I know it’s Easter Sunday, and I really am excited and thrilled to know that Jesus rose from the dead, but there’s more – Neddy lives too!  It’s clearly the day for resurrections.  After several months of being garaged, my lovely Mini is now back on the road, healthy and alive and really loving it!

I was actually hoping to sell Neddy way back in November, when we bought our Ford Escort Ghia X, which was intended to replace our little Mini.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find a buyer at the time, what with the credit crunch driving car prices down, so Neddy sat almost completely forgotten in the garage, not seeing the light of day or feeling the tarmac under his tyres.  I did make sure the car was MOTed before Christmas, but due to lack of buyers I opted to SORN the car rather than renewing the tax disc, with the intention of getting the ball rolling again in the spring, by which time hopefully the car market would have improved.

A few weeks ago I got the insurance sorted, got the car taxed again, and had every intention of getting the car back on the road.  Unfortunately I just never got round to it, what with everything else getting in the way, so Neddy stayed in the garage.  Yesterday afternoon I decided enough was enough and I just had to get Neddy up and running again, hopefully so that he can be sold before we move.  I pushed the car out of the garage and tried starting it up – not a sausage.  A trip out to Halfords equipped me with some jump leads and a battery charger, so I connected the Mini to the Escort and tried to jump start it – again, no joy.  The starter motor kicked in and turned the engine over, but it refused to do much more than that.  It spluttered and gave very faint signs of trying to start, but nothing more.  Not good.  In addition, I noticed a small waft of white smoke coming from the engine bay, so stopped what I was doing fairly sharpish.

On further inspection the cause of the smoke appeared to be a wire connected to the fuel inertia cut-off switch (which stops the engine in the event of a crash).  I touched the wire and it literally fell apart.  No wonder the engine wasn’t keen to start.  The insulation around the wire had worn through, by the looks of it through years of rubbing against a nearby bit of plastic in the engine bay, and the wire inside had rusted through.  That left the Mini stranded outside the garage, with no clear way of getting it back in (it’s on a slight hill, so pushing it was out of the question).

This afternoon I went back with a little more time and significantly more determination, and set about putting right as much as I could.  The wires leading to the switch were my first concern.  The wires are actually connected to a plug in the bottom of the switch, so I was able to unplug that end and a gentle tug snapped the other wire too, which apparently was in almost the same condition.  A little poking around showed that the wires had rusted along inside the insulation, which means there’s no way of stripping the wires and reconnecting them – the plug can’t be taken apart, so I’m going to have to order a new one.  In the meantime I’ve simply connected the two wire ends together, bypassing the switch altogether.

While I was at it I fitted the recharged battery, and tried to resolve an issue I’d had before with the negative battery lead not doing up tight enough and popping off the battery terminal.  I eventually got the bolt undone and pinched the ring with a pair of pliers to make the whole thing a tighter fit, and (after accidentally putting the battery in the wrong way round first time and causing a brief spark – oops!) put it all back together without complaint.

So that just left trying to start the engine again.  If it still didn’t work my next stop would be to check the spark plugs.  But I turned the key, and after a little persuasion the engine lumpily kicked into life, stuttering badly to begin with but levelling out after a minute or two.  That’s to be expected after a long time of rest, so I wasn’t concerned too much about that.  What joy!  Neddy was running again, and my face was beaming!  I was standing in front of it, looking lovingly into the engine bay, talking to Neddy again just like I used to.

Of course, that necessitated a quick drive, so I shoved all my tools back in the garage, shut everything up, and got in the driver’s seat.  The gear stick felt very foreign to begin with, and the clutch and brake pedals felt very odd indeed, but I soon got the hang of it again – it all came flooding back with pungent familiarity.  I took it easy to begin with, driving slowly round the block, teasing the brakes back into life and letting the engine slowly work its way up to normal running temperature.  Then it was onto some main roads, trundling along at 30 with an enormous smile on my face and the window down so I could hear that lovely exhaust.  The main road turned into a country back road, and with the national speed limit came the familiar temptation to open the engine up and give it some welly!  Neddy bounced happily along the road, clearly enjoying being back where he belonged.  Back on a main road towards home we met up with a tractor which, at the next available clear straight, presented a nice opportunity for letting loose with the go-juice and doing a little overtaking.  Oh the thrills!

