Family

Ellie’s operation

Ellie gave us a bit of a scare earlier this year.  What started off as just a niggling pain in the chest turned out to be gall stones, which was at times crippling and meant she had to avoid anything even remotely fatty for several months.  She found that change of diet difficult, what with not being able to eat cheese or chocolate.  Still, the operation went very smoothly and she was back on her feet and eating naughty things soon afterwards.  My biggest confession here is that I’m still ever so slightly jealous at how quickly she healed after her operation, compared to me and my hernia (which is mostly fine now, incidentally).

Peter leaving home

This year my littlest brother flew the nest, finding a lovely little church in Uffeculme to go and be a trainee youth worker at.  I went to his induction service, which was a great way to support him as he began his new ministry, and an opportunity to meet (albeit in passing) others like him and also the vicar he’s working with, who seems very nice.  Unfortunately, despite booking a date in with him, we didn’t get to actually visit Peter on-site this year (more on that later), so hopefully we’ll reschedule that for early 2012.  It does leave Mum and Dad’s house somewhat empty though; apparently their food bill has roughly halved now that Peter’s moved out…

Read Peter’s blog.

France holiday

Apart from a weekend in Weymouth, we as a family have never had a holiday until this year.  Ellie and I have been married for 4 years, and that was all we had managed.  This year we took advantage of Ellie’s Dad’s holiday home in France, and had a lovely week with them.  We had a fantastic day on the beach, generally enjoyed chilling and not doing too much, and although it was short it was much appreciated.  The travel was an adventure – driving on the wrong side of the road isn’t actually too hard at all, although the weather on our return journey made the ferry crossing quite uncomfortable (not that Samuel seemed at all bothered by that).

Samuel’s visit to hospital

Not to be left out, Samuel also necessitated a trip to the hospital, following a very high temperature that caused him to have a brief seizure.  That was a huge worry for us at the time, but thankfully it wasn’t anything to worry about in the end.  Apparently these things happen with young children, because their bodies aren’t able to deal with the heat as well.  No lasting damage, I’m pleased to say.

Grandma’s funeral

Ellie’s Grandma sadly passed away this year.  It wasn’t entirely unexpected, as she was very old and increasingly unwell, but it was still something unpleasant we all had to go through.  She had been growing increasingly senile, making conversation difficult, and although we’d managed to persuade her to move out of her bungalow and into a flat where she’d have people to help, she actually only lived there for a matter of weeks due to prolonged visits to various hospitals.  It was one thing after another, what with falls, blood pressure, infections, and so on.  In the end she had a fall while in hospital that led to a bleed on the brain which, in addition to everything else she was going through, was just too much.  Thankfully we happened to be visiting Ellie’s Mum at the time, so we were on hand to support her through it.  A useful bit of planning on God’s part, methinks.

Cars

Tow bar fitted to the Zafira

We have a trailer tent sitting in the garage.  We were given it by Ellie’s Dad, but we have yet to actually take it anywhere.  We drove it back from Gloucester, attached to our Ford Escort, but since then it’s just sat there.  So to ensure that we would be able to take it out when the opportunity finally presented itself, we got a tow bar fitted to our Zafira with 2 power points just in case.  It may not usually be recommended, but I reckon with judicious driving and selection of gears it should be easily possible to tow a trailer tent with a 1.6 litre engine!

Ellie’s driving test

I’m very pleased to report that Ellie is now on the road, having passed her test in November.  It was only her second attempt, and she had to take the test in our car because her instructor had double-booked himself, and it was in Dorchester rather than where she had been learning, so all things considered I think that’s pretty good going!  It’s already proved to be very useful, with Ellie frequently dropping me off at work and having the car during the day so she can do shopping, take Samuel into town, etc.  And of course long journeys can now be shared out between us, which was very much appreciated at Christmas time!

Zafira written off

Unfortunately, exactly a month after passing her test, Ellie had a bit of an accident.  Nothing major, which was a relief, especially given the sort of accidents new drivers tend to have, but sadly it was enough to make the Zafira a complete loss.  It was just a collision with a parked car, but it took out the steering rack.  Our insurance company was very good though, and helped us through the process very well.

Our new Focus Estate

So having lost the Zafira, we went looking for a new car.  We hired a little Corsa for a weekend (which was surprisingly affordable, courtesy of Enterprise) and went touring the local area for potential cars.  I was originally aiming for a Ford Focus hatchback, which would be a lot smaller than the Zafira but about the same as our Escort, so should be manageable.  Not ideal, but it would do.  The first Focus we saw turned out not even to have a valid MOT, so I refused to take it out for a test drive.  It would have needed a lot of work doing on it anyway.  The second, while in much better condition, still didn’t feel right.  In the end though we found a Focus Estate that was just right, and it’s really proved its worth over Christmas.  It’s got a slightly bigger engine at 1.8 litres, making it a bit more powerful, and the gearing is taller too making it much more comfortable on the motorway.  And it came with a tow bar, so we’ll still be able to take the trailer tent out when that opportunity comes round…

Church

Creating the Facebook page

For those who don’t know, I’m on the PCC at church.  That’s basically the committee that makes the decisions regarding the running of the church, working on behalf of the whole congregation and beyond.  Those who know me will know that I’m not a sit-quietly-and-wait-for-someone-else-to-do-it person.  I saw a need for us to be on Facebook, so I proposed it, explained a few times what Facebook was, and was finally given the go-ahead to set it up.  It’s now live, and although it’s not a hive of activity, at least it’s there and being used, which is a step in the right direction!

Visit the Facebook page for St Peter & St Paul’s.

Designing a new church logo

I’m also on the Outreach Focus Group, which is like a sub-committee of the PCC in charge of outreach.  While I was thinking about outreach and how we communicate with the outside world I got to thinking about creating a logo for the church to use.  So I created a potential design, got very positive feedback, presented it to the PCC, got even more positive feedback, and was then told to put it on hold until the new vicar arrived.  Which was frustrating.  I can see where they’re coming from though, and hopefully this year we’ll be able to move forward on it.

