This morning I went to the Chaplaincy for the morning service. It’s been a while since I’ve been to a service there, and strangely enough I found I actually missed some aspects of it! Most of the time I was there last year I was yearning for a Baptist church, longing for a larger congregation, yet somehow going to the service today I felt comfortable, almost like coming home. It’s a very different style of service, which is nice every now and then, and I even found myself wishing we did the ‘sharing of the grace’ at Orchard Baptist Church!! Julian’s sermon turned out to be less of a sermon and more of an interactive seminar focussed on how we are all called by God to do something, even if we don’t realise it. We went through a whole load of different examples of gifting, various possible routes you could take in the Anglican church where God might be calling you. This was all quite interesting and useful for me, as I’ve been thinking about my calling a fair bit recently. I don’t think I learnt anything new, as such, but I think some things I already knew were made clearer today, which is good.

This afternoon we spent most of the time tidying the house, in preparation for the pancake party Anne-Marie had organised. We had a good lot of people come round actually, and we all had a great time. It was good to see Phil and Jenny again, and Alison came for a bit too. The pancakes came fairly steadily, and everyone had at least 3 by the end of the evening. Esther even got a fish shaped pancake, which was very cute! Mitch also decided he wanted to see the chase from The Italian Job. Obviously I had no objections (!!), and we also ended up watching the Mini chase in The Bourne Identity, which is also a fantastic car chase. For those who have usernames and passwords, you’ll find a load of pictures that I took on my PhotoLounge; if you haven’t asked for a username and password, let me know and I’ll set you up with one. Unfortunately I don’t think the system I’m using allows you to sign up yourself, so just send me an e-mail and I’ll add you!

Today started relatively early, with a Men’s Prayer Breakfast at church. Getting up wasn’t the problem – delaying breakfast was though! We had a good discussion though, about our direction as a church and what we were actively doing in our community. Some bits were quite challenging, as I guess you’d expect from a discussion like that. After all, you can always do more. One of the first things to establish, both as a congregation and as an individual, is who your community is. Someone very rightly pointed out that our workplaces are our mission fields. I’m a little different because I work from home, and most of the people who I do web sites for are churches! Still, I’ve been making sure I get myself into non-Christian friendship groups this year, so hopefully opportunties will present themselves in due course.

After a brief rest at home, a little more web design, and some lunch, it was back out again to meet people at the Chaplaincy. Today we were all going to a monestary for the afternoon, to see what it was like and what they do, and Alex had managed to rope me in to give people a lift. It was actually an Orthadox monestary, which was quite interesting. It was near Tolleshunt Knights, about 13 miles from university along lovely country roads. When we arrived we met up with a guy called Melchizedek who was in charge of showing visitors around the monestary. First of all we went to the main church, which was fairly small (apparently it can hold up to 150 people, but I wouldn’t like to be in there then!!) but beautifully decorated. All the walls were painted with icons, depicting the life of Jesus from birth to death and beyond. Right on the far wall they had a huge icon of the Last Supper, which was quite inspiring. There was also a screen across the front, behind which the priests would sit and do whatever it is they do behind the screens… We also looked in on the small chapel, which was like a miniature version of the church, similarly dimly lit but very atmospheric. Then we walked over to the refectory, looked at all the paintings on the walls there, and had a nice cup of tea. For some reason several people looked at me as soon as ‘tea’ was mentioned… no idea why that was…

Before we left we attended the beginning of one of their services in the church, which was an interesting experience. There were about 40-50 people there in all, and it was quite different to a ‘normal’ church service. For a start, people were free to wander in and out at any stage in the service (which was good for us because the services normally go on for about 2-3 hours!!). They didn’t have any instruments, though they did have a chamber choir hidden behind the screen doing some songs and some sung liturgy. Some of it was in another language, so I didn’t understand those bits, but the music was nice. Very calming, very atmospheric. The guy in charge also came round several times with some incense, which I respectfully put up with (never been a big fan of the smells-n-bells approach). There wasn’t any participation involved, no joining in with songs, no chanting along, nothing to do really except listen. There wasn’t a teaching bit either, though that may have come later – we only stayed for an hour or so. All in all it was very interesting, though I have to admit I don’t think I gained a huge amount from it spiritually. It was fascinating seeing how other people ‘do’ church, how a monestary works, and seeing a glimpse of what an Orthadox service is like. I think I’ll still carry on going to Orchard Baptist Church though – I’m not sure the monestary would take too kindly to me playing my guitar at full volume and singing Shine Jesus Shine…!!!

