Sunday, July 29, 2007

Busy busy busy...

Just a quick post as I've hardly time to draw breath at the moment! Great but hectic few days. Got home from our weeks camping at New Wine at 11pm Friday night, out from 10am till after midnight yesterday at the Cambridge Folk Festival, spent today mowing lawn and sorting stuff out ready to re-pack and load the car to head off around 10-11ish tomorrow morning to Liverpool, Shropshire and eventually Holyhead and the Dublin ferry at 2.15pm Tuesday heading over to Ireland for 3 1/2 weeks!

New Wine was a really good week, with some really good teaching, great worship, and some 'interesting' stuff that was quite thought and discussion provoking (will try and discuss more at a later point but not time now!). It was really good having time to spend with a number of friends from our Liverpool church, enjoyed catching up with them, getting to know their various babies who have arrived since we moved down here, and some lively debates after meetings around our 'camping circle.' My godson Zak was there with his family. Love this photo of me and him:


The weather was variable to put it mildly, with the low point being a wild, wet and windy day on Thursday that I thought at 1 point would lead to us coming home early! It didn't quite come to that, but we did have to relocate our tent due to some minor flooding in our awning area. Would like to have a photo to show of it - but guess that wasn't my priority at the time! Glad we stayed though. Weather was great on Friday so it meant we were able to pack everything dry.

Then on Saturday Lisa and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary at the Cambridge Folk Festival with friends. Really good day out. Really diverse range of music. Highlights were Bellowhead, Sharon Shannon (Renegade), Shooglenifty and Four Men and a Dog. Probably the strangest thing we saw was a Romanian Gypsy brass orchestra called Fanfare Ciocarlia. Click here to see some footage. Photo below of 4 of Bellowhead's 11 members in action:

Definitely something I'm glad to have done while living down here.

Heading for Liverpool tomorrow to go and see the vicar who is responsible for trying to try and match me with the right curate's job for next June to talk about what he has in mind for Lisa and I next. Exciting but scary - any prayer would be much appreciated!

Then after spending the night at Pete and Lorraine's in Shropshire it's off to Holyhead for the Dublin ferry to spend 3 1/2 weeks in different parts of Ireland. Looking forward to some time with Lisa's family near Dublin, a wedding in Roscommon, some time with my family in West Cork, some time to ourselves travelling up the west coast through Kerry, Clare, Galway and Mayo with the tent, and of course drinking some Guinness, taking in some trad pub music sessions, and a round or 2 of golf! Hoping the weather is ok - their summer has been no better than England's so far! Internet access is likely to be sporadic, so this will probably be it for blogging until we get back.

1 comment:

Kristin Ross said...

Hi Simon, hope your meeting in Liverpool went ok yesterday. I look forward to catching up with you and Lisa down in Schull! Glorious sunshine today so we might be in luck!

We've now got broadband at Altar Cottages if ever you get stuck and miss blogging just that little bit too much!! hehe

See u soon