Our new vicar

When we first moved to this area and started going to St Peter & St Paul’s there were 2 full-time clergy and a curate, plus a whole load of retired clergy itching to get involved.  Now, I’m sure it’s nothing to do with us, but not long after that we lost Dave to another church, and a bit later Liz took early retirement, leaving just the curate, who should have been busy training really and not running a church.  Despite being promised lots of support from the diocese, and the promise of being fast-tracked through the process, we still had to wait a good 18 months before David started.  It was a tough time for the church, and a lot of people had to work a lot harder to fill in the gaps and keep things running, but clearly God was saving us for just the right person.  I’m pleased to say that I like David a lot, and I think he’s just what our church needs.  He has already made a big impact, already challenged people’s expectations, already begun giving us focus and direction.  And we’ve already ensured he’s got the right impression of us – since he’s arrived we’ve had 5 fancy dress outings, the first of which was on his first Sunday and I dressed up as Cruella Deville…

Youth Praise talk

I was asked to do the talk at the December Youth Praise service.  I’ve done them before, but this turned out to be the talk that made me most nervous.  There were a number of factors at play: it was the first sermon our new vicar would hear me preach, and my parents were visiting that weekend so they’d be there too.  Oh, and I ripped a page out of my Bible.  Now, before you write me off as a heretic, I ought to explain the context (and back myself up by stating that I’d checked with the vicar that he was okay with it).  The running theme of the talk was that of “one continuous story”, bringing in the fact that although Jesus was born of Mary he actually existed long before then, and was present at creation.  And although the words stop being printed at the end of the book of Revelation the story itself continues and includes all of us today.  So to make the point, and to reinforce the idea that the Old Testament and the New Testament are not two separate stories, I ripped out the divider page between Malachi and Matthew, making it literally one continuous story.  Now, obviously I don’t condone people ripping pages out of Bibles as a general rule, but it got the point across, and I had some very positive feedback afterwards, which was encouraging.  There was more to the talk than just that, but that was the bit that required the most thought and prayer!!

Fancy dress

Pyjamas

To raise money for Children in Need this year our Youth Praise service at church decided to come in pyjamas.  I have to admit I’ve never worn pyjamas in church before.  It would have been cold had it not been for the addition of a dressing gown and slippers.

No pictures I’m afraid.

Cruella Deville

We don’t tend to actively encourage Halloween in church circles.  I personally find it a tough concept, mainly because the whole event trivialises something that is very real and dangerous, which can be a very risky thing to do.  But nor do we like to appear to be sticks in the mud, so we arranged for a Halloween-alternative party for our young people to come to, and it had been decided it would be fancy dress.  After much work (mainly by Ellie), I turned up to the party as Cruella Deville from 101 Dalmations, accompanied by Ellie as a dalmation, and I was decidedly the most scary person at the party.  I wore a long black dress, black bra (with socks for padding), tights, knee-high boots, a black and white wig, black gloves, plus makeup and accessories.  And, I have to confess, it was surprisingly good fun!

Butler

A little more conventional this time; Ellie and I appeared as a maid and a butler (respectively) at the church youth group’s Christmas meal.  We waited on them the whole evening, staying in character the whole time, which I think unnerved a couple of people!  It was tiring work, especially on the feet…

Root of Jesse

At the December Youth Praise service we were encouraged to come in fancy dress again, this time as something from the Old Testament.  I was doing the talk, so I didn’t want to be wearing anything too distracting, so I just brought a carrot.  It’s a root vegetable.  Root of Jesse.  Geddit?

No picture available for this costume I’m afraid.

Wolverine

I’ve been Wolverine before, at Anne-Marie’s birthday party a few years ago, but I brought it back out again this year (something I prefer not to do, I don’t like to repeat myself) for a special occasion.  The work Christmas party this year was themed as “A Night at the Oscars”, and we were all encouraged to come as a film character or actor.  A lot of people opted for the easy option, which was to come in a fancy ball gown as if they were walking down the red carpet, but thankfully there were also plenty in fancy dress.  I was Wolverine from X-Men, in a tux.  My claws were made from cardboard, coloured with a silver pen, held in place by untwisted paperclips taped to the back of my hand and hidden by fingerless gloves.  It worked very well, and I got a few comments from people at the party.  The muttonchops also went down a treat.  The most surprising comment though wasn’t about any of that – “is that your real hair?”  Yes, it was my own hair, just gelled.  I’m still not sure whether to take it as a compliment or not.

A photo does exist, but it’s not mine and it’s on Facebook.

Christmas Elf

Another Christmas party, this time for the younger children of the church.  In absence of Father Christmas himself, I manned the grotto as an elf, wearing bright red trousers, green t-shirt, red waistcoat, green hat, and proper elf ears.  And yes, I was in character too, making sure I was smiling and jolly the whole time, which was incredibly hard work.  I gave presents to all the children, did a little dance (for which I still need to exact my revenge on Wendi…), and afterwards tried to convince the kids that it wasn’t me and that it must have been a real elf.  I don’t think they believed me.

Again, no pictures that I’m aware of.

White Rabbit

This was my second-favourite costume this year, for our New Year’s party.  It was a group of friends from church, all of us with children, so we started at 5pm, had some dinner, played some games, and then bundled all the kids upstairs and told them to go to sleep while the rest of us stayed up.  That plan sort of worked, eventually.  Anyway, it was fancy dress but with no particular theme, so we decided to go as characters from Alice in Wonderland, which is a theme we’ve somehow not covered before.  Ellie went as the Mad Hatter, I went as the White Rabbit, and Samuel was the Dormouse.  Ellie made the most enormous hat, and Samuel looked very cute with his mouse ears and teapot.  My triumph was the teeth I made from a plastic pot cut to shape, which simply slotted between my gums and upper lip and, with a little effort, still allowed me to speak!  Obviously I still had to take them out to eat and drink, but it was good fun nonetheless.