On another note, I think my Mini needs a trip to a rolling road. I got the distinct impression when driving to the monestary (admittedly I had a full car at the time) that the engine was a little lumpy in the acceleration. It may be that putting the new exhaust on will help that, as a blowy exhaust is never good, but I’ve also read that you should have your car checked on a rolling road any time you make any changes to anything to do with performance, as you may need to alter stuff to do with the mixture and stuff to cater for whatever you’ve changed. I’m going to ask around at the Mini Club, see if anyone can recommend anywhere. It would be nice to make sure the engine is nicely tuned as well. I was reading in the Mini Magazine recently about what sort of BHP people were getting out of their Minis, and was pleased to read that a standard 1275 spi engine should be producing about 63bhp, which isn’t bad. Not sure my Neddy is doing that, not consistently anyway. The RC40 exhaust should improve the performance slightly, but I guess I’ll have to wait until I can get it properly tested to see what’s actually going on. I’m also tempted to get a replacement air filter too, one that will help Neddy to breath in more easily, having sorted the breathing out! Oh, and I’ve also decided what wheels I want – silver Revolution RFX alloys, 12 x 5. Here’s a picture of them actually on a car. Sweet. But expensive. Ah well, start saving the pennies!

Yes, I know I’ve only just posted here only a couple of hours ago, but there have been developments since then. After mentioning The Mini Forum in my previous post, I happened to wander through the forum, looking at whatever was interesting. In particular I found myself looking at ICE installations, and how easy it was to get the standard Rover cassette player out and fit something else. As it turns out, it’s dead simple – just unplug the wires from one and plug into the other! So I just had to get out in the garage and fiddle, seeing as how I had a CD player out there, waiting to be put in. Sure enough, there were the right connections, and after a little poking around in the darkness of the footwell I managed to plug the CD player in. It was sitting on the floor at this stage, so it was hardly practical, but at least it was working! And when I had plugged the ariel in it sounded even better!

The next step was mounting it in the dashboard (the cassette player was mounted underneath the dash on the passenger side). This meant feeding the wires up over the heater (which sits directly below the centre of the dashboard) and up behind the dash. There was just about enough length of cable to reach, though there was a slight hiccup during the transfer. One of the plastic sleeves had worked its way off one of the little connectors, leaving a bear bit of metal. As it turned out, that was a power line, and touching that against an odd bit of bodywork turned out to be not such a great idea! Thankfully the car didn’t blow up, just blew a fuse. It took me a few minutes to work out which fuse it was, but thankfully I had a spare fuse knocking around that was the right rating, so all’s well that ends well. After quickly plugging the CD player in to check everything was working, the next step was fitting the housing in the hole in the dashboard. It’s just basically a piece of metal that sits between the CD player and the dash, keeping everything in place. I had to bend it around a bit to make sure it wasn’t going to move, and I’m still not convinced it’s the best fit in the world, but it’ll do for now – I’ll take a closer look at it when there’s some daylight to help me! Next I had to get the radio arial up behind the dash, which meant feeding it up behind the bottom rail, cutting a small hole in the shelf lining and feeding it all through. There wasn’t much wire to play with, so I had to make sure I did it right so that it actually reached the CD player! Still, everything fitted nicely in the end, and I now have a nice Sony CD player in my car! I shall take pictures of it at some point and add it to the gallery. Oh, and I also need to get the cassette player out at some point – thanks to Rover’s anti-theft measures, it’s nigh on impossible to get the retched thing out…

I had a rather large delivery yesterday, and it was very exciting! I had been waiting all week for it, and on Wednesday lunchtime a large UPS van drew up outside. I waited at the window, waiting to see what would come out. For quite some time, nothing appeared to be happening. Was the driver lost in his own cabin? Had time lost the will to pass? Did the van not have any driver at all, and somehow managed to get all the way from Potters Bar to my house by mere fluke? Was I looking at a cardboard cut-out, specially made to dupe me into thinking that there was a delivery for me? Thankfully, none of those was true, I think the driver was just searching in the back of his van for my parcel. I say parcel, it wasn’t actually in a box at all, but rather wrapped in various places with odd scraps of cardboard that must have been lying on the floor of wherever it was “packaged”. It was long, thin, metal, and cost me almost £60. Any guesses? No, it wasn’t a model of the Eiffel Tower. Nor was it a industrial strength four-foot drill bit. It was in fact the exhaust system I had bought for my Mini.

