Tres, Tres Occupe

What a weekend. All go. This is me and my colleague Debbie at the British Transport Awards (or something) Never heard of them? No, me neither till we got a nomination. Didn't win but we got a trip to London, a lovely meal and then a photo with JEREMY VINE!! Actually very lovely man and a good after dinner speaker which is more than I can say for some under Secretary of Transport who also spoke and needs some lessons on how to work a room. (Am quite shocked at how short my hair is. You never imagine yourself to look the way you do in photos do you?)

Also we went to the flicks again.

This is completely fine. If you like Outnumbered then you will like this. There is a lot of kiddy improvisation going on which the adults handle very well.
Rosamund Pike is yummy. David Tennant is yummy. Billy Connolly looks slightly bemused yet yummy. Amelia Bullimore completely steals the whole thing with a fantastic YouTube video that had the cinema I was in shrieking with laughter.
Scotland is impossibly beautiful. It's really funny and I suspect nothing like Gone Girl will be which is Rosamund Pike's next big movie. Gone Girl is an 18 certificate. Nothing gets an 18 certificate these days. What on earth do you suppose is going on there? I shan't be troubling it I don't think.

Lastly, just a little thank you. A couple of posts ago I mentioned how much I was enjoying the Shardlake novels and that I wished I had bought them in paper form. Well a friend saw the post and has given me all his copies! How generous is that? So thanks very much David and (probably more relevant) thanks as well to your Mrs who is insisting on you decluttering a bit (well a lot)

Right, I am off to try Grantchester on catch up. Dunno anything about it. Will give it a go.

A New Venture

The weather is changing here in Devon, a bit misty in the mornings now and a bit chilly until the sun comes out. Probably about time, if only to kill off some of the alien size spiders that have taken up residence in our garden. I heard someone on the radio say that all the house spiders we see are male and that we would know if we saw a female, because apparently they are THREE TIMES THE SIZE OF A MALE SPIDER! How can that be possible? I have been out and given the garden spiders a strict talking to about the rules. "Stay out here and you live, Enter my house and I cannot be held responsible for the consequences - especially if you are thinking about bringing the lady wife with you." Time will tell if they take the wise course of action.

I am looking into starting a new group at church. It's a group for young adults. Too old for youth but not part of the student community - at least not yet. Most of the ideas are still forming in my head but I will get there. The idea is that they spend one night fortnightly at our house - your basic time honoured Bible Study vibe and then, on alternate weeks, go and do something social without me. This way, I get more recovery time from young people and they get time to build community without an old fart in tow. It's a win win I think you will find.

The only slightly jarring note so far is that someone suggested that I might like to think of a name for the group. You see I don't really hold with all this modern naming stuff - you know - ZOOM!, DYNAMIC! or THRUST! you get the idea. Or worse still things that are almost acronyms. IYBIHWC! (If You Build It He Will Come - in case you were wondering) At the moment, I am thinking of going with "Young Adults". I think it has a ring to it.

That's what my heart yearns for now...

...Love and Pride

Off to the pictures AGAIN...what are we like?? We went to see the film "Pride" as a sort of celebration of my brother's life. Four years on 25th September since he died. We thought it was a film he would have loved - there's a good disco bit! Anyway - we loved it too. It's about the 1985 Miners' Strike and a group of gay activists who decide to support them whether they want them to or not. There is a lot of mistrust on both sides but...well you can probably guess how it goes. It is quite formulaic but surprisingly moving. The music is great - especially the way Billy Bragg's Power in a Union is used. It came as a surprise to me that some of the people in the film were real people. You get the titles at the end to tell you what happened to them in real life. Again very moving - don't forget this was as AIDS was just emerging. We cried about four times for various reasons. I'm not I would watch it with a maiden aunt or The Rev Ian Paisley were he still with us. Oh and it's a really good laugh as well

Holy Mystery

This is my not particularly impressive photo of Wembury Church. It's a long way off and a lot of it is behind the greenery. I was a bit distracted by how far we had walked and the prospect of chips when we got home. It is a very purdee church - Norman most of it and it has a real sense of a community in it. People pay a lot of money to get married there and you can see why. Although, to tell you the truth, if the weather is a bit off, and it can be in Devon believe it or not, then you might be better served by having your wedding photos in a wind tunnel - the effect is more or less the same. Anyway, to walk in is to feel a sense of calm and if you pay attention, I think you can get a sense of God. I like a church me. I like old ones and new ones. I even like boxes built in the sixties. Actually, I especially like the boxy ones built in the sixties.

But (I realise that I just started a paragraph with BUT but I am trying to tell you something and I can't be bothered.) But, I read this in the Message in Luke. Jesus has just healed the Centurion's servant and raised a woman's son from the dead. They are outside, by the village gate near the funeral procession and the disciples realise something

They all realised that they were in a place of holy mystery, that God was at work among them.

They are not in church or temple. There are no visitations from Moses or Elijah or angels with fiery swords. Just them - with Jesus. And he is doing stuff. And they realise that this means that God is doing stuff. Maybe they mean that this time was a place of holy mystery. I don't know really. This signalled a change among them. And I thought that as I ask God and he moves in circumstances and I see God at work in ways that I cannot fathom, that I need to train my "Holy Mystery Detector" to see things for what they are. To not wait for meetings or for church.

The Bible said that this realisation made them

..quietly worshipful and then noisily grateful

I like this - a bit of respectful realisation of what they were dealing with followed by a bit of joy and gratitude. 

Sometimes there is so much trash happening in my life, a great deal of which (but not all) I create myself that I can miss that God is there, working, above and beyond the day to day. 

Culture to the Second

IMDB

To the pictures to see A Most Wanted Man. I LOVED this. It was subdued, slow and not afraid to go a full thirty minutes without people getting their entrails scattered abroad. It is a spy thriller in the old sense of the word with twists and turns and it is almost impossible to tell who, if anyone, is a goody. 
I know this is trite but Hoffman is a real loss to the cinema. He was just fantastic.

Reading the series by CJ Sansom about Shardlake - a hunchback lawyer who operated in London on the fringes of the court of Henry VIII. It is no Mantel and no Wilcock (the first one is set in a monastery) but really good murder mystery stuff going on here and really famous real people keep walking in and out of the thing. (Cromwell, Rich, Duke of Norfolk etc) At the moment am finishing one and galloping on to the next. This where Kindles don't really do it for me. When I first wanted to read one of these, I downloaded it for 99p on some sort of special deal. Now, three books in, I think I would rather actually own real paper copies, to keep but it seems a bit over the top to buy it twice. What to do...what to do...