Music

Rediscovering the cello

Earlier this year I had a free evening, and Ellie was out, so I decided to dig my cello out.  It had been buried in the corner of our hall since we’d moved in, and hadn’t been played in years.  I hadn’t even checked that it had survived the house move.  So it was with some apprehension that I opened the case, but found to my surprise and delight that not only was it all still in one piece and in working order but that it was still perfectly in tune!  Not only that but I could still remember how to play the thing.  Admittedly not to the same level as when I was on top form, back in my final year at school, but I was still able to play The Swan without any difficulty, which is somewhere in the grade 6-7 range I think.

Album update

Unfortunately this year has seen little in the way of progress on my album.  I did some more editing, and regrettably decided that one of the tracks that had been causing me difficulty was actually too fast and needed to be re-recorded at a slightly slower tempo.  I also did some minor tweaks to some of the levels, and re-recorded a couple of the guitar bits to make use of the effects pedal I got for Christmas last year.  But there is still a fair amount of work yet to do, what with re-recording bits and adding more depth in a few places.

Worship at camp

Camp was by far the biggest musical input of this year, as I was leading the music and worship for the whole week, which is quite normal for camp but still a lot of effort in a condensed period of time.  I found it quite hard work this year though, partly because I wasn’t quite in the right place, spiritually, to lead as effectively as in previous years (in my opinion).  It was also harder because I didn’t have my core group of musicians that I had got used to – Sarah had double booked herself so couldn’t make it, and Greg was needed on another camp and the dates clashed.  The musicians I actually worked with were brilliant, but it was just a lot harder work having a different group of people each evening and not having an opportunity to gel as a band.  Still, it was good fun overall and I’m looking forward to next year!

That’s a quick summary of 2011.  Well, not “quick”, but summarised nonetheless.  Bring on 2012!

It was one of those stereotypical nights that would feel right at home in a Hollywood movie – the sky was black, the wind howled menacingly, the icy rain hurled itself at the ground, and small furry creatures everywhere ran and hid.  And I sat at home reading Samuel a bedtime story.  It was only when my mobile rang on page 2 that it became apparent that the weather was indeed a bad omen.

In all fairness, Ellie has only been driving on her own for a month.  And it’s not exactly a small car.  And the conditions were awful, as I’ve described above.  And it was a very narrow road.  Squeezing down a poorly lit residential street she slightly misjudged her position on the road, and clipped the back of a parked car as she passed.  She was only in second gear apparently, and it took her completely by surprise.  She was surprisingly calm on the phone though, which in turn helped me to be surprisingly calm too, as I skipped to the end of the book (andtheyalllivedhappilyeveraftertheend) and hastily put Samuel to bed without brushing his teeth.  To be honest I was more relieved than anything else – given the sort of accidents new drivers usually have, this was nothing.

Thankfully the owner of the other car was very understanding.  In fact, apparently it was the third time this had happened to her.  Which tends to suggest it’s not entirely Ellie’s fault after all… but I doubt the insurance company will see it that way.

Ellie wasn’t hurt at all, incidentally, as she wasn’t going particularly fast at the time.  In fact, on inspection in the light of the following day the damage didn’t seem too bad.  But because Ellie had mentioned about the steering not feeling quite right we decided to play it safe and leave the car where it was until it could be looked at by a garage.  So we arranged for the car to be collected, and today I heard back from them with their assessment of the damage.  There was some cosmetic work that would need doing, such as replacing a few body panels (front bumper, bonnet, front wing), repainting (the aforementioned new panels, plus some deep scratches on the doors), and a new headlight unit.  But the thing that really swung the issue was a bent and snapped steering rack.  Ouch.  Presumably when the two cars collided they bumped wheels, and even at that slow speed it was enough to cause significant damage.  The cost of repair was quoted at more than I paid for the car in the first place, so understandably it has been deemed a complete loss.

It makes me wonder though how cars last so long when they’re banger racing.  If a gentle knock can sheer a steering rack, how can scrap cars survive being repeatedly rammed and still pull themselves along??  I also wonder what banger racing will be like in 20 years time when all the ‘old’ cars are made of plastic.

So on Friday, straight after a work end-of-year conference in Yeovil, I went and picked up a hire car that we’d booked for the weekend, and spent most of Saturday looking at cars.  I had already looked at the AutoTrader website, and had decided that a Ford Focus was what we needed.  Significantly smaller and cheaper than the Zafira, but still with just about enough space inside for us to get by on a day-to-day basis.  A long term goal at the back of my mind is that now that Ellie and I both drive it might be more sensible for us to have two smaller cars rather than one big one.  So I picked out the best options, we piled into the tiny Corsa we’d hired, and set off.

The first car was in Frome, and was being sold privately rather than by a garage.  I thought it looked good from the website, so I was feeling positive.  However, the man selling the car didn’t do himself any favours at all.  He knew practically nothing about the car, because he hadn’t had it long and hadn’t bought it for himself, and had allowed the MOT to run out.  That meant that we couldn’t legally take it for a test drive, despite his offers.  It also had dubious interior additions (who uses CB radios these days???), two balding tyres (both on the same side of the car, so all four would need replacing), the engine sounded rough (even for a diesel), and it just didn’t feel right.  So we left without even moving it off the drive.

The next one on my list was back in Shepton.  It looked miles better, despite a little rust on the rear subframe, so we took it for a spin.  It was okay, but not great.  The brake discs felt warped, and juddered a lot when braking, which made the whole braking experience very unnerving.  It was also didn’t like going into third gear.  It was a nice enough car, it just didn’t feel like ours.  So we said no and went home to grab some lunch.

