Sat still

It feels like I haven't moved from this seat all weekend. I must have because I've managed to fit in going out to a Teppanyaki restaurant for Anthony's birthday last night, going to church this morning and joining Bek & Si in the Botanic Gardens for lunch after church and for a wander. Other than that though, I've not moved from my desk.

The reason is that I've been writing a talk. At St John's there's this monthly thing called the Gym. To quote the Facebook page "The Gym is by Young Adults and is for Young Adults. Each night there are two talks from the bible on a topic, supper, time for questions, and a great chance to chat with other christian YA's". It's called the Gym because "it's a spritual workout!" Well this time around, on October 2nd I've been asked to give one of the talks. Last weekend I did a whole load of prep on the passage (2 Corinthians 8 and 9 if you're interested - it's on providing generously) and this weekend I had to turn all those notes into a talk. My main issue is that that's two whole chapters. And my talk is meant to only be 15 minutes long. I've heard someone preach two whole forty minute sermons on those two passages. How am I meant to condense all that down to 15 minutes? Working out what to leave is quite tricky. At the moment I'm about 700 words over, I reckon. Will anyone mind a 20 minute talk instead of a 15 minute one do you think? I would be very grateful for prayer please. Both for my prep and for when I give the talk a week on Thursday. Much appreciated, thank you :)

So yeah, other than that, as I say, last night we joined Anthony in a Teppanyaki restaurant in town for his birthday. Just in case you don't know Teppanyaki is it's where you sit around a hot griddle thing and the chef cooks your food infront of you, together with all the showy entertaining bits, flairing his implements and spice shakers and chucking egg around and stuff. It's a whole cullinary-visual extravanganza. I've not been to one before so it was a great experience.

And then today after church Si & Bek and Joanne & I bought a nice fresh bagel to eat in the Botanic Gardens and then went for a wander. I do like that place. Every time I go it changes with the seasonal plants and flowers and stuff. The daffodils are fully out now and the tulips are just beginning to come out. There's colour pansies everywhere and in a few months the roses will be in full bloom. I'm not big on flowers and plants and stuff but they put so much effort and hard work in to the Botanic Gardens that it's hard not to enjoy what there is to see and enjoy as you wander through it all by the river.

Not just for the glory

On Saturday Joanne and I went my football club's end of season awards dinner. Well, I say dinner. In the end, when we left at 10 the aroma of savouries was just beginning to fill the air but by then we'd committed to finding something to eat elsewhere. But that's not why I'm telling you about the evening.

There was ten or thirteen or so senior teams that are part of our club (as well as innumerable kids teams) and so there were a good number of players and their partners present. The main part of the night was made up of each team's results being read out and then the awards being presented to each team's player of the year and players' player of the year. Then we got around to the golden boot awards for the top scorers of the season. There was one award for the women's teams, one for the men's upper grades and one for the men's lower grades. And it turns out that I'd won the last of these. My 17 goals this season was the most scored for our club by anyone else in the lower grades (whatever they comprise). Which was a nice surprise.

I went up and collected my trophy and medal and had my photo taken and everything. I had to then hand the trophy back (something to do with it being really difficult each year tracking them down from previous winners) but got to keep the medal. For my first season back playing competitive football for over 15 years I'm quite happy with how it all ended, especially since I'm not as fit as I could be. Pre-season training starts now.

My mum would be proud

Given the season has probably finished I came home tonight and cleaned my football boots. I guess what my mum told me growing up must have gone in. Too often as a kid I'd dig my boots out of the back of the cupboard in September, at the start of the season, and find it hard to tell when boot ended and where mould began.

Strike! - or not

We had quite the hectic weekend. It seemed quite non-stop to be honest so it was nice to have a sit down yesterday evening (for me at least - Joanne was out and had her rest time in the afternoon).

It started on Friday evening when we joined some of Joanne's workmates for dinner in La Porchetta before heading across the road to the cinema to watch Hellboy II (my review: big red; good special effects; not as good as the first one).

Saturday saw a big bowl of chocolate porridge for breakfast followed by football in the afternoon. Supposedly it was our last game of the season and was a bit of an anti-climax as we got beaten 3-1. We scored first as well but pretty much petered out after that. I say that it's supposedly our last game as we still have one of our eighteen games left to play that was washed out earlier in the year, but the season's officially ended so I'm unsure whether we'll get it organised. We might but then again we might not.

Assuming we don't play the make-up match it means we played 17 games in total (I missed two though) and I scored 17 goals. Not a bad return for a mid-table team (we finished 6th out of 10) given I've not played competitively for something like 15 years but I was kind of hoping to reach 20 for the season. Maybe next year, if I manage to get fit in the off-season.

In the evening on Saturday Joanne and I headed out into town for dinner. We went to the Bismarck, a German place with proper German food. Bratwuerste, fried potatoes with bacon and sauerkraut. Proper German.

After that we met up with a whole bunch of friends from church at the bowling alley. Another Kiwi first for me, we've not had any ten-pin action since moving over here. And it showed unfortunately. I broke 100 in both games, but failed to get over 120. A long time with little practice has passed since the times Joanne would go weekly on 'date-night' and I'd regularly score 150 plus and once even made it over the 200 mark.

