Too busy to blog...

...but just popping on for a quick request for prayer please. I need mucho concentration and mucho determination just to WORK! I have been posting my progress through the competences on the side bar. I know have three to complete, an essay that was due Friday plus another essay which is due in the distant mists of time (end of May!). I may also have revisions to do on the folders I have handed in.

Thankyou for your prayers so far: I have come a long way. Not long now...

Shopping

I hate being me sometimes. Shopping is a fact of life but I have to make it so much more difficult for myself. Questions I have just been asking myself as I walked around Waitrose:

1. Is it organic?
2. Is it fairly traded?
3. Is it free range?
4. Is it locally produced?
5. Is it disproportionately packaged?
6. Is it from England?
7. Is it environmentally friendlier?
   

These questions are on top of the normal ones that are:

1. Is this healthy?
2. Will everyone eat this?
3. Can I afford it?
4. Is the sell by date long enough?
5. Do I have time to cook this?

I bought 28 items. It took a long time.

Small steps

I'm not going to blog much about Spring Harvest this year because I don't have time but I do like to evaluate what I did and what I learnt. By putting it here I become accountable and I don't mind you checking how things are going if you remember. Jeff Lucas on the final night was talking about people who as a result of the event were taking or about to take Big Steps. I took this to mean mainly things like making a commitment to becoming a Christian for the first time or the equivalent. I wasn't doing anything on that kind of scale so I didn't go forward. But I do want to claim my small steps. These are:
1) Committing to NCBC
2) Discovering my niche at NCBC- hoping to explore worship, drama, movement and art
3) Really work at the things that are important to me concerning the environment at home, work and church
4) Promoting Stop the Traffik
I think that covers it. Sorry it's not much to go on but I will let you know how it's going as and when.

An opportunity to make a difference

The Open Venue is to be a state of the art youth venue for young people from Norwich and across the county. The idea is to encourage young people to adopt a healthy lifestyle by using this drug and alcohol free venue and it is hoped that all the major youth agencies (one of which I belong to) will be based there.
According to today's Evening News, the venue has done a call for young people to join their steering forum but have been unsuccessful. So if you are between 13 and 25, this could be an ideal opportunity for you to become involved in this exciting new venture. Ask me for further details...

teenagers and cars

The AA Motoring Trust has gathered information on the number of teenage motorists dying in road crashes in England and Wales and it appears that the figures have doubled in the last 6 years. By cross-referencing government statistics on accidents and driving licences, they showed deaths of 16-19-year-olds per 100,000 driving licences had risen from 9.76 in 1998-2000 to 19.23 in 2004. And the number of 16-19's holding licences in the same period fell from 41% to 26%.
Info from BBC news website here...
So what's going on?

Ban the cats

It isn't often that something contraversial or indeed interesting can be found on the web pages of the Evening News but there has to a first for everything here. The idea is that one of the conditions of Wimpy homes building near a nature reserve is that they have to write a clause in the title deed of the houses they build banning cats. The writer of the piece isn't enamoured of cats anyway so that suits him. What do you think?

Tattoos

I have never had one.
They are becoming more popular (apparantly)
It seems every where you turn, a tattoo parlour has sprung up.
I'd like to have no opinion about them
But I do.
I haven't ever liked them
Although I feel less strongly about them now than I used to.
Some I think are quite pretty,
But not for me.
The thought of looking at myself at 66 in a full length mirror
Gravity having taken it's toll
Isn't a thought I want in my head.
Gravity can take it's toll, that's fine.
But I don't need a faded bluey, green wrinkly patch of skin there too.
As a reminder of Yoof,
How things used to be.
Maybe if they faded away after 5 years,
Maybe if there was a miraculous reversal technique,
Maybe, maybe.
I don't know. If you want a tattoo,
Nothing I will say as I ramble in my blog,
Will influence you.
Which is a Good Thing because who wants to listen to a 37 year old fogey?