Armed with a broader range of options, having succumbed to the idea that I might be wrong in declaring that we needed a Focus, we set off in the afternoon to see three more cars: a Zafira and a Focus Estate in Frome, and an Astra in Trowbridge.  We went to Frome first on the basis that they were closing earlier.  The Zafira was like ours, only a slightly higher spec model, so we took that as read and had a look at the Focus Estate, just to see what the difference was.  It looked lovely, a wonderful big boot, great condition, and none of the rust issues that the other Focus had had.  Taking it for a spin we both very soon agreed that it felt like our car.

So we bought a Focus after all, albeit a bigger one than I’d expected.  God led us in exactly the right direction, once I let him, and it’s being delivered on Sunday afternoon.  Yay!  I’ll put photos up in due course, for those of you for whom a blog post of this length is just too much effort.

The problem started when I moved from my old hosting provider, PearTreeUK, to my new hosting provider, WebhostingUK.  I was determined to be clever, being a professional web developer, and decided to merge a load of old domains onto one master domain and host my blog there, so now you’ll find that www.minipix.co.uk, www.chapternine.co.uk and www.giftlistcentral.co.uk all redirect to www.matthewdawkins.co.uk.  Seamlessly.  Well, almost seamlessly.  The trouble was, despite all my cleverness, I forgot to download all the images on my blog before cancelling the old hosting.  Foolish fool.

So while everything worked, it looked rather bare.  For the most part it wasn’t a huge issue, but believe it or not there are actually some blog posts that Google quite likes, such as my demonstration of OpenTTD junctions, which is somewhat underwhelming without the images.

Thankfully, the folks at PearTreeUK have their heads screwed on.  I emailed them on the off-chance that they might have my old data lying around somewhere, half hoping that they didn’t (because that would be careless and unprofessional).  The reply came back positive, and thankfully it’s not unprofessional at all – they actually have a policy in place to hang onto expired accounts’ backups for several months before automatically deleting them.  Which is a very wise policy.  And it meant that they were able to provide me with a full backup of my blog, including images.  So I downloaded the images, put them in the right place, fiddled with my .htaccess file to make sure I didn’t get any straggling 404s, and hey-presto my images are back!  Feel free to take a wander through my archives if you like, to marvel at my newly-found old images.

As an extra bonus, I’m pleased to say that something else fairly significant was also recovered at the same time.  I had been writing a pregnancy diary during 2009, before Samuel’s birth, and I’d put it online (though hidden from public eyes) so that I could update it from wherever I happened to be.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Anyway, I kind of forgot it was there, so when I came to migrate all my websites from the old web host I completely forgot to take a backup of that diary.  Thankfully, the backup PearTree were able to send me included all that hard work.  One day I’ll finish off the last few weeks worth of entries (which are currently only in note form) and maybe make it public.  Might make an interesting read.  Maybe.

At the bottom of the garden

Amber was the sort of person who truly believed there was a perfectly sensible answer to anything that appeared in the least bit supernatural.  She didn’t believe in monsters, or elves, or ghosts, or any of the fairytales she had been told when she was growing up.  She instructed her parents to stop telling her bedtime stories, informing them in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice that she was “too old for silliness”.

In truth, she rejected the tales because she was afraid one day one of them might be true.

And now it was her birthday, her coming-of-age.  And she hadn’t slept a wink all night.

*****

The day before had been fraught with tension, mainly her mother’s fault, fussing around making preparations for the party.  She was trying to be organised, but to everyone else it just looked like panic.

“You’re not sweeping the floor properly, Amber,” she called from the other side of the room, “I can see streaks in the woodwork where you’ve missed bits.”

“Well then,” Amber replied, almost to herself, “maybe you should get someone to sweep the floor who actually cares if it’s clean or not.”

“Don’t take that tone with me, my girl,” her mother retorted, waving her duster menacingly in a nondescript direction, “this floor needs to be spotless for the party, and you’re old enough to know how to sweep properly.”

“I never even said I wanted a party,” Amber complained.

“That’s not the point, dear,” her mother replied, pulling a dining room chair into the sitting room to be able to reach the corners of the ceiling, “you’ve reached an important age and everyone wants to celebrate with you.  They’re expecting a party.  And that means we have to give one.  And that means you have to be here, so people can wish you well.”

“But what if I don’t want to be here?  What if I just want some time to myself?”

“Don’t start that again, child,” mother said sternly, “you’re old enough now that you should respect other people’s wishes before your own.”

“Then maybe I’m old enough to go out and have my own fun, to be where I want to be, to see what’s at the other end of the garden…”

“You are NOT permitted to go to the end of the garden,” snapped her mother from on top of the chair, “you know full well your father and I have declared that to be off-limits.

“Fine,” Amber harrumphed, “I’ll just go to my room then.”

And off she stomped.  Her mother called after her, shouting about Amber’s responsibilities and her own old age and frailty and how if she fell off the chair doing the dusting it would be all her fault.  Mother wasn’t frail at all, as Amber knew all too well, but she had used that excuse for as long as Amber could remember.

From the semi-solitude of her own room, with the muffled thumping of her mother reverberating through the floorboards, Amber silently screamed at everyone who had ever told her what to do.  All her life she had lived behind the bars of someone else’s concerns, living by rules that someone else had thought up, constrained by invisible chains that someone else had crafted.  She was so close, now, to her first taste of freedom, just one day away from being able to make some decisions for herself, and that just made it seem even further away.

Amber looked longingly out of the window.  The end of the garden had always been a mystery.  She knew there must be something beyond the hedge, and had often asked about it, but her father had always forbidden any talk of it, let alone entertained the idea of letting her go there.  She was certain there was a secret he refused to tell.  Yet, somehow, it was more than that.  There were times when Amber thought for a moment that his face contained a fleeting trace of fear at the thought of her venturing beyond the ‘safe’ part of the garden.  “When you’re older”, they had said.  Well, tomorrow she would be older.  And she knew exactly what she’d be doing.

