a company over two weeks to get a component for one of their own machines
• whether they have any comment to make about never returning phone calls or replying to emails

If I get a reply I'll post it here, but I'm not indulging in any breathholding.

UPDATE: I've just realised that Medion's hotline web page is headed "I have a problem" and continues "is a phrase that we often hear when customers call our telephone hotline." Could it in fact be the phrase "I have a problem with your appalling level of service and apparent total disregard for your customers"?

If I had more money

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

Truth and information

I found this story via Cartoon Church. A site that is named after Martin Luther King is presenting a distorted and untrue picture of Martin Luther King. Given that Martin Luther King was in favour of direct action it doesn't seem unreasonable to use Google bombing to try and get more truthful information about Martin Luther King on to the Google results page for Martin Luther King. Truth is truth, however quietly it is spoken, but information is whatever is shouted out loud.

Young people happier in developing countries

Reuters carries a story about a survey conducted by MTVNI, which finds that overall young people in developing countries are happier and feel they have more to look forward to. There's a comment in the article that the happier young people tend to be more religious; I'd love to know if living in developing countries is enough of an indicator for likelihood of religious faith, or if religious faith by itself is a factor in young people's happiness. I thought this was worrying:

MTVNI said one of the trends they spotted was that young people with access to mass media tended to feel less safe as they did not have the cognitive skills to interpret real risk.

In the UK, more than 80 percent of 16- to 34-year-olds said they were as afraid of terrorism as they were of the getting cancer -- though the latter was far more likely to hurt them.

Not only worrying that young people may be as (un)likely to take positive steps to look after their health as they are to avoid the danger of terrorism, but that 16-34 year olds (34 year olds!) don't have the cognitive skills to spot the difference between scaremongering and actual danger.

472 peaches and 2 apples

The Australian reports on a survey carried out for findmypast.com on parents naming their children after celebrities. This is nothing new, of course; my friend Julie got her name because her parents liked The Sound Of Music. Girls seem to have come off best in the list: Kylie, Keira and Shakira are all OK, nothing to get beaten up for in the playground, which will probably be the fate of some of the Dres, Gazzas and Tupacs; I should advise all three Snoops to change their name to Michael or James as soon as possible.

40

So now I'm counting the days I have left: 20 days (including today) of being thirtysomething. This is the first birthday I've ever had that I've not wanted to celebrate. I wasn't looking forward much to 30, but I had a party (probably the first successful party I ever organised) and in the end it was OK. But now it feels as though my life is ending. I know that this is partly because I'm feeling a bit miserable, and I know that plenty of people have achieved things when they're older than 40 - I am, by the way, finding it increasingly hard not to slap people who say "Life begins at 40" - and I'm sure that the day after my birthday I'll wake up and do exactly the same things as I did the day before my birthday, but nonetheless I can't help feeling that that's it: life is over, from now on it's simply existing. I'm not likely to start a new career, despite the fact that I have longer to work before 65 than I have worked since I was 18; I'll continue to be adequate at some things, but I'm unlikely now to ever excel in anything; all the aches and pains I have now will most likely either continue or get worse, rather than improve or disappear; my thoughts about God's plan for my life are complex but usually come down to an assumption that he wants me to just do the best I can, where I am, with what I've got and I'm not doing very well so far.

People who complain better than I do

This made me smile: The Helsinki Complaints Choir

The enemies of blogging

The enemies of blogging are busyness, tiredness and depression. Busyness, by itself, is not necessarily an obstacle to blogging. After all, a short post only takes a few minutes, and being busy means that there's plenty to blog about. Tiredness, equally, will not in itself stop any blog owner from writing that he is tired, or that she has done many things, and now she is worn out. If I still eat and drink and walk around the house when tired, then surely I can manage a little light keyboard tapping. Tiredness and busyness, alas, come together; not an insurmountable obstacle, but when blogging is last on a very long list of things to do, chances are it may fall off the list altogether. All it takes is to add the last ingredient to this poisonous cocktail, and the blog takes to bed, surrounded by grieving relatives. The most insidious aspect, I know from experience, of being mildly but chronically depressed, is the feeling that manifests itself in the phrase "I just can't be bothered". It's late, I'm tired, I still have things to do, and I'd really like to blog. I enjoy blogging. Blogging makes me feel good, gives me a sense of achievement and a connection to the outside world. But I look at the time, I look at the stack of ironing, and I look at the computer and I think "I just can't be bothered".

P.S. Sorry about the prose style of this post; I've been looking at Norman Rockwell pictures.

