Hooray!! Finally cracked the Diocese web site! It hasn’t actually been working since it went live last week, but I’ve sorted it out now and it all works like a dream. Turns out the problem was that the site is running on an older version of PHP than I was expecting, so the command I was asking of it didn’t actually exist, so it wasn’t doing anything! Thankfully though there was another way of doing the same thing (which is now depreciated in more recent versions), so I just changed a few lines and it all works nicely now. I’ve put some stuff into the news section too, to make it look less like it’s only just got online, and added a visitor counter to it – we’ve already had 8 visitors this afternoon, and one of those was from the US!

Two life-changing things happened this week. Things will never be the same…

Firstly, the other day my mum had a car accident. Thankfully she’s ok, just a scrape on her knee. But the Mini was written off. Not good. My dad sent me a photo of our poor dead Lulu, and it’s not a pretty sight. Seems mum was pulling out of a side road, having been let out by another driver, but when she pulled out another driver came down the outside lane and smashed into the front wing. So we are now no longer the proud owners of a Mini. Hopefully her parts will be put to good use though – we’re hoping to be able to sell her to the local Mini Centre for spares. Almost like having a donor card I suppose.

The second, while not so dramatic, is just as important to my life. I ceased to be the Chaplaincy Assistant! Well, technically my employment stops at the end of this month, which is Thursday, but I’m not working today as Wednesdays I do web design for the Diocese. So yesterday I met up with my successor, Alex, to show him the ropes. We chatted for a few hours, I showed him where everything is, explained a few things to him, and gave him the keys! Very scary! It’s odd to think that the next time I go to the chaplaincy it’ll be as a visitor. I have no authority there any more. I can’t tell people what to do. I can’t put random pages up on the web site. Then again, I don’t have to keep the place tidy either…

Well, I’ve had a fantastic holiday, spent camping with my family in north Wales, in the foothills of Snowdon. The weater was very kind to us, and none of us suffered particularly, which was good! We climbed the big mountain, and went on an assortment of narrow-guage railways, and even went on the beach one day. Oh, and we did a quad bike safari! So much fun…

I’m not going to go into too much detail here, it would take far too long, but I’m hoping to put some pictures up on my photolounge sometime soon, so those of you who have access to it can take a look at what I got up to!

I’m still quite tired though, having driven a ridiculous number of hours in the last couple of days. I drove back from Wales to Torquay on Wednesday, stopping off at Gloucester to see a certain someone, and then on Friday I drove back from Torquay to Wivenhoe, a journey that should have taken 5 hours but ended up taking 8!! One of these days I’m gonna have to figure out a way of getting between east and west without going round the M25 – at the moment it’s hardly the quickest way to get round.

Right, I’m going to start work now, need to make sure everything is ready for our Sunday service. Thankfully I’m not giving the sermon, I think that would be asking a little too much of me right now!

Well, we finally have internet here now, which is nice. So I’ve been doing some more web design, trying to do something with the Mini section of the site. I actually liked Phill’s idea of putting pictures of Minis up there, but I thought to make it more original I would make it somewhere where I could document my life as a Mini fanatic! So I’ve got the basics of a site up there now, and will no doubt add to it in due course. Click here to see it.

I’m actually going on holiday tomorrow. I’m on annual leave from the chaplaincy as of today, and for just under three weeks (been saving it up all year!). Today I’m planning on doing some gardening at my old house, clearing out the weeds that have taken over the garden! And then tomorrow afternoon/evening I’m planning on driving down to see Ellie again, before meeting up with my parents at my grandparents’ house in Bristol. We’re going on a camping holiday in north Wales for two weeks, which should be fun! I’ll probably start packing tonight, and finish off tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it a lot, and I can’t wait to see Ellie too! It’s been far too long…

Right, well I’m taking a friend to the hospital later for an appointment, so I guess I’d better stop rambling and actually finish getting up!