Wychwood 2007

Last weekend we went off to our festival of the season - a new one to us: Wychwood

It was excellent a good time to chill out - with some decent music and beer and company! and even a good cup of tea and slice of cake were available
more photos can be seen here

Onion

Gayle showed me the Onion website with clips from ONN
there is a news article on Gap Kids clothing on her blog but this one caught my eye! Excellent


In The Know: War On Terror

Goodnight Irene ...

Saturday saw 40,000 gasheads heading for Wembley stadium - 2 of which were me and my eldest son - and what a day it was!
A game of high-tension, from the first few minutes going down 1-nil to the Shrews to us coming back to getting 3-1 and getting through to League 1.

Next season we will be playing Leeds Utd (my brother-in-Laws team - he is very excited about the prospect of loosing to us!)
Wembley Stadium was a great venue - but expensive and they haven't quite worked out how to get everyone out of the car-parks yet!

Couple of fav photos below - rest on flickr here

Wembley Wembley, we're off to wembley

Well we did it -we got tickets and we are off to Wembley on Saturday!

Frustration

Brilliant news - Rovers are in the play-offs on Saturday at Wembley (much to Gayle and her family's disbelief) but to my utter dismay i can't get tickets!!

We (me and my friends) have been trying all day on the website and all evening on the phone lines Gayle says - who knew there was 35000 rovers supports out there!

Anyone have spare tickets??

Foundation little service - fun with a phone camera!

On Sunday there was a larger than normal little service for Foundation - it was designed as a guest service.

there are a few pictures on Flickr of the service taken on my phones camera - makes for some interesting light effects. Click here for more















also if you want some entertainment from YouTube go to Gayle's blog

Farmdation

Last week we became the proud caretakers of an allotment in North Bristol, after a false start of digging the incorrect plot for 3 hours, yesterday we got things well underway - planting our first veg - some potatoes!

Yesterday was spent digging more ground over - and i have the blisters to show for it - but there was something very satisfying about the process, the blood, sweat and tears - a bit of hard graft, being at one with the earth, planting to bring new life, camaraderie with fellow allotment owners was evident with everyone being extremely friendly. I could go on with the trite phrases but somehow it was actually like that

So here's to all the fresh veg the Farmdation crew will be enjoying and a few moments of peace in the shed - yes our plot even has its own shed!

PS this picture is not of our actual allotment - pictures of the work in progress will be appearing on various foundation members blogs in the future

Portugal

Last week we were visiting Gayle's parents - in between doing jobs around their house we went out to their local towns - Churches seem to be the main attraction for visitors.
In Ovar their nearest town there is Chapels du passo - which are chapels built to represent the stations of the cross - unfortunately not a single one was open though it is their main tourist attraction!
When we did eventually find a church open to have a look inside - we very quickly discovered that the reason for it being open was that there were 2 dead bodies inside (in their open caskets) for people to come and pay their respects - they didn't appreciate 2 English tourists bundling in with camera and flash photography!









here are some photos of their beautifully tiled churches and the manny crosses we discovered on our travels. The last 2 pictures are of grafitti we saw outside the church!

Brunch

Yesterday we discovered a fantastic little place for brunch (well it also offers lunch, dinner, coffee etc!) It was a quirky little place in Bradford-on-Avon called the Lock Inn - tiny little cafe with lots of outside eating spaces including a boat and garden sheds. The was a great selection of food as well - great breakfast choices - veggie and non, as well really good looking lunch and dinner menus!
The general message is that everyone and everything is welcome - including dogs, cats, ducks and children!

this little ditty was on the front cover of the menu:
I wish I was a glow worm
A glow worm's never glum
Cos how can you be grumpy
when the sun shines out of your bum!

You can even have a very pleasant walk along the canal to walk off all you have just consumed in the cafe!
Highly recommend a visit!

Cheesy films

Last Friday we needed to distract ourselves and decided to go to the cinema, though very interested in going to see Babel we decided we needed something a lot less taxing on the brain and opted for Music and Lyrics with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore.

it was just what we needed: light hearted, funny, good reminiscening of the 80's, cheesy but not overly American entertainment!

Sometimes you just need to escape ...!

Adoption

I know this has taken a few days, but I feel quite stunned that Rowan Williams has "sided" with the Catholic church over the issue of exemption from the Equalities bill and gay & lesbian couples rights to adopt children. This does not feel like my church. It has made me feel so angry that Christians are asking to be allowed to treat people differently, who are we to say people should not be allowed to care for a child who is without a family because of their sexuality. In the church i go to - we want people to be who they are and this kind of statement makes me (and i would imagine most gay and lesbian Christians?) feel more alienated from the church.