I’ve been after a replacement exhaust for a while now, as my current system is leaking somewhere and making a good deal of noise where it shouldn’t be. So I figured now might be a good opportunity to upgrade the system and get something that would last, something I would be proud of. After a lot of research on various Mini web sites, I finally chose the RC40 exhaust, which bolts straight onto the back of my catalytic converter. It’s actually the same exhaust that comes with a stage 1 kit (which is like the first official step in tuning your Mini engine), so it should be good. It also comes highly recommended by the guys on The Mini Forum web site. Compared to the standard exhaust it’s a huge improvement, and should give me a little bit more power, which is always good fun! The RC40 should sound better, look better, and perform better, and all for £43.35 (+VAT +delivery) from Mini Spares. I’m well chuffed. Not that I’ve fitted it yet, I think that’s gonna have to be another job for my friend Billy (one of my friends from Colchester Mini Club). Still, should be relatively straightforward, should get it all fixed on one day. I shall just have to wait until there’s a relatively warm day, or at least a not-too-freezing day…

Here’s a little joke for you. Feel free to laugh if you feel thus inclined. Q: How do you know if a fish is Christian? A: It’s got a car stuck to it’s back. Sorry, that was poor. But it does have a point, convoluted though it may seem. I now have a little chrome adhesive fish symbol to go on the back of my Mini. It’s not stuck on yet, it’s still sat on the table, but the thought is there. The next step will be investing in some nice chrome GB letters to balance it out on the bootlid. After all, I wouldn’t want Neddy to lose his grip on the road on account of a heavy fish on one side…

And finally… arg! Can’t think of anything else to say! So much for the “and finally” part of the blog. I could rant about the weather, but you probably already know about it. I could tell you what I watched on TV today, but chances are you probably watched it too. I could tell you my predictions on the pattern of government over the next twenty years… actually, no I couldn’t, I know nothing about government. I think someone’s been making me too much tea today. That would be me then…

Well, MegaQuest is over (phew), but sadly that wasn’t anywhere near the end of my week! Friday night I was invited out to dinner with some folks from church, to Fai’s Noodle Bar in town. Paula (who was leading MegaQuest) and her family were going out anyway, and decided to invite a couple of ‘extras’ along for the ride, so Berkeley and I turned up and ate with them. It was actually a lot of fun, we had a great time, and the food was really tasty!

Then on Saturday, did I get a lie-in? No chance! I was down at the chaplaincy at 9:30am to give people a lift to a chaplaincy quiet day at Assington Hall. Nice drive through the countryside, which was nice, though I was running on empty at the time – empty on tea, that is! Then in the afternoon I was rehearsing for a concert in the evening. And Sunday morning I was playing at church, followed by a meal out with Anne-Marie’s parents, and playing again at church in the evening.

Actually the concert went really well. The University Chamber Orchestra played two Haydn minuets, a Mozart clarinet concerto, a few movements from a ballet written by our conductor, plus some solo items – a flute solo, two piano pieces, a guitar solo, my cello solo, and a Mozart trio with flute, cello and piano. The trio was a lot of fun actually, especially because we only practised it that day! In fact I hadn’t practised all of it beforehand, so I was sightreading my part in the rehearsals! It was very good though, a nice challenge and a lovely piece. And of course my piece went well too – it sounded so much better being played by real instruments rather than just my computer! I would have liked to have put more passion into it, but unfortunately my cello spike was slipping ever so slightly so I was afraid of attacking the strings too hard in case the whole cello slipped out from underneath me! Still, people seemed to like it, so that was reassuring. Bit of an odd piece, I have to admit, I’ve not written anything like it before or since. I think a lot of the inspiration came from Shostakovich, thinking back… it was just after I had done a Shostakovich piece for my grade 8 cello.