It was then that the thought crossed her mind.  If it’s only tomorrow, what’s to stop me going today and not telling anyone until tomorrow?  No one would know.  And, after all, what difference does a day make anyway?  Why should she be forbidden today but allowed tomorrow?

Her mind made up, she climbed out of the window (which wasn’t easy, and she’d only managed it once before, and ended up with all sorts of bruises as a consequence), brushed herself down, and set off across the garden.  She could still hear her mother, just about, complaining to herself as she tidied the kitchen, occasionally shouting some snide remark in the direction of Amber’s now empty bedroom.

She passed the rose bush where last spring she had ripped a brand new dress while she’d been playing.  She rounded the pond where she used to talk to the frogs.  She paused briefly under the sycamore tree where she and her best friend Willow had agreed to reveal to each other who they fancied and realised that they were both in love with the same person (they were only mere infants at the time, and their mutual hatred eventually lapsed after a few days).

Finally, she reached it.  The point beyond which she was not allowed.  Her heart thumped in anticipation and, she realised, fear.  That the end of the garden was forbidden was something that had always been part of her life, like a defining landmark.  It had been drilled into her for as long as she could remember.  And now she was about to break that rule, to deliberately rebel against a kingpin in her upbringing.  She loved her parents, she was sure of that, and the thought of disobeying them so blatantly made her stomach churn slightly.  But, her mind had been made up.  She wouldn’t forgive herself if she backed out now.  Not when she’d come this far.

The hedge was thick and grey, and cast a cold dark shadow across the garden.  She waited by it for a moment, collecting herself.  Something was behind it, she could sense it, she knew it.  There was nothing to be afraid of, no monsters, no terrible beasts from folklore.  Amber closed her eyes and breathed deeply, taking in the woody smell of the hedge.  And then she calmly peered around the hedge.

There was a wall.  A tall wall reaching far into the sky.  She wondered how she had never seen it before.  Set in it were several enormous windows, each reflecting vast tracts of mottled sky.  And in front of her, staring back at her with an almost identical look of surprise, was a human.

“A fairy!” cried the gargantuan creature, in a voice as loud as thunder.  It stood up to its full height and pointed an enormous finger at Amber, a look on its face an amalgamation of surprise and excitement bordering on psychotic.

Amber’s heart might as well have stopped dead.  The world around her turned icy cold, black and indistinct, save for the impossible fairytale creature that loomed before her, burning its effigy into her tiny fairy eyes.

The monster lunged forward, oversized and plumpish hand opened wide, ready to grab, to catch, to kill.  Only at the last possible moment did Amber’s reflexes finally come to her aid, and with a deft and well-practiced flutter of wings she managed to slip just out of reach before the fat fingers closed around where she had been.  The girl-giant noticed her error, fixed her lustful eyes on the fairy once more and, with blood-red tongue clamped determinedly between her lips, she made another attempt.

This time Amber saw it coming and despite a head full of impossible thoughts and almost overwhelmed with fear she mumbled a hasty disappearing spell and vanished from sight.  It would only last a matter of moments, but long enough for her to flit back behind the hedge and head back into her garden.  The monster raged behind her, shouting words that Amber didn’t even stop to listen to, feet pounding heavily on the grass as it followed.

*****

“Before everyone arrives, we’ve got… well, it’s not a present, exactly,” her father said, “although it is a gift, of sorts.”

It was the morning of her birthday.  Her mother had been up all night making the final preparations, baking, cleaning, hanging decorations.  And she’d done it alone, because Amber had refused to help; for reasons her mother resigned herself never to understand, Amber didn’t even join them for dinner that evening, and stayed in her room.  Only this morning had she appeared, pale and quiet and clearly having not had much sleep.  Her mother put it down to the excitement and anticipation of the party.

Amber still felt cold, but didn’t shiver.  Her head felt fluffy inside.

“Now that you’re old enough,” her father continued, “well, your mother and I have talked it over, and we think it’s time we shared a truth with you.  We know you’ve always been interested in what’s at the other end of the garden, and we’ve deliberately kept it from you.”

Amber’s right hand felt numb.

“The thing is,” her mother chimed in, “some of the stories we told you when you were younger… well, they were actually based in truth, some of them.”

“We never told you everything before,” her father picked up, “because we didn’t want to scare you.  We just knew we had to keep you away from the end of the garden, for your own safety.  And we want you to know that we did that because we love you, and always have, and always will.”

Amber felt a strange sensation in her big toes, somewhere between frostbite and pins and needles.  And her wings tingled too.

“You see,” her father fumbled with his jacket as he tried to find the right words in the right order, “what we’re trying to say is that… well, humans do actually exist.”

There was a pause.  Amber’s expression didn’t change.

“You remember the stories about the humans, don’t you dear?” asked her mother.

“There is actually substantial evidence,” her father said, “that there are humans living at the end of the garden.  We’ve never seen them, I might add, but all the signs are there.  Which is why we always told you never to go there.”

Amber’s blinked a few times.  Her vision was blurring.

“And,” said her mother, quietly, “we all know what happens to fairies if a human looks at you.”

“Only takes a few hours, they say,” mused her father, “a day at most.  Not a nice way to die.  But you mustn’t be afraid, my dear, just as long as you stay away from the end of the garden.”

Amber would have cried, or said something, or done anything at all.  But she couldn’t.  A moment later her legs gave way.

And the little girl never saw her fairy again.

By Matthew Dawkins
Copyright (C) Matthew Dawkins 2011 

What’s pShadow?

pShadow, short for ‘paper shadow’, is a jQuery extension that adds realistic drop shadows to HTML elements, which works in Internet Explorer (IE8, IE7, IE6 with some clever trickery), Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and any other modern browser you care to mention.  It’s free to download and use, and you can see an example on the demo page.