Having just written all this i see Tony Blair has done the right thing ... click here

travelling

create your own visited countries map

inspired from Ellen and Gayle! shows how much more there is to see of the world ... though i would love to go back to Russia one day though

Well I've played

I had to buy new squash trainers and trousers and managed to organize my first game I got slaughtered - lost count after losing the 5th but I really enjoyed it !!
The sweat I produced was unbelievable - you could wring my socks out!
I think my opponent was kind to me in the end - though I am not sure advising me to go for an eye test was entirely justified!
roll on match 2 ...

Winter Blues

Christmas has been and gone, people's plastic is all spent out and we start to promise ourselves we are going to change our lives around, make resolutions (or not), planning and filling in diaries for 07. So my resolution (even though I don't make them!) is to get a little bit fitter by playing squash!
We'll see how long this one lasts ...!

The Perfect Christmas Stocking?

With only a few days left before the'big' day, i am left wondering / worrying about what to put into a Christmas Stocking to amke it perfect?
the usual things like nuts, chocolate money, satsumas, smellies, socks? or do people do more unusual things?

Lee Abbey

Couple of weekends ago some people from Foundation went to Lee Abbey in Devon for the weekend there are some photos on my flickr site. click here to see

Peace

Tonight i did the little service at Foundation - it being Remembrance Sunday i decided to do something on peace. below is some of the liturgy we used:

We opened the service with:

Lord,
lead me from Death to Life,
from Falsehood to Truth;
lead me from Despair to Hope,
from Fear to Trust;
lead me from Hate to Love,
from War to Peace.
Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.
Peace Peace Peace
[by John Johansen-Berg]

I then asked the group to draw their reposonses to peace, pin them to a cross and light a candle for peace

we closed the service with the responsive prayer and the Peace:

Leader: Jesus, you are our peace.
R: In you we become new, one single humanity.

L: Come among us with your gift of peace:
R: Not as the world gives, in fear and suspicion, but as you give, in love and truth.

L: Come among us and banish the weapons of war
R: Speak peaceably to every nation, that your rule may extend from sea to sea, to the ends of the earth.

L: Come among us with the new covenant of love.
R: Sweep off the earth the instruments of destruction that all living creatures may lie down without fear.

L: Come among us with good news for the poor,
R: With release for prisoners and captives, with sight for the blind. with deliverance for the oppressed, with the fair distribution of the resources of your world.

L: Come among us that we may hunger and thirst to see right prevail;
R: That we may show mercy, that we may be peacemakers.

All: You are our peace. You are the way, you are the truth, you are the life. Fill our lives with your spirit of love, joy and peace. Amen.
[by John Ferguson]

I used music from Taize and Late Late Service through-out the service

Lindsey and Jenny's Civil Partnership

At the end of October, Foundation had its first civil partnership celebration, this was actullay my first time at a civil partnership as well. There are some photos on flickr of the covenent cermony and party!
i thoroughly enjoyed the day and had the priveledge of being Jenny & Lindsey's chauffer for the day!

80's revival

Last night Gayle and I went with some friends to an 80's disco, to raise money for one of Gayle's godchildren school in Horton (nr Chipping Sodbury)
We seem to have spent the last few weekends tracking down our costumes, which was quite fun really. Girls seem to have it a bit easier at the moment as 80's are in for them but for men it was a bit harder! I managed to track down a very cool (!) new romantics frilly shirt from a shop on the Gloucester Rd, so it was down the New Romantics road I went, getting a dodgy wig and scarves to tie around wrists and waist.
For this was a bit of trip down memory lane, I've not dressed up like this for a good 20 years, when the make up was applied I was back there reliving my mis-spent youth!
Gayle got herself a rara skirt and legless tights with legwarmers and her hair was great - all backcombed and then tied up with lace (very Madonna-esque!) - apparently this is how she did it every weekend while she was mis-spending her youth in Nailsea Scotch Horn Disco's! Gayle also dug out her original Duran Duran sweatbands and scarf - she was a real Duranie when she was young!!
The four us applied plenty of spray on glitter - now everything we touch seems to be glittery - will we ever manage to get rid of it!
The disco was entertaining, Gayle and her friend seemed to know all the words to all the songs, whilst I claimed I didn't remember many - being more of the Goth type then and lost in some university haze!

Is it really a year...

Last weekend was our wedding anniversary so we (including Frank the dog) went to Stow-on-the-wold in the Cotswolds and stayed in a nice B&B.
Great pubs, great food, peaceful walks with plenty of wildlife - with rabbits and pheasants that Frank enjoyed chasing! The only thing that spoilt one walk was that one farmer had insisted on locking the gates on a right of way - but we still managed to get through - well over actually!
A couple of highlights for me was Hailes Abbey which was very peaceful (see small island), Toddington station with the steam engines running and the Cotswolds falconry centre. Various slide shows on flickr.

On Sunday evening we went to Loch Fyne in Bristol for a meal - it was absolutely fantastic, delicious, i had kiln roasted salmon with a mushroom and whiskey sauce - yum!