Yesterday we had church in the morning as usual and then headed back home for lunch. It was a bit of triumph actually. I turned some of our wannabe-Lincolnshire sausages into pork patties and then served them with a poached egg atop each one and some sage and onion bread on the side. It was so good that Joanne had to have a kip for the rest of the afternoon to sleep it off. Joanne having a kip is always a sign that she's had a good meal ;)

While Joanne snoozed I spent the afternoon filling our shed. As part of the new garden we've had a shed put up and it's been there for weeks now, empty. We bought a shelf unit to go in to it a few weeks back too. It's been in it's box for weeks now. I finally decided to get around to it all so built the shelf-unit and then set about moving bikes, tools, ladders, chairs and buckets into the shed. The garage is quite empty now. Empty enough to be obvious that it needs a sweep, Joanne pointed out.

After all that physical exhaustion I spent the evening on my backside in front of the telly while Joanne went round to a friend's for a bit of flute and piano 'jamming'.

So there you have it, a taste of one of our fuller weekends. Next week should be quieter I think, other than my football club's end-of-season dinner and awards night on Saturday.

Not sure if I mentioned but I've got an MRI booked on my shoulder for Thursday. I finally, three months after injuring it, got referred to someone by the physio the other week. One appointment with a sports physican and he seemed to have a better idea of what was going on, thinks that it was actually disloacted after all and has referred me for the MRI to get right to the bottom of the issue. Just a shame it took three months to get to this stage though, eh?

Spring sprung

Monday marked the first day of spring, and to celebrate the sun came out. It got up to 19 degrees today so at lunchtime I took a walk around the Botanic Gardens. It was something I really enjoyed last year, getting away from the desk, getting some fresh air and stretching my legs.

There's a bit in the Botanic Gardens where they plant hundreds and hundreds of daffodils. The daffodil lawn they call it. Well, in keeping with the season they've started to come out. It's still early days and there's plenty more to come out yet but the early birds are jumping around waving their yellow heads in the air. And there are snow drops to keep them company until all their mates arrive.

I had to cut the walk shorter than I would have liked today. My ankle started playing up. I trod on someone's hand (accidentally!) playing football at the weekend and went over on it, twisting it or spraining it or something. I was going to stick a picture of it on here for you to see, but I decided against it, figuring that no-one would really want to see my purple, swollen ankle. I came to the conclusion that a shot across the Avon to the Daffodil Lawn would be generally more appealing.

Whizzing by

When things come around again that have happened before, that's when it reminds me how long we've been here. This morning I attended another men's breakfast at St Stephen's church in Shirley. Admittedly it was held in September last year but it's still the second annual men's breakfast I've been to.

This morning Cam was speaking on living as a Christian in the workplace - how the workplace is a place for evangelism, how evangelism is something we should be not something we should do, and how we should be prepared. A very challenging talk with some great tips to take away too. Why is it that when someone asks on a Monday "What did you do yesterday?" it's easier to say "Hmm, not much. How about you?" rather than "I went to church yesterday morning and heard a great talk about Jesus before having some friends from church back for lunch" or whatever?

Thinking earlier about being here for over a year and stuff got me thinking again to what we were doing this time last year and where we were with stuff. This Wednesday marked my one year anniversary of having this job (we went out for coffee and cake to celebrate) and tomorrow is the one year anniversary of getting the keys to our house before next weekend marks the one year anniversary of living here.

Things happening again reminds us of so much that has happened in the past year, but also of the things we're missing. This weekend, if we were still back in the UK we would be heading up north to Grimsby. It's my niece Ellie's birthday this weekend (Happy Birthday, Ellie!) and we always used to go home for it. And we're missing her 7th birthday now, after missing her 6th birthday too. Things like that make it hard to be here sometimes.

Sporting frustration and sickness

I didn't realise how frustrating it would be watching the Olympics over here. Great Britain are have a great Games. They're currently third in the medal table. Third! That's quite honestly an amazing achievement. But the frustrating part comes in the fact that unless there's Kiwi interest in an event there's limited coverage of it. I guess it's understandable, and is probably much the same in the UK, but it is very frustrating. We topped the rowing medal table, have won 4 out of 5 track cycling golds (and 8 out the 15 medals presented so far) and have won both the sailing golds presented to date but I've had to follow pretty much everything on the BBC Sport live text feed thing. I guess it's a downside to put up with every four years that comes with living on the other side of the world.

The weekend just gone was a bit rubbish. Last week was one of those when I didn't get home before ten any night (taking Jo's uncle out for dinner on Monday, Bible study group on Tuesday, standing in leading at CE on Wednesday and Joel's stag-do on Thursday) and slowly over the week I felt my health gradually on the slide. By Friday lunchtime I felt pretty terrible and so had to go home. I've been in bed (or crashed on the sofa) ever since. A sore throat that led to a rasping, chesty cough followed by a streaming nose and eyes and finally headaches and throbbing sinuses weren't much fun. I think I'm on the mend now and will probably be good for work tomorrow. Maybe. I lost my appetite and hardly ate anything at all over the weekend. I think that shows quite how ill I was. I did scrape myself out of bed on Saturday to go along to Joel and Liz's wedding though. It was great to be able to make it. I just hoping my wheezing and coughing weren't picked up by the video camera.