Aching bones

Don't make me laugh. To quote the Molenberg bread ad - "It hurts when I smile." All over. I had my gym induction yesterday and the trainer made me work. It felt fine at the time but it doesn't now. And it's getting worse. I hope it feels better tomorrow otherwise I'm not going to be much use for kayaking. Or for touch in the evening.

Why is it I sit here almost every Sunday evening and write about how busy we've been the past weekend? Tonight will be the same.

As I said, I had my gym induction yesterday morning and then the guy came to fit the shelves in the wardrobes. (And a great job he's done too.) While he was here Joanne and I loaded up the car with all the boxes and recyclable packing materials we had lying around. Once the wardrobe fella left we headed off to the refuse centre to dump that lot. The Santa Fe was full. Total fully of cardboard and paper. It seemed such a waste throwing it away but at least we could take it to be recycled. Then there was the weekend's obligatory trip to Briscoes followed by the supermarket, where the Saturday girl packing the bags was most bemused by my t-shirt.

Today we had another early start for the rugby final, followed by church, and then a picnic. The rugby was a little disappointing but I guess we have to focus on the fact that no-one expected England to do anything and some even predicted, after the 36-0 SA game that they'd fail to get out of their pool, but they ground out some dogged results beating Australia and France to reach the final. Which of course, is two rounds further than the ABs. I do wonder what the reaction has been like back home to reaching the final and stuff. I can't really remember the media coverage back in 2003 really, just the made Trafalgar Square stuff afterwards. I guess that won't happen now though. I do hope they get a heroes welcome home though. They deserve it for the fight they've shown to overcome all the odds and surpass everyone's expectations.

Church saw another great and challenging sermon by Wally from Deuteronomy. Today was the start of chapter 5 and the prelude to the Ten Commandments. And then the picnic. The guy who organises the touch rugby on a Monday night from church, Ailers, organised a picnic. It was a BYO thing but just an excuse to go and hang out together enjoying the sunshine (and it was gorgeous for most of the day.)

There were a few people at the picnic we knew, and a few faces I recognised from touch, and it was good to see Simon and Rebekah there and have chance to catch up with them. At one point though everyone was chatting and we were kind of left on our own a bit. It would have been easy at that point to get up and say our goodbyes briefly and slink off. But I was determined we wouldn't. We're not going to make friends by doing that sort of thing, so we sat it out, and a little later a few people came over and introduced themselves to us and we had a good chat. Making friends is a slow and hard process, but I guess we just have to put ourselves out there. It's be easier when we have a dining table and can invite people over for dinner, I reckon.

In church today, someone from the mission team stood up and gave us all a quick update. It turns out that one of the mission teams St John's supports is David Mann and his wife, the doctors at the hospital in Madagascar where Chris and Ros spent last summer. Small world, eh? I need to get around to emailing Chris to see how Oak Hill is going, so I'll make sure I mention it.