Strange pronouncements on Scottish smoking

BBC news carries a story that Scotland's Chief Medical Officer has said the country's smoking ban will reduce the number suffering from lung cancer. I'm not sure whether a ban on smoking in public places is any more effective than other measures in stopping people from smoking, but I was slightly taken aback by the comments by Neil Rafferty, from the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco (FOREST - a desperate attempt to get a good acronym if ever I heard one), who said that there is no conclusive evidence that lung cancer is caused by second hand smoke. Just out of curiosity, I put the phrase "conclusive evidence that lung cancer is caused by second hand smoke" into Google - perhaps Mr Rafferty should try the same. The winning bizarreness, however, has to be this: "Mr Rafferty said that by claiming such good results from the policy, the public could be misled into entrusting politicians with more power over people's lives". I'm sorry? Are we to assume that the Government should only deliver inaccurate and negative public health messages, in case the populace foolishly decide that they will hand over all responsibility and control to elected officials? "This Government has done something helpful: I must give them complete power over my life." Any evidence that smoking causes brain damage?

Friday tired

4.30 on Friday - time to go home, put feet up and relax for the weekend. Or not, as the case may be. Bursledon Players have their next production coming up (directed yet again by me) - tickets available here - so tomorrow is set building all day, then technical rehearsal all Sunday afternoon. Yet again I've had to ask the ever-helpful Mike Andrews at Lite Relief if we can have lights etc at short notice - to his credit, when I asked him on a Friday evening as he was driving back from a job in Oxford, he promised to see me at the warehouse at 9.30 on Saturday morning. I'm out praying with John tonight, it's Cathy's birthday party tomorrow evening (a masked ball for which I don't yet have a mask), and what with church Sunday morning (plus Celebration in the evening) and going to the Fox and Hounds quiz, I'm wondering when on earth I'm going to get the usual 5+ loads of washing done so that children have clean school uniforms etc. I'll be shattered by Monday.

Now I know that this is all voluntary and mostly pleasurable, and that there are a lot of people who don't have leisure time to anywhere near the extent that I do, but nonetheless it's not a great feeling to be finishing work for the week, feeling tired, and knowing that it's going to be non-stop until Monday when I'm back at work again (and giving a presentation on the Local Government White Paper that I haven't even thought about yet).

Bizarre signs

Dave's recent post reminded me of probably the most surreal sign I've ever seen - picture taken in Southampton General Hospital a few months ago.

Swedish furniture (but definitely not IKEA)

I found this via Boing Boing - FRONT use 3D mapping techniques and instant prototyping to turn their designers doodles into plastic furniture. It looks horrible, but I'd love to play with the hardware. Instant 3D graffiti... or how about drawing round a model, à la Anthony Gormley. Performance sculpture!

Choice, identity, Kingdom

Some quick and not necessarily coherent thoughts. C.S. Lewis, in The Problem Of Pain, says “There is no reason to suppose that self-consciousness, the recognition of a creature by itself as a ‘self’, can exist except in contrast with an ‘other’”, which is a much better way of putting some of the ideas in my previous post. Combined with the idea that a choice-driven society, by reducing frustration of desires, reduces our ability to relate to or even conceive of the ‘other’, it’s not an enormous step to suppose that living in a consumer society leads to the erosion of the self, and that such erosion is shown through features of contemporary culture such as identification with celebrities in an increasingly cultic fashion, a makeover culture that focuses on constant renewal and reinvention of the self through possessions and environment, and a paradoxical presentation of violent and erotic objectification as both abhorrent and universally pervasive.

The other idea that I’ve been thinking about, motivated partly by discussions on Luke in our small group, is the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven. What does this mean? How does it differ from ideas about heaven as a place we go when we die? Well, the Kingdom of Heaven is a phenomenon that produces both an affective and a behavioural response – like someone finding treasure in a field: they change what they are doing with their life (they go and sell everything they have to buy the field), but they do this related to an emotional response. This isn’t a business decision, made with an eye to the balance sheet. This is a sequel to an emotional response, to a feeling that is literally life-changing. Lots of parables talk about rejoicing and throwing a party as the normal response to the Kingdom of Heaven impacting on your life. And just as an aside, how often does evangelism try to reason people into Christianity, as if the response to finding a lost possession was to sit down and think “Hmmm… I reckon that this is worth throwing a small-to-medium sized party”? And how often is joy the defining characteristic of Christians?

Crucially, it seems that the Kingdom of Heaven is something that changes us profoundly, at an identity level, yet also remains separate from us. It is a “present-but-not-fulfilled” entity, an essentially ungraspable fact. Living in the Kingdom requires that we be perfect, as God is perfect – that we strive for the unattainable. Living in the Kingdom means that I am made in the image of the Other; that my identity is derived from that which is ultimately unknowable, that I find myself as I grow closer to the Other, rather than finding the Other as I look more closely at myself. Living in the Kingdom requires that we love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, forgive those who hurt us; not because these are sensible things to do, but because they are precisely the things that are most likely to produce a response of “It’s not really me”. It means that the more intimately I become involved with and connected to that which is not-me, the more I discover myself, until one day I become one with all that is not me, and I become truly who I am.

