Blood Brothers and The Natural History Museum

Just had a really enjoyable weekend. Instead of getting each other birthday presents Lisa and I had booked a deal on lastminute.com to go and see the musical 'Blood Brothers' and stay in a Holiday Inn near Hyde Park. Blood Brothers was absolutely brilliant and I'd highly recommend it to anyone. Very moving and funny at the same time throughout - and brilliantly performed by the cast (not that I'm any great drama / musical critic though!). Would definitely go and see it again. The story is based in Liverpool, and bits of the humour in it were quite scouse - and Lisa and I noticed part way through that there were a lot of foreign tourists around us who didn't seem to always pick it up, we were aware all of a sudden that we were laughing very loudly at certain points and no-one else around us was! Had some nice Tex-Mex food afterwards near Leicester Square.

Then on Saturday, because of where our hotel was we decided to take the chance to visit the Natural History Musuem:

This place is absolutely massive - you need a week to do it justice. I'd been hoping to nip into the Science Museum next door as well, but there was just too much! Will definitely have to pay a few more visits to those 2 museums before we head back up north. Very impressive - especially as they are free!

End of another year at Ridley...

Hard to believe that I've now completed 2 of my 3 years at Ridley - it's flying by! It has been a strange last couple of weeks watching many of my friends who were either already here when I started, or started at the same time as me but were only here for 2 years, packing up their things and moving on. When college starts again in late September out of the 70 ish full time students at that point only 8 of us will be there from when I started in Sept '05.

This last year at Ridley in many ways has been quite tough going as I've battled to complete the BTh degree - I certainly don't ever remember working as hard or intensely as I have done this year generally but particularly over the last couple of months. But at the same time it has been very rewarding, and I believe I've really grown and developed through it. God's been at work in me, and often I've not realised it at the time but when I get into reflective mode like this and look back it's often fairly obvious. My understanding of my own character and nature, who I am as a person, has really developed; my understanding of what I believe and confidence in that has grown. God's still got a lot to do with and in me - but at the same time it is good now and again to be able to look back and recognise what has already happened and how God has been working. It's in this whole area of recognising who I am and what I believe God is doing in and through me, and learning to be confident both in my faith and in the fact that God really is calling and using me, that I've got most reason to be thankful for my time here at Ridley so far (as well as for the many amazing people I have met).

Moving into a 3rd year with just a remnant of the people I started with is going to be interesting, but I've met many more great people this last year who will still be around and I look forward to meeting another group of people in September. It'll be good going into this next year feeling more settled than we have done so far - Lisa finally finding fulltime work that she really enjoys has helped with that. It's going to be a very different year workload wise - with no weekly supervision essays to prepare / write as I have no exams to prepare for (JOY!), meaning that I should have time to spend longer on and go more in depth into the things that I study and write about. But despite feeling more settled here we are also going to be getting excited about and preparing to move on elsewhere. These next couple of months will be interesting as we seek to come to an agreement with the Liverpool diocese and the appropriate vicars / parishes about where my curacy will be and what it will entail - prayer would be appreciated!

But before I have to think too much about my next year at Ridley or the curacy process I've got a nice long summer to enjoy!! These next few weeks are going to involve lots of sleeping, watching DVD's, some bike riding, and reading (stuff purely for enjoyment!) - though I guess there will no doubt be some housework and gardening to fit into all that. By the time Lisa's term finishes in 4 weeks or so I'll probably be bored and more than ready for our trips to New Wine and Ireland, but at the moment the thought of these coming 4 clear weeks is absolute bliss!

The lengths one would go to to get out of cleaning chapel...

As term draws to a close here at Ridley, those of us who are returning for another year here in September have the joy of joining in what are called community work days whereby we are put into small teams to help with tasks around the site that need to be done. These include such pleasures as painting, gardening, library stocktaking, clearing out the big college basement, and also giving the chapel a clearout and spring clean - polishing all the silverware and wood in there, clearing all the junk that has gathered in the vestry etc., which is what I was put on the team for. It was arranged that this would be done this morning. However I was looking forward to doing this sooooo much that I went to extreme lengths to get out of it - I conveniently managed to have our car broken into!!

Well, not quite true - the car was broken into (kind of) but I hadn't actually arranged it you'll be glad to know. In all seriousness this is becoming a pain in the backside - I posted a few months back about my parents car being broken into whilst parked outside our house (see here), and now it has happened to our car in the same spot. In fact this time 3 out of 4 households of us who live in a row all had our cars broken into (fortunately the fourth household - good friends of ours were away). Idiot here managed to get my bike out of the garage and cycle off passing 2 of the cars without even noticing, and it was only 20 minutes later as I was nearing college that I heard my mobile ringing in my bag as Lisa was calling to let me know what she had found when she came to get into the car to head for work. Fortunately Lisa was able to get a lift to work with another teacher, and I was able to get a lift home so that I didn't have to cycle the 5 miles straight home again. Reported it to the police - but this time they hadn't actually opened any of the doors and got into the car, they'd literally just smashed a little back quarterlight window on the driver side, so the police said to go ahead and get it sorted rather than waiting for a 'scene of the crime' officer. Like last time, maybe I'm stereotyping too easily, but it does seem to be bored youths rather than anything more malicious - but it is a pain, and hard to know what can be done to stop it happening again!

What did annoy me was the phonecall I made to our insurance company which I now regret making at all. Basically what I found out was that even though my policy is fully comprehensive I do have to pay £100 excess, and also I've paid an extra £50 to protect my no claims discount - but that only covers 1 claim per policy year! So if I claimed for this, but then had another incident that involved a claim before my next policy renewal date I would lose 2 years of my full no claims discount when I renew. It just seems such a scam to me! The upshot was that I have got it done without filing a claim, and it only cost £80 ish which I would have ended up paying even if I had claimed because of the excess. The fact that I called them will probably be noted on my file though - and knowing my luck will mean an increased renewal premium anyway!

Anyway, rant over for now...!

Degree mark...

To follow on from yesterdays post, I got the sheet with my exact breakdown of marks today. To replicate exactly what the bottom line of the sheet said:

Overall result = 2:1 (just!)

'Just!' - my feelings at the moment are who cares!! A 2:1 is a 2:1, I wasn't expecting it and I'm really chuffed - irrespective of how close a call it was!! It's been one of those occasions in my life where I've kind of hoped for something without really thinking it would happen and whereas most times I've been proved right and whatever I'd hoped for didn't happen, this has turned out to be 1 of the few times that trend has been bucked (funnily enough 1 of the other 'few' was my first degree, hmmm...maybe there's something I could learn from this!).

The individual breakdown of marks made for interesting reading - very surprised at some of the area's that came out better than others etc. The most disappointing thing was getting an embarrasingly low mark (my lowest mark of my two years here) in what has been both the best taught / supervised and my favourite course. But at the end of the day I didn't think I would get the 2:1, and after what has been a really hard slog, especially for the last couple of months, I'm really happy!!

Passed!

Found out today that I've passed my degree. I know I've got a 2nd class of some description - won't find out until tomorrow whether it's a 2:1 or 2:2 or my exact breakdown of marks. Watch this space...