The steering actually felt quite heavy after the power steering in the Escort, and the driving position wasn’t exactly perfect either – it’s the case in all Minis, and something we very easily forgive, but the steering wheel is actually off to the left slightly, as are the pedals, which means sitting at an odd angle to drive.  Still, it was enormous fun, and brought back many happy memories.  The sharp steering, the bumpy ride, the throbbing exhaust, the slight unevenness of the braking, the diddy little windscreen wipers and the pathetic window washer pressure, the amazing ability to stick to the road, the thrill of doing 60 and it feeling like 80.  Love it!

The only fly in the ointment really is that now I have to sell my lovely little car.  I had delayed putting the adverts up because I wanted to make sure the car actually worked, otherwise I’d have a hard time trying to sell it at all, but now it’s back on the road it means I really ought to be advertising it again in earnest.  I shall have to do some research to find out what the going rate is at the moment – before the economic slow-down I would have expected to get around £2200, but I reckon it may be worth nearer £1400 now.  I’ll have to see.  And of course if I can’t sell it before we move I’ll have to drive it to the Westcountry and sell it there instead.  Unless of course I can persuade Ellie to let me keep it for the weekends…

Unfortunately, having a Ford Escort as well now as my daily runner, the Mini has been left neglected in the garage.  Now, normally this would be a good thing; the garage is dry and safe, so in that sense it’s the best place for it.  What I forgot to do was disconnect the battery.  As a result, the month and a half it’s been sat stationary has drained the battery almost to its limits, the consequence being that the car won’t start.  Ordinarily, not the end of the world.  But it was supposed to be going in for its MOT today, so that’s had to be postponed until I can get the car running again.

Thankfully the garage round the corner has been very helpful, and has offered to charge the battery overnight to give it a full dose of energy.  They’ll then be able to test it to make sure it’s still working, and if it is I’ll be able to pop it back in the Mini and get it MOTed tomorrow.  If the battery is dead, I can always pop into town and buy a new battery, and still get the car MOTed tomorrow.  So it’s not the end of the world.

It’s just rather frustrating that my own negligence caused the problem in the first place.  I have to admit, I had just sort of forgotten that I had a Mini in the garage.  I did manage to get the car started briefly yesterday by bump-starting it, and had a quick drive around to make sure everything else was still working.  At first the brakes were stuck on a bit, but they soon loosened up.  What surprised me most was how fun it was – I had forgotten just how much like a go-kart the Mini is!  Of course I’ve always known this, but having been driving a ‘normal’ car for the last month and a half I had got used to its refinement and quietness.  Neddy roared and bumped along the road, loving being out on the road again.  It certainly brought a smile to my face!  And a gut-wrenching shame in putting the car up for sale.

There is a ray of hope though for Neddy’s future.  I did have someone get in touch with me the other day enquiring about the Mini, so they should be coming round on Sunday to have a look.  I’m just hoping it will have passed the MOT by then so it’ll be road-worthy, because I’m going to struggle to sell the car if they can’t take it for a test drive!

In other car news, I have also discovered a problem with the Escort.  Actually, to tell the truth, I discovered the problem a while back, but only today found the cause.  I noticed soon after buying the car that it was low on power steering fluid, so topped it up.  I did note at the time that there appeared to be some leakage around the reservoir, but couldn’t see where the leak might be.  Today I found it.  There is a pipe plugged into the top of the reservoir which, I presume, is for bringing the fluid back to the reservoir after it’s been round the system.  The clip holding the rubber pipe on clearly isn’t quite tight enough to make a good seal, and it’s leaking ever so slightly from there.  It’s not a massive problem, as it’s not exactly spurting out all over the place, but I don’t really want to be topping the fluid up every month if I can help it.  So I just need to replace the clip with something a little more adequate, and hopefully that will put that problem to rest.

I suppose it all just goes to show, all cars have problems, not just the old ones.

Odd, then, that I should be even considering letting that car go.

Unfortunately, that’s the way life is at the moment.  Minis are great fun, and I can’t think of a car better suited to me, but in all honesty they’re not the most practical of vehicles.  For just me, it’s fine, but my wife wants to learn to drive, we want to have kids, and there just isn’t enough room in a Mini for all that.  I wouldn’t want Ellie learning to drive in a Mini, not because I’m afraid of her breaking anything, but more because I’m afraid of it breaking her – Minis don’t have crumple zones.  The inevitable upshot of that looming eventuality is that Neddy will need to go.