Cut to the chase – how do I get it?

Download pShadow1.0 and unzip it somewhere.  You’ll see pshadow.js and 2 png images, and I’ve included the jQuery script too (but feel free to download it fresh from the jQuery site if you prefer).

In the <head> section of your HTML file, add the following lines:

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.1.x.x.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="pshadow.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
    $('.someElement').pShadow();
});

Now all elements in your markup with the class .someElement will have a lovely drop shadow!

The options

There is more than one way to skin a cat.  By the same token, there is more than one way to use pShadow.  Below are some options you can set.

There are 2 built-in shadow types, using one of the 2 .png images bundled in the zip.  Choose which one you want to use by setting the type parameter to either ‘corners’ (default) or ‘middle’.  See the demo page to see the difference.

$('#element').pShadow({type: 'corners'});

You can set how deep the shadow is, i.e. the vertical height of it, by setting the depth parameter to a number (assumes pixels).

$('#element').pShadow({depth: 30});

You can vary the strength (i.e. the darkness) of the shadow by setting the strength parameter to a value from 1 to about 5.  See the technical stuff below for an explanation of what those numbers mean, but 1 is lightest and 5 is probably the highest you’ll need to go.

$('#element').pShadow({strength: 2});

And of course you can combine those options into one array, and even chain other functions on afterwards.

$('#element').pShadow({
    type: 'corners',
    depth: 10,
    strength: 2
}).css('background','blue');

How it works

Okay, here’s the more technical low-down on how this all works, and what makes it so special.

We all know that modern browsers (apart from IE anyway) support the lovely CSS3 box-shadow property.  But there are times when we need to cater for IE too, and sometimes a simple box-shadow just doesn’t cut the mustard.  The pShadow jQuery extension does what all great performers do – it masters the art of illusion.

The shadow itself is actually a .png image, carefully designed to sit on the bottom edge of an element and give impression of depth and shadow, as if the element was a piece of paper sitting on your screen.  No shadows are needed on the other edges, because the bottom shadow does all the work for you.  Your eyes do the rest and turn it into a 3-dimensional object.

pShadow uses jQuery to take (nearly) any element, or set of elements, and dynamically adds the .png image to it, positioning it carefully so that it lines up with the bottom edge of the element.  In the case of self-closing elements like <img />, pShadow adds the shadow element immediately following it in the markup, and positions it absolutely to the target element’s position on the screen.  In the case of non-self-closing elements like <div></div> the shadow is added inside it and then positioned relative to the parent.  Then it scales the width of the image to match the target object.  And, to my knowledge, that can’t all be done purely with CSS.

The darkness of the shadow (known in the code as the ‘strength’) is a quick and dirty approach but generally works well.  There is still only one .png image, but if you layer them on top of each other it gets progressively darker.  If you leave the parameter to its default setting, or set it to 1, it will place just one copy of the shadow under the element.  If you set it to 3, you’ll effectively get 3 shadows stacked on top of each other, making it darker.  By my reckoning the scale can sensibly go up to about 5, although there is technically no limit.  And if you want more control you can create your own shadow image that’s really really light and stack loads of them on top of each other, if you really want to…

Limitations

No, it’s not perfect.  Yes, you can break it.  No, I can’t guarantee to be able to fix every issue you have with it.  Here are some things I’m already aware of:

• PNG images are not totally supported in IE6, because it forgets to take transparency into account.  However, there are a number of ways to force IE6 to do transparency, so do a Google search for “IE6 transparency” and use any of the solutions there!
• If you apply a shadow to a self-closing element like an image, and then move the position of that element, the shadow won’t follow it.  Because the shadow is positioned absolutely to where the target element was relative to the page, if you then move the target element the position of the shadow would need to be updated too.  That’s beyond the scope of pShadow at the moment.
• If you have CSS targeting images, there’s a possibility that you might affect the shadow elements too.  I’ve tried to cancel out some typical CSS parameters, but it’s no silver bullet, so beware.
• pShadow doesn’t take into account rounded corners, so if you’re using a hefty rounded corner on an element then the shadow might look a little odd.  Tough luck, I’m afraid.
• Also, pShadow doesn’t currently handle nested pShadowed elements perfectly.  Hopefully that’s something I’ll find a fix for though!

Frequently Asked Questions (or at least questions that I imagine might be asked frequently)

Is pShadow free?

Yes.  It is.  And always will be.

Do I have to use jQuery?

Yes.  Technically you could achieve it all in raw Javascript, but it wouldn’t be as elegant, nor anywhere near as easy to use.  And I have no plans to convert it to use any other Javascript framework.

Can I apply pShadow to any element?

Yes.  But I can’t guarantee it’ll work in every case.  It’ll definitely work for <div>, <p>, <h1> etc, <img>, and any other element that a browser will treat as if it’s a block element like <div>.  It won’t work quite right with <input>, <textarea>, <button> yet, but that might come later.  And I’m sure you’ll all tell me if other elements don’t work either.

Can I use pShadow?

Yes.  You can use it on your personal blog.  You can use it on your company website.  You can use it on your corporate intranet.  You can use it in your web application.

However, you can’t use it on your oven.  Or your car.  Or your girlfriend.  Or your sense of pride.  Or the sunset.

What happens if I have a problem with pShadow?

Leave a comment below and I’ll see what I can do to help.  Unfortunately I have a 9 to 5 job to attend to, so I can’t provide unlimited tailored support, and you can’t employ my services either, even for money.

When is the next version of pShadow due?

It’s not.  Not as such.  This is a little personal project of mine, initially knocked up in an afternoon.  I hope to find time to tweak it as necessary, as and when people point out critical failures, but there is no roadmap for development.