Well, after all that, I think I’m going to get an early night and have a nice lie-in tomorrow morning!! I’ll do some work in the afternoon…. maybe…

I am absolutely shattered. I’ve been helping out at MegaQuest (the kids’ holiday club put on by Orchard Baptist Church) this week, and although it’s only been for two hours each morning, I’m exhausted! I was a group leader, in charge of four year 3 kids. Doesn’t sound like too much of a challenge, when you put it like that, but it was still a lot of effort keeping them interested and making sure everything happened in the right order and within the time limits.

The theme of MegaQuest is a computer game, with each day being a different level. The first level (Tuesday) was “The Garden”, and looked at how God created everything and put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to look after it, and then looking at how the Devil came along, mankind went against God, and everything fell apart. Level 2 (Wednesday) was “The Mountain”, looking at the story of Moses. We saw how God cared for his people so much that even though we ignored him and tried to go our own way, he loved us enough to give us some rules on how best to live our lives. Level 3 (Thursday) was “The Hill”, where we saw Jesus paying the ultimate price to save us – giving his own life and dying in our place so that we don’t have to be separated from God. Level 4 (Friday, today) was “The Road”, where Jesus defeated death itself and came back to life, meeting his friends on the road and having dinner with them, showing the world that God’s plan had worked and that if we let him, God will come and be with us too. Our Sunday morning service will be the last level, “The City”, where we’ll look at the end of the story, where we are reunited with God in heaven. It’s really a fantastic way of explaining the gospel to kids, after all it’s such a fantastic story in the first place!!

Each day of MegaQuest followed a set routine, squeezed into just two hours. When the kids came in, we had 10 minutes at the beginning to build a computer out of junk (each group had a box full of plastic cups, cardboard boxes, and other things you’d find on Blue Peter…). At the end of the week they were all displayed and a winner chosen. Sadly my group’s computer didn’t win, but it was a fantastic creation, complete with a keyboard, mouse, all-in-one computer and monitor, scanner, printer, mouse mat, speakers and a webcam! Anyway, after 10 minutes each day of junk modelling we all got together and sang a few songs (led by the resident band, iTunes!) and watched a drama sketch performed by a load of puppets, which was fantastic! Next we split up into groups for Activity Time, which was either Games (running around), Craft (making things), or Creative (dancing and flag-waving). After that we would come back and have the MegaQuest Challenge, which was a daily challenge of some sort – on the first day three people had to create the tallest tower they could out of just spaghetti and marshmallows! Then there was a video clip which explained the story for the day, and then we went into our small groups and did various activities to look further into the day’s message. We finished off each day with another song, and then went home, by which time I was usually really tired!

Unsurprisingly, I haven’t got a huge amount of work done this week! Which is a shame really, since I’ve actually got quite a lot of work that I could be doing. Business seems to be going fairly well at the moment, even if I haven’t done much of it recently!

In other news, I’m playing my cello at a concert tomorrow evening put on by the University Chamber Orchestra. We’re doing a few pieces by Haydn, some by Mozart, part of a ballet composed by our conductor, and a premier of one of my own compositions! We’ll be rehearsing all afternoon, so another busy day. And I won’t get a lie-in either because I’ve agreed to give some Chaplaincy folks a lift to Assington for a Quiet Day – so I’ll have to be at campus by 9:30am. And then I’m playing at church on Sunday as well… I think I’ll sleep next week to make up for it all!!

I was interested to watch part of the Child Of Our Time programme this week about what makes us successful. The programme identified seven areas of skill that determine how successful we are, and gave tests and games to try to determine how good we were in those areas. I only saw the first 10 minutes or so, because I had to pick Esther up from the train station, but it was fascinating. The seven areas were musical ability, logical ability, understanding emotions, creativity, narrative ability, spatial awareness, and physical ability. For a more in-depth look, go to the BBC web site.

It was quite interesting testing myself in those areas, both while I was watching the programme and when I looked on the web page afterwards. Musical ability was no problem, which came as no surprise! Logic was fine up to a point – I fall down when it comes to numbers. I have always found mental arithmetic really challenging, and even simple addition can be a struggle even now. I tried some of the kiddie tests the BBC had online, where it was supposed to test your mathematical ability. It was clearly aimed at children, around the age of about 5-8 I guess, but I really struggled! I got all the questions right, but some of them took some time – in one case it took me about 5-10 minutes to add together three numbers!! Apparently, so I discovered from the BBC web site, there’s a name for it – dyscalculia. Seems to be a relative of dyslexia, and all of that family. So I might be dyscalculic. Not that it’s caused me too many problems so far, but it’s interesting to know!