Civil liberties in an information society

E-Health Insider have picked up on articles in today's Guardian, emphasising the concerns over confidentiality and security of the national patient database. The Guardian is also providing a template so that people can opt out of the system - with a comment that if enough people refuse to have their details on the Spine, then the system will be unworkable and will be abandoned. Normally I'm on the side of the Civil Liberties lobby, but in this instance it seems crazy to try and wreck the whole system. Patient records will be held electronically; my records at my local GP haven't been on paper for several years. If I'm admitted to hospital, I want my notes to be available to hospital staff - particularly if there is some urgency, or if I can't provide relevant information. Surely it makes more sense to campaign for increased safeguards and stricter penalties for those who attempt to misuse data, rather than trying to delay or disrupt a useful and necessary but imperfect system?

Halloween II

Yet another reason to move to France

Halloween

Finally, all the ghoul masks that have greeted me as I walked into Tesco over the last month will be gone. All we need is one evening of not answering the door, praying that nobody throws things at the house or keys the car, and it will be over for another year. I see that BBC magazine have picked up on Halloween Choice - maybe next year consumer pressure might give us a few more alternatives, though I'm sure that the juggernaut of rising sales (a tenfold increase in the last five years) will continue to push endless Hannibal Lecter masks and bottles of fake blood in our faces. The younger children will go to the Bright and Beautiful Party at church; maybe later we can turn the lights off and catch up on Spooks and Torchwood.

Choice

Walking past Burger King in town today, I noticed that their current slogan is "Have it your way" (an article on that here - including interesting reading on targeted advertising for BK's demographic; "more important to be provocative than pleasant"). This reminded me of an ongoing conversation with Nick over choice, sparked by me reading Rowan William's "Lost Icons", which discusses the importance given to choice in this culture from a psychoanalytic perspective. As far as I understood it, the argument was that in analysis the analyst stands in for the "unattainable Other", the ideal that we measure ourselves against or wish to become. The Other must always be unattainable, or else there is no desire, no process of becoming, no development (personally or socially). The task of the analyst is to avoid becoming the Other, to resist the urge to satisfy the analysand's needs, and in the transference relationship to enable the analysand to engage with the process of growth through frustration.

Walking past Burger King, I was reminded again how dangerous a culture is that minimises or removes frustration. Rowan Williams suggests that sexualised or violent behaviour is a result of the loss of identity caused by the absence of the Other; I'm sure that there's a good argument for the idea that when there is no frustration of needs to promote my growth as a person, I'm more likely to engage in behaviour that both connects me with another person and which objectifies them, which establishes them as "not-me", something compared with which I can know myself. There's probably a good link here too with racist and xenophobic behaviour. I wonder if a society that promises choices - of goods, lifestyles, bodies - to its members is also inevitably going to be a society that demonises outsiders, such as asylum seekers and those judged to be sufficiently different to be classed as "not-us".

I'm not sure how this fits with the fact that choice is an illusion for many in this culture; that a consumer society promises more than it delivers. Perhaps it is the illusion that's important here; the quaintly old-fashioned notion of "knowing your place" is distasteful to those who believe that everyone can make it to the top, but when the truth is that only a few make it to the top, the many are fed on celebrity gossip dreams, identifying on first-name terms with "ordinary" people who have made it big. When "knowing your place" meant having a realistic assessment of the world and your place in it, frustration, recognition of the unattainableness of the Other, was a key to genuine growth. When everyone believes that they should have whatever they want, and frustration is replaced with over-identification with (fallible, ordinary, destroyable) celebrities, there is nowhere to go to seek the unattainable other except in violence and xenophobia.

I'll try and post more thoughts on this, especially how it fits with my current understanding of the Kingdom of God, sometime soon.

Back from the quiz

with a creditable score of 53 and second place. Though at least part of that due to John coming and helping us with the sheet of faces; I'm sure none of us would recognise Sir Geoff Hurst. I didn't even manage to get Rachel Weisz, or to remember that The Agony And The Ecstasy was about Michelangelo and Lust For Life was about Van Gogh. Never mind. Bedtime now I think, since I have to get up in time to iron school shirts. I'll see if I can manage another chapter of the current library book, Ideas: a history from fire to Freud, which is fascinating but heavy in every sense - though it's very readable it deluges you with information, and the hardback edition could be used for weight training if you didn't have a medicine ball handy.

Short of time, as always

Sunday evening, just about to go out to the quiz at the Fox and Hounds, and yet again I'm trying to write a blog post about what we've been doing but feel like all I have time for is a sentence saying I can't write much because I've not got time.

We had a good couple of days at my Mum and Dad's, would like to have stayed a bit longer. Went over to Leicester to see my Nanna, still doing pretty well for 98. Went out for a walk at Bradgate Park - nice but slightly strange to see the children enjoying themselves climbing the same trees and rocks I used to climb.

First post

So here we are. The start of another blog, taking up where my last blog left off... or rather, taking up a little while after my last blog petered off. I've moved from Tagworld because of consistent problems with being able to access my page, and also because one of the disadvantages of a social networking site is the stream of vacuous friendship requests, usually from bands looking to build a fan base. All I really want is a place to post thoughts, ideas and updates on my life, plus a few pictures from time to time, so let's see what Blogger can do...