So today, finally, she had her operation.  She had to be at the hospital at 7:30am, which is a silly time in the morning, even more so because that meant we had to get up at 5:30am to be ready in time to leave the house at 6:30.  The journey in was pretty straightforward, little traffic to speak of, and we didn’t talk about the operation at all.  It was only when we got there and waited in the drop-off car park that we spoke properly about the op, and prayed together that it would all go okay.

And that was it.  I dropped her off and came home.  I wasn’t able to sit with her, or wait for her, or comfort her, or be around when she came round from the anaesthetic.  I felt quite helpless.

Samuel managed to stay awake all the way home, but only just, and went straight off to sleep when we got home.  Which was brilliant, because it meant I had time to go through the shower and everything else I didn’t have time for first thing.  He woke up eventually and we went to Tesco, and when we got back I phoned the hospital to find out what the situation was.  I spoke to the lady who was in charge of bed allocation, so she didn’t know exactly where Ellie was, but she said she’d give me the phone number for the ward where she’d be put after the op.  I went to fetch a pen, started writing down the number, and then my mobile rang – it was the ward I’d just been given the number for, telling me that Ellie was out of theatre and was doing well.  Talk about good timing!

I gave her a quick ring on her mobile, because the ward nurse had told me I was allowed to.  Ellie was compus mentus, which was encouraging, but she was understandably groggy so I didn’t keep her long.  Apparently she’d be let out later in the afternoon and they’d give me a ring when she was ready.

So Samuel and I played some more, and went to the park, and came back again.  And then I put Disney’s Lion King on, because I don’t think Samuel’s seen it before.  Not that he’s got enough of an attention span to watch it all the way through, but he did spend the first 20 minutes or so laid on his tummy underneath the coffee table with his eyes glued to the TV!

Finally, as I was giving Samuel dinner, Ellie let me know that she was being discharged and that she’d like me to pick her up from the hospital.  And so I bundled a load of stuff into the car and made the journey to Yeovil again.  I managed to find Ellie eventually, in a little ward in the women’s wing (I was almost surprised to be let in, maybe I just misunderstood the name…).  Curiously, there weren’t many staff around at the time.  In fact, because Ellie had already discharged herself and was just waiting for collection, I didn’t have to check with anyone that we were leaving, we just left.  It almost felt like I was stealing her away, as if we were sneaking out without permission.  It also felt odd that I hadn’t seen or talked to any medical professional the whole day – Ellie could have been looked after by gerbils for all I know.

Thankfully Ellie was in pretty good shape, all things considered.  She’d had the operation fairly early in the morning, and it had been relatively straightforward (it had taken about an hour in theatre, plus several hours recovery), and she seemed a lot more ‘with it’ than I had expected.  I’d forgotten to bring her squash though, which she’d asked for, but I don’t think she had the energy at the time to tell me off.  We talked about her experience most of the journey back, and when we got home my Dad had arrived and was getting dinner ready.

So all’s well.  God has looked after us all, answered our prayers, and will undoubtedly continue to work his little miracles as Ellie’s body heals itself from the ordeal.  We’re also really thankful for all the various family members who are looking after Samuel for the next couple of weeks, which means Ellie doesn’t have to and I don’t have to take time off work.  It’s amazing how things pull together!

Feel free to send chocolate, she can eat that now.

Now, just recently I’ve not been all that active on Twitter or Facebook.  Life has just been too hectic, and having spent all day working at a computer actually the last thing on my mind when I get home is “right, I really need to sit in front of a computer for the rest of the evening”.  I’ve also had very little to say for myself, so even when I do find myself sat at a computer in the evening, I can rarely think of anything worthwhile to say.  The same goes for this blog, which hasn’t really been regularly updated in yonks.

A few days ago I was chatting to two of my best friends on Skype, catching up on stuff.  It was wonderful to see them both, and it reminded me just how much I miss them, and how irritating it is that Colchester is just so far away.  Whoever decided that 200 miles needed to be such a long distance clearly needs their head examined.  In fact, it occurred to me that Anne-Marie and Sarah are still my closest friends (apart from Ellie of course), despite the distance and the shameful lack of regular conversation.  We really ought to keep in touch more often.

And then it hit me – I’ve been doing Twitter all wrong.

For some time now I’ve been operating under the mantra that “no one wants to hear about what you had for breakfast”.  It’s been drilled into me that Twitter is meant for sharing important and useful information, and that you have to offer something unique and intellectually valuable for people to follow you and retweet your ideas.  Well, if the goal of your existence on Twitter is to attract clients and do business and generally be seen on Twitter as a minor celebrity, then yes, by all means, that’s exactly what you should do.  But that’s not me any more.  The only people interested in following me now are my friends and family.  I’m not interested in anyone else.  And I don’t have to prove my intelligence to my friends, they already know my foolishness, they don’t want to hear about the latest trends in website performance or PHP coding.  My Twitter followers are like Anne-Marie and Sarah, who want to hear about those mundane everyday moments that often get missed even in a Skype video call.  True, they may still not care what I had for breakfast, but there are other parts of my life that they will be interested in.

I’ve found my purpose again.  And hopefully, with that newfound confidence in my own online existence, you should hear more from me in future.  And if not, feel free to shout at me in the comments to tell me off.

It’s officially over, and my what a journey it has been!  Way back in 2005 I was approached by the St Albans Diocese Youth Service and asked if would be able to design them a new website or three.  And so my freelance business began, primarily offering web design services for churches and Christian organisations.  The business grew, I took on more clients, and I started providing services such as web hosting too.