So I’ve been looking into what other potential cars we could buy.  We don’t want a small car, because that’s not really going to be a huge improvement over the Mini.  We don’t need anything bigger than a small estate car because we just can’t justify it at the moment.  There is certainly no need for a 4×4 or a people carrier, and as much fun as it would be to have a sports car we can’t afford it and we could probably get more shopping in the Mini.  So, we’re looking at a medium-sized family saloon, nothing special, nothing expensive, just something cheap and cheerful to satisfy all our needs.  Incidentally, this also means satisfying my undying need to have a little fun every now and then – not breaking the law, and not taking unnecessary risks all the time, I just enjoy having the option of throwing the car into a corner every now and then.

It would appear, then, that the ideal solution is a Ford Escort.  They’re cheap to buy (I’ve found decent ones for sale for around £1000), cheap to maintain (every good mechanic knows how to fix a Ford Escort), reliable, spacious enough for a small family, cheap to insure, and relatively safe.  Sure, it’s not the best car on the market, not by a long way, but for our needs it’s probably our best option.  And I trust Ford with this sort of car – I had a Fiesta as my first car, and while it wasn’t anything special, it was a good little car.

What’s surprised me most, however, is the insurance.  I’ve played around with a few insurance web sites and got a few quotes, and discovered to my relief that insuring Ellie to learn to drive isn’t going to be as expensive as we’d thought.  Because I’ve been driving for a while and built up a good no-claims bonus that puts me in good stead, and apparently the fact that we’re married also gives us additional benefits – which is the first time I’ve come across an industry that actually likes the fact that we’re married.

So, given that I can almost definitely sell Neddy for a lot more than I bought him for, we’ll have more than enough left over to pay for a second-hand Escort, cover the insurance, and pay for Ellie to have driving lessons.  That’s not bad going.  It will be sad to say good bye to my beloved little car, but thankfully none of this is actually going to happen just yet – I’ll almost certainly have the Mini at least until the end of the show season!

And it was on this day that I went with Colchester Mini Club to the Manningtree High School Classic Vehicle Show.  Not restricted to just Minis, there were cars of all sorts in attendance, all (or at least most) shined up and tidied to be on show.  Photos of the event are in my new Picasa album.

Vintage Classics

There were the traditional classics – Wolseleys, a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, a lovely Bentley.  Old cars with narrow wheels and wooden brakes, with about as much horse power as… well, a couple of horses really.  These cars show us something of the origins of the motor car, how form followed function and unnecessary styling was mostly left out.  The technical simplicity (relative to today’s modern engines) is punctuated by the sublime beauty of the hand-crafted design, a remnant of the sort of creative engineering that characterised the Victorian era and the industrial revolution.  A glimpse of an old Rolls Royce engine shows it to be full of shining metal, carefully and artistically arranged to produce the desired result – a six cylinder engine made up of two cylinder blocks, each cylinder having two spark plugs.  It was amazing.  Awe-inspiring.  And I’m glad technology has moved on.

Mid-classics

That brings me to the next era of classic cars – the Jaguar E-type, Ford Cortina mk1, Morris Minor, MG Midget, Ford Consul, and of course the Mini.  These cars are not all brilliant, in fact some are downright aweful, yet they reflect the state of society at that time.  Cars were no longer for the rich and famous, but were for everyone.  Your average family could have a car.  And they did.  Function had to work its way around form, engineers having to work double-time to work out how to make the car work despite the crazy ideas the designers were passing them, all striving for cars that looked stylish and modern.

Modern classics

Finally, there is another class of classic cars, and one that in many ways is controvercial by its mere existence – the modern classics.  The Ford Capri of the 80s only just makes it into this category, being somewhat old now, alongside such cars from the 90s and 00s as the Honda Civic, Ford Sierra Cosworth, Cheverolet Corvette, Ford Mustangs.  There is no doubt that some of these cars are fantastic cars, groundbreaking, historic, gorgeous, technologically astounding.  But are they really classics?  A ‘normal’ Sierra would be more likely classed as ‘old’ rather than ‘classic’, surely?  Then again, maybe it’s the Cosworth name that gives it a reputation that is more deserving of recognition.  The same could be said for various sports cars, each with a heritage and history to back up their place in history.  These are modern classics.  The Honda Civic, as good as it is, arguably isn’t a classic.  Yet.