Understanding emotions was the next skill area, and I scored well on those tests too. On the test linked to on the BBC web site I scored 128 out of 150, which is well above the average of 100. Actually, from other similar tests I’ve done, I seem to score well above the average for men, and just below the average for women! Creativity has never been something I’ve had any difficulty with, what with my interests in art, music and Lego as a child! Similarly, narrative ability has been something I’ve used a lot (I’m currently working on a sci-fi comedy novel, which at its current progress rate should be finished by about this time next year!). Spatial awareness is pretty good, dealing with shape transformations. And in the real world I find that if I’m trying to find my way to somewhere new in the car I’ll look at a road map first and memorise it, and I don’t normally get lost at all. Physical ability is passable – I’ve never done much in that area, but I know I can play sports if I feel like it, I just rarely get round to it!

So, in conclusion, it seems I don’t really have any one area of speciality. Jack of all trades, master of none. Oh, and please don’t consider this post as a boastful one, I’m not sure being reasonably good at everything is actually very helpful! Sure, it gives me plenty of possible vocations at the end of the day, but who’s to say which one I’d do best at?…

Just saw this on eBay – a spade handle gear knob! How crazy is that?! I suppose that way if you ever got your car stuck in mud, you could dig yourself out…

I’ve fitted my clear indicator lenses to Neddy! Yey!! They look fantastic, I’m really pleased with them. The front lenses are pretty simple to swap over, you just unscrew the existing orange lenses, replace the bulbs with orange coloured ones, and screw a clear lens on. It really changes the appearance of the front of the car, makes it look cleaner and lighter. The rear lenses were interesting though – they come in two halves, top and bottom, with the bottom half holding the top half in place. Billy (my friend who sold me the lenses and helped me to fit them) and I discovered that the bottoms that came with the clear set were about 2mm taller than my existing ones, which meant that I couldn’t use my existing clear lens bottoms (the bottom half is the reversing lights, which are clear anyway). We did try, but my bottoms didn’t hold the tops on, so we had to use Billy’s bottoms instead. Anyway, all looks fantastic now, and he put some LED brake light bulbs in too, which really adds to the look of it. It means they’re not quite so bright from the sides, but if you’re right behind they’re good and bright! We did have a look at replacing the side repeaters too, which are little lights above the front wheel arches, but we didn’t have any the right size. Billy’s going to order some clear repeater lenses though, so they should come soon. All I need now is the nice crystal headlamps, and I’ll be sorted! Oh, and Billy’s also going to get me a price for a new exhaust system, which would be really good.

I’ve put some pictures of all this on my PhotoLounge, so do take a look if you’re interested!

I’ve just finished reading Genesis. I was inspired at Christmas to read the Bible from start to finish, having seen that my little cousin had managed to read the Bible in a year. Today I got to the end of Genesis, having discovered several passages I had never come across before. In fact, today I found an amazing bit of prophecy in Genesis 49 where Jacob blesses his twelve sons, saying some to each about what sort of people they will become. What’s interesting is what he says to Judah (who later became an enormous and powerful nation, and the centre of Judaism). First of all Jacob says that Judah will become great and powerful and rule over the other tribes of Israel (which he did). But then Jacob says this: “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his”. Now, I read that an instantly saw Jesus!! The reign and rule of Judah remained until Jesus came and took the throne (though not in the way the Jews thought he would). Verse 11 goes on to say of this new ruler “He will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch; he will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes”. Here again are references to Jesus: entering Jerusalem on a donkey, his parable about the vine and the branches, the last supper, and the crucifixion! I read this and was simply amazed at how all that had been prophecied 2000 years before it happened, and how I’ve never read it before now! This is so cool! Can’t wait for Exodus…

In other news, I’m going to see my friend Billy this afternoon to fit some clear indicator lenses to my Mini. I’ll probably post some pictures on my new PhotoLounge this evening.