But, like all good things, it had to come to an end.  In October 2010 I got a ‘real’ job – a full time position as a web developer for another company, and my own business had to be gracefully turned off.  After a lot of dallying and helping clients out with migrations to other web hosts, today finally sees the final milestone completed.  My old websites are being taken offline and my reseller hosting package cancelled.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who I’ve had dealings with over the years who have made it all worthwhile.  Thanks to Rob for being so helpful, especially in those stressful downtime moments, and for resetting the firewall every time I blocked myself by trying to remote MySQL into something!  Thanks to Ralph giving me plenty of work to do, and for being cause for much entertainment.  Thanks to Anthony for getting me started in the hosting business.  Thanks to Liz for getting me my first job.  Thanks to Ellie for putting up with me, for bringing me cake batter at just the right moments, and for reminding me of the time.  Thanks to David for lending me your clients while you were away.  Thanks to Elliot for giving me work when times were quiet, and for looking after several of my clients when I started closing down.  Thanks to antoniojl for selling me the G5 Mac that’s been so useful the last few years.  Thanks to Phill for the opportunity to collaborate with you on a revolutionary idea.  And thanks to God for leading me down this path, for reminding me at regular intervals that I was still on the right track, for providing for me in so many different ways, and for showing me clearly when the time was right to move on.

Will I offer my services again in a freelance capacity?  Possibly.  I can’t rule it out.  But, that said, one of the lessons I learnt very early on (and had to either ignore or find ways round) was that I’m not a natural businessman.  I hate invoicing people, I find it hard to charge a realistic price for my talent, and I still don’t understand all the jargon of the Self Assessment Tax Return form.  For now, God has led me somewhere new and I’m really enjoying it, so I won’t be hurrying back to being my own boss.  But if you do have questions for me, feel free to ask, and if I get a free moment between family and church commitments I’ll try to answer!

So, for now, it’s adios, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, aloha, arrivederci, hagoonea’, tot ziens, and a fond farewell to all my old clients, colleagues, and various previously-important icons on my desktop.

Today was my first proper day out with Samuel.  Without Ellie.  Yes, I was let loose with our 15 month old son, equipped with little more than a changing bag and a packed lunch.  And it was lots of fun!

We first had to call in at Matalan in Yeovil to exchange a shirt that I’d bought on Saturday for one that wasn’t 2 sizes too big (my bad).  Samuel slept in the car on the way there, and pointed out imaginary cows most of the way back.  But finally we arrived at our exciting destination – the East Somerset Steam Railway!  Despite being just outside Shepton Mallet, we’ve never actually been there before, but now Samuel is old enough to appreciate it I decided it would be a good use of a bank holiday.

This weekend happened to be a Thomas the Tank Engine special, so the place was packed.  They had three small steam engines fired up, each with a different face on the front, and one of them was even painted to look like Thomas – and unlike some other attempts I’ve seen, this particular model of engine did actually roughly resemble the Thomas of the books!  This was Samuel’s first encounter with steam engines, so I deliberately took it nice and gently.  He wasn’t too keen on being in the carriage to begin with, but he soon settled in and started pointing at things out of the window.  We shared our compartment with an old couple, who seemed to love having Samuel’s attention.

The track is actually only 2.5 miles long, so the journey there and back only took about half an hour.  But that was ideal for Samuel.  We were sat in the rearmost carriage on the way out, but that meant we were at the front going back, so we could hear all the chuffs and whooshes.  And of course it smelt heavenly.  It was wonderful.  I think Samuel may have enjoyed it too, although I was perfectly happy being excited for both of us.

After the train ride we popped back to the car to pick up our lunch, then went back to the station, saw off the next train (Samuel was by now getting the hang of saying “choo-choo”, which was very cute), and found a picnic bench.  We timed it well, because the train came back into the station just as we finished our lunch, so we waved at it again.  Then we wandered round to the engine shed, where there were various engines and wagons in varying states of repair.  There was also a little tank engine on a short bit of track that members of the public could drive – advertised as a “Driver for a Fiver” experience.  Sadly, having Samuel with me meant I couldn’t take up that offer, although to be honest it was such a small stretch of track it would hardly have been worth it anyway.

And after all that, Samuel was exhausted, so we came home.  As it happens, I’m shattered too.  But it’s been a fun day out, full of new experiences for Samuel, meeting shiny old steam engines.

Some time ago, as some of my faithful readers will know, I got a new job.  That meant getting rid of… I mean, encouraging my old clients to go elsewhere for their services.  Getting everyone’s web hosting moved to new providers was a bit of a challenge, and understandably there were some people who were none too pleased at having to move at all, and others who didn’t have the first idea what might be involved.  So I’ve helped as much as I can, given that I’m no longer actually working from home.

So the time is nearly upon me where all my clients will be migrated, and all that’s left is my own sites.  At that point, I’ll need to move my own sites to a new host too, as I can’t afford the reseller package I’d been using.  An upshot of that is that I can’t really afford to be running lots of personal sites for free, as I used to through my business.  What’s needed is a careful rationalisation of my online presence, to ensure continuity and sustainability.

So here’s what’s going to happen.  ChapterNine (www.chapternine.co.uk) will cease to exist, although I’ll keep the domain for now and just forward that on to another page on another website.  Minipix (www.minipix.co.uk) will also be shut down, again with the domain forwarding on elsewhere.  Now, before you all get cross and up in arms and worried that I’m shutting down my blog, I must stress that I have no intention of stopping blogging, nor of losing the last 10 years’ worth of personal history.  What’s actually going to happen is that my blog will be moved to www.matthewdawkins.co.uk, which will no longer serve as a business website but will be my personal website instead.  So everything you see here on minipix.co.uk will soon appear on matthewdawkins.co.uk instead.  Some of the stuff on ChapterNine will appear there too, as will some of the material currently on matthewdawkins.co.uk.  It’s all a bit confusing, but it’ll make sense once it’s done – basically it’ll all be in one place instead of on three separate sites.

I’m still in the process of building the new site (I’m a web designer after all, I can’t just move it and have done with it, I’ve got design myself a completely new theme to go with it!), but I’m hoping it’ll be sorted out at some point this month.  And, as I’ve said, I’ll keep the old domain names now, so all your old bookmarks and links should continue to work.  It’ll just all appear in one shiny new website over on matthewdawkins.co.uk.