The Americans

Also in attendance at the show were a good selection of American cars, including several Mustangs, a couple of Corvettes, some Cobras, a Hudson pickup in need of some TLC, and a totally tricked-out Dodge pickup that had hydraulic suspension so extreme that it could sit its bodywork flat on the ground.  There is no doubting the sheer power and presence of some of these cars, exuding an American atmosphere, but in some ways they do seem somewhat out of place here on our winding country roads and miniscule car parks.  I really felt sorry for the owner of one particular car, which was so unbelieveably long that it should really have needed a ‘long vehicle’ sticker on the back – imagine trying to drive that round town, let alone trying to find a parking space for it.  They are classic cars, no doubt, but they belong in their home country where there is actually room for them.

Best of show

The winner of the ‘Best of Show’ competition turned out to be a heavily modified Ford Mustang – not an old 70s ‘Bullitt’ model, but a car that couldn’t have been more than a decade old, and looked like it had been painted last week.  It was pimped to the max, with a massive ICE install, NOS, and doors that opened upwards instead of outwards.  Very nice, and I’m sure a lot of money and effort had gone into its preparation and modification.  On the other hand, I suspect there were many hard-core classic car owners who resented the fact that a modern car won overall instead of a car that actually had a few miles on the clock.

What makes a Mini?

This brings me neatly to a conversation I was having recently about what makes the Mini so special.  It is, after all, a car that wasn’t designed to be anything more than a little runabout, practical and efficient, and in that sense much the same as any other car in production.  The New Mini, developed by BMW, is a modern take on the classic, but hasn’t seen anywhere near the same level of enthusiasm as the original.  The failing of the New Mini is that its designers only took one aspect of the original’s brilliance and replicated that – there is no doubt that BMW know what they’re doing when it comes to performance and engineering precision.  They are German, after all.  But there are several critical components of the classic Mini that are absent, and those will always mark the Mini apart from the crowd.

When the Mini first hit the roads it was revolutionary.  It was the first car to have a transversely mounted engine, saving space and giving more room inside.  In fact the Mini was quite spacious relative to the other cars of the time, and still has more room in the back seats than a New Mini.  But I think what makes the Mini an enduring marvel is that it was never finished.  By that I mean the standard production car never crammed in everything you could possibly want, even at the end of its run in the late 90s.  Sure, there were many technical improvements over the years to both the engine and the interior, eventually adding such luxuries as a multi-point injection engine that didn’t suffer from the rain, a CD player built into a proper dashboard, air bags, nice interior trim.  But there were never any cup holders.  No Minis were ever fitted with air conditioning.  Or a clock.  And most didn’t even have a rev counter.  Any way you look at it, by the time you got hold of your Mini there were already a whole load of extras you really need to add to the car to make it more complete.  And that is the genius of the car’s continual success – owners can add what they like to make it more complete in their own eyes.

Compare that with the New Mini.  The New Mini has pretty much everything you need.  You’re not expected to need anything else.  It’s good as it is.  If it’s not good enough, but something else.  With a classic Mini, if it’s not quite what you want, you can modify it to suit your needs.  Add a CD player if you like.  Add a bodykit if you’re that way inclined.  Put another engine in if you really need more power.  Bolt chromed accessories on if you want to.

The mindset is also quite different to that of other car owners who modify their cars.  Most of the time if there is any modification going on it’s to add a massive stereo system or a monstrous bodykit.  It seems the only way to modify a modern car is to pimp it up, make it into a chavmobile and race people at the traffic lights.  Minis, on the other hand, can take a considerable amount of modifying without going anywhere near the boy-racer style.  And that, ultimately, is what attracts such a diverse group of people to the Mini – we can all appreciate it and make it our own, regardless of what we actually aspire to.

This afternoon I took the opportunity to put work on hold briefly while I went outside and mowed the lawn.  It has needed doing for a while now, and I’ve been putting it off, but today I figured I ought to take advantage of the sunshine and get out there while I can.  Looking at the forecast, the weekend isn’t going to be too promising.  The lawn actually needs treating at some point, as one half of it looks to be more moss than grass.  We’ve got some moss-killer, it’s just a case of spraying it on and letting it do its job.  I didn’t get round to that today, but I did cut the grass and do the edges, so the garden is looking nice now.  I also noticed that the peas in our vegetable patch are beginning to grow too!  We’ve got carrots and parsnips in there too, but I only planted them last week so it’s no surprise they’re not topside yet.

This weekend is going to be pretty busy too.  Saturday I’m off to a friend’s stag do, which promises to be lots of fun, if somewhat energetic… I’m not giving any details, just in case the person in question doesn’t know about it all yet.  In fact, part 2 of the stag do is on the Sunday, so it’ll be a hefty weekend of fun and frolics, and a fair amount of driving too.

Also on Sunday I’m skipping church.  Doesn’t happen often, but occasionally I take a day off to go to a Mini event, pretty much all of which tend to be on Sundays.  This weekend it’s the Manningtree High School Vehicle Show, and Colchester Mini Club will have a stand there with several of our Minis on display, mine included.  Which means at some point I really ought to clean the car.  I’ve also got a couple of electrical items to install eventually, now that I’ve got all the required bits and pieces for it: I’ve got a rear brake light to go in the back window, some LED side repeaters, a cigarette lighter socket, and all the necessary wires and connectors for installing it.  All good fun.  But since I’m going to be out all Saturday I’m not sure I’ll have time to install them before the show.  Never mind.  It’s not a particularly big show, and apparently it’s going to rain anyway.  Ah well, there’s always next time.

On the computer front, I’m now testing out Firefox 3 beta 5.  It’s not quite finished yet, and isn’t even a Release Candidate, but it’s interesting seeing where they’re going with it and what improvements they’ve made.  For a start, it’s much quicker than FF2 was on the Mac, and significantly faster than previous betas too, which is good.  Speed and responsiveness was one of the main reasons I stopped using Firefox on the Mac in the first place and switched to Camino.  There are still some bugs to iron out before it goes live (I’ve seen some problems handling frames), but the big thing I don’t like at the moment is that it won’t work with UNO.  For those of you who don’t know, UNO is a cool little extra that straps itself (harmlessly) into Mac OS X Tiger and allows you to unify the messy interface, getting rid of the brushed metal windows and allowing me to make everything look consistent.  Unfortunately, FF3 seems to break UNO – it’s not dangerous or particularly problematic, just an annoying visual thing.  Basically, UNO is supposed to unify – join together – the top part of the window and the menu bar underneath.  As standard FF3 does this anyway, which is nice, but as soon as UNO is working, regardless of whether it’s actually supposed to be doing anything with Firefox, that unity is lost.  Curious.  Without UNO, FF3 displays unified, but nothing else does.  With UNO, everything displays unified except FF3.  Grrr.  As I say, not a huge problem, just a niggling frustration, but one I’m hoping will be sorted by the time FF3 is released properly.

Finally, on to this blog.  Astute blog readers will notice that I’ve changed the theme back to the way it was last week.  Sorry.  It just got to the stage where I was annoyed by enough of the new design to warrant just reverting back to the previous design.  I’m working on ideas for a refreshed theme, which I’ll be designing myself (rather than picking an off-the-shelf theme), and you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve found a way of testing themes without the general public seeing them, which should allow me to develop it and test it before actually letting it loose on you lot and letting you pick holes in it.  So, again, apologies for messing you around with visual styles, but hopefully the end result will be better.

Right, after all that, I need another cup of tea.  And maybe I’ll see if I can persuade the gerbils out – Ellie’s much better at it than I am, but she’s at work and the girls need the exercise.  Time to show the little furballs who’s boss…

So, first of all, a general introduction.  Many things have happened since my last blog post, including (but not exclusively): two trips to theatres, some significant developments on the business front, a somewhat extended birthday, Neddy going to the garage a couple of times, a couple of additions to the Dawkins household, an above-average number of requests to lead worship, and a general realisation that Ellie and I are taking over our church.  That’s quite a lot to write about.  I’ll try to keep some of it brief.  Just to demonstrate that, you’ll notice the lack of information in the spaces between words.  Every little helps.

Glass Menagerie

This is a show Ellie has been working on in Ipswich, which finished last week.  She managed to get a couple of tickets for the penultimate show, and I quite enjoyed it.  A little random in places, but that’s all good and familiar.  Some fairly convincing American accents, plenty of imagery, clever lighting, and rather eerie music.  Not much to report really, but it was a good evening out.  Ellie and I joined the cast and crew afterwards for drinks, so that was a good opportunity to meet people and put faces to names.  And if I was lucky I got the right name with the right face.

Keeping busy with business

A couple of Saturdays ago I met up with a group of Christians in Colchester working in internet business, whether that be hosting, web design, SEO or general management.  It was a good meeting, lots was discussed, and it looks like I’ll be getting a little more work out of it.  One of the other guys is trying to get rid of all his clients (in the nicest possible way), and it looks likely that he’ll pass them on to me to look after.  Not a lot of work involved really, just annual billing for hosting and the occasional request for updates.

The major development, though, is a business link I’ve made with another web design company based in Hornchurch.  It’s run by a Christian chap, and his company deals mainly with high-flying businesses, so quite a different clientele to me.  He’s been rushed off his feet recently, and is really looking to find someone he can employ full-time.  Clearly I can’t give up my current commitments to my existing clients, so that wasn’t really something I could consider, but he’s now outsourcing to me and passing a fair amount of work my way.  It’s nice to have some variation in my work, and doing business web sites involves a very different approach – whereas churches spend forever thinking about things and passing everything through PCCs and committees and suchlike, businesses want it all done yesterday and are prepared to pay for the privilege.  It’s been quite exciting, and I’ve been doing a fair amount of PHP as a result.  All good stuff.  And it pays well too.

I’ve got a brand new combine harvester

Sadly I never did manage to find that song on the internet for free.  Ah well, never mind.  I had plenty of other folk music to satisfy my taste and provide a background ambience to my birthday party.  Yes, for those of you who didn’t hear (and therefore weren’t invited – sorry), my 25th birthday was celebrated this year with a fancy dress party (no surprise there) on the theme of ‘farmers and country folk’.  It was a good laugh, with people dressed up in chequered shirts and flat caps, eating home-made cakes (courtesy of my lovely wife) and kettle chips, drinking tea and cloudy lemonade (not at the same time), with Devonshire folk music in the background and a dog curled up in front of a roaring fire.  Yes, you read that right.  It was cheating a little, perhaps, in that the dog was a toy and the roaring fire was a screensaver on my computer, but the effect worked well.  Photos are up on Facebook.

Present-wise, the highlight was most definitely the radio-controlled Mini I got from three of my friends who clubbed together.  So much fun!!  I’ve driven it round the lounge more than a few times already, and had fun doing handbrake turns and powerslides and all sorts of things you’re not really supposed to be doing with radio controlled cars.  I also got some chocolate and another guitar strap.  Ellie’s present to me didn’t arrive in the post though, so I had to wait for that.

Gee up, Neddy

Neddy, my Mini Sidewalk, has been feeling considerably under the weather just of late.  Acceleration has been rather sluggish and uneven, he’s been leaking oil, and the fan belt has been slipping very conspicuously.  I had every intention of getting the work done myself, as none of it is particularly difficult.  But, as the lateness of this blog entry testifies to, I just never got round to it.  In the end I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to pay someone else to do it for me, and ended up taking my Mini to Wivenhoe Garage.  Last week they replaced the top engine steady bushes, replaced the oil and filter, and fitted a new rocker cover and gasket (which should stop the oil leak).  Yesterday Neddy went in for stage two, which involved replacing the alternator (bearings were gone, and it turned out to be cheaper to buy a new one than get the bearings replaced) and flushing the coolant.  Neddy is also lined up to be given a closer inspection by a tuning garage next week, which will involve interrogating the ECU to find out just how happy it is, and may involve putting it on a rolling road to get it properly set up – the new alternator has certainly helped a lot, but I’m fairly sure more power can be eked from the 1275cc block yet.

Diamond and Pearl

No, we haven’t been splashing out on fancy jewellery.  Ellie and I went to a pet shop on Saturday to buy some bird food, and ended up going back on Monday to buy some gerbils.  A little spontaneous, perhaps, but definitely worth it.  Expensive too, given that we had to buy everything in one go, but they’re apparently very cheap to keep after that.  We’ve got a fantastic cage, with a plastic bottom which gives them plenty of room to dig around in the bottom without sending sawdust flying out into the lounge, and a barred cage on top giving them two further levels to explore.  They’re so much fun!  And very cute, too.  I really must take some photos of the girls soon.  They’ve settled in really well already, and we’re beginning to introduce our hands to them and encouraging them out so they can play.  All good fun.

I have not forgotten you

Leading worship is one of my many passions, as my friends and family will know.  I’ve been a keen musician for years, and it’s been a natural progression from there to leading worship.  I led worship at the CU, I led worship at the Anglican Chaplaincy, I led worship at Orchard Baptist Church.  Pretty much everywhere I went, that was my focus, my responsibility, my blessing to the Body of Christ.  Until I came to St Margaret’s, that is.  Apparently they have a policy of not letting anyone ‘new’ lead worship, at least until they’ve been observed and checked out for at least a year.  It’s been over six months now, and I was beginning to think that maybe God didn’t want me leading worship any more.  Then, within about a week, I had two requests to lead worship.  One was a Christian event organised by a friend from the CYFA camp Ellie I go to in the summer, which sadly I was unable to agree to since the event fell on the same weekend as my birthday.  The second I did agree to, though, and that was leading a short worship slot for the Lent Course on Tuesday evening.  It was only 10 minutes or so, so only three songs, but it was still the first time I had led worship at the church, and despite what Christians generally say I’m pretty sure they were all judging me.  The response was good though, which is reassuring – I’ve been learning to lean on God a lot recently, and it was so wonderful to be given the chance to serve again.  So it sounds like they might ask me to lead again.  God apparently does still want me leading worship after all.  So much for the year of waiting!

The Great Dawkins Takeover Bid

In addition to being told that I wouldn’t be asked to lead worship for at least a year, when Ellie and I first started coming to St Margaret’s the vicar was quite insistent that we wouldn’t be asked to do anything in the church at all in the first year of our marriage, telling us to focus on our marriage first.  As we expected, and as I think our vicar is beginning to understand now too, that was never going to happen.  Ellie and I are both the sort of people who like to be active in the church community, always happy to be doing things.  Very soon after joining the congregation Ellie found herself leading one of the youth groups, and I quickly got myself into the worship band playing guitar and bass.  Ellie also does sidesman every now and then, and we’ve also done teas and coffees after the service.  Ellie has been asked to work the projector in a few weeks’ time, I’m down to MC an evening service next month, and both of us are on the rota to preach in the near future.  We’re not complaining, it’s what we love doing, but it just seems funny how little of the church is left for us to get involved in!  Not bad for being at the church for almost seven months.

Birthday part 2

Remember I said that Ellie’s present to me was delayed by the post?  Apparently that was a rouse.  The postal service wasn’t involved at all.  Ellie wasn’t going to work yesterday at all, despite what she’d said.  About lunchtime yesterday I got a text message informing me of the treasure trail she had planned, and told me where to find the first clue.  In the middle of a book in our bookcase I found the first clue and some instructions, and before I knew it I was hopping on a train to London with no idea where I was going or what I was going to do when I got there.  Once I got to London I followed a set of cryptic clues, sent by text message, which led me from one location to another on a route from Westminster tube station, along a whole load of roads I’ve never been down, through China Town, and eventually found my wife at the end of the trail, who took me round a corner and revealed my birthday present – there, a little way down the road, was the theatre showing Les Miserables.  It’s a show I’ve wanted to see for a while, and I really enjoyed it.  The treasure trail was superb though – a little random, but lots of fun.  I did feel a little conspicuous running through London looking all around for random objects, then stopping and texting on my phone, and then waiting for the next clue to come back before setting off again.  It was like being a secret agent, following some obscure set of clues.  Les Mis was superb – very sad, but very good.  Especially given the main part was being played by the understudy that night.  I won’t give the story away for those of you who haven’t seen it, but I would encourage you to go and see it if you’ve not already – some fantastic music, a very dense plot, some heart-rending moments, some funny bits, and quite a powerful resolution.

So thank you, Ellie, for a wonderful birthday present.  Suitably random.