Mostly Driving

I had my fourth driving lesson today, adn I got inot third gear for the first time.  I've been fighting the nagging suspicion that I'm not a fantastic driver, but it seems to be going now that I've started to get the hang of my steering.  Apparently steering is my weakest point, whcih I see as a little amusing because it seems to be the most critical and fundamental pillar of driving.  My driving instructor is a great guy called Dave Harper, he teaches well and says funny things like 'I mean that sinceriously'.  My favourite line of all time was the solid gold that I had the pleasure hearing just an hour or so ago:

'I don't mean this in a bad way, but do you have a problem?'

We were talking about concentration.  I said mine was clincially bad, and he proceeded (in a way that reminds me a little of Mr. Molloy) to change his wording, so that instead of saying 'Look over to the middle of the road', he would say things like 'Put your concentration to the middle of the road.  I would have been patronised, but I think it was actually pretty effective.  Sometimes he explains things to me and I realise that I've just been making minimal responses whilst thinking about something else entirely. 

I'm afraid that driving's about the most interesting thing that's happened to me in a while - it's been a pretty average week.  I've had the odd teacher on my back about work.  Turns out I'm supposed to be doing it at home as well.  Mr Brock spoke in rhyme today.

I'm beggining to realise how terrible this blog post is.  The structure is simplistic and the punctuation unengaging.  Look at this, it's just one simple, two-clause sentence after another. 

The fire is ablaze.  The cat is cute.  I can not stroke him.  He will meow.  He will bite.

Look!  Look at the cat!  The cat is cuddly!

"Meow" says the cat.  Oh, what fun! 

Christmas is nearly here!  Goodbye, everyone!

All the Fun

Generic title, generic times.  I've been having fun lately.  The first bit of the fun starts where we left off last time, at the much anticipated science museum trip.  It was awesome, even though they wouldn't let us into launch pad, and forbade me access to the double good grain mover.  Apparently only under fourteens can access that stuff, which is stupid because they deserve it the least.  I did, however, make an excursion to 'The Future'.  The future, apparently, has a plethora of overhead projectors.  In fact they're not even all over head.  Basically, it would seem that the sun burnt out and humanity was saved at the last minute by a ridiculous excess of projectors, which bathe the entire globe in a multicoloured, interactive ambience.  It's like a featureless, creepy utopia populated entirely by sleek grey tables where the only activity going is voting on issues.  Maybe they're waiting until there's a unanimous decision, but currently (or rather, eventually) inhabit a kind of indecisive purgatory where nobody can agree on whether we want helpful house robots or manbirth.  Man birth is wrong because it is weird enough for the weirdness to have ethical implications.  The house robot thing was a little biased.  Most people ended up saying 'No', after playing a game in which you are a baby avoiding deadly automatons designed to stop you from having fun.  It literally tells you the amount of 'Broken Ankles' you've received (future people have more than two) and then asks you to vote on whether you want to fill your future home with unmanned, child snatching drones.

It was pretty hard to keep everyone together, which was convenient for some people who seemed to get lost together, just the two of them, an uncanny amount.  There was a plenitude of 'banter' (as you young people call it), followed by an abundance of Nandos, which was not only delicious, but also yummy.

On Sunday, me Andy Lovell and David Glover all went to 4Woodford, (The '4' stands for 'for', so it's like a cool word play) in which we partook in some good actual worship and stuff, then spent most of the evening in muffled church-hysteria when we thought that the praying lady said 'Transformers, we pray.' and 'parrot organisations.'  We were particularly giggly during a prayer about people-trafficking, and the taboo of this only served to further fuel the fire of our predicament.  After we left, the silliness culminated in the form of David Glover chasing me with a bike that had its front tyre saturated in Andy Lovell's urine.  He got  me a little bit, but I think it was mostly gone by then.

I'm going to stop now, because for me personally, nothing can top that. 

Half Term Funsies

Hello everyone.  The funsies are yet to begin properly, but it is half term and they are nearly upon us.  It looks like this post'll be a two - parter, I'm leaving in ten minutes for a leaders meeting over at the Bridge.  Fun, early morning times. 

Cid has been super duper cuddly lately.  He came in my room on two separate instances this morning, both within five minutes of each other, and jumped onto my bed for super catsy cuddles time.  All your cats are rubbish compared to mine.  Especially if you don't have any cats.

Five minutes left now.  Yeah, I'm actually a pretty slow writer.

I've been having a right laugh lately fulfilling my newfound role as head of publicity in a super secret special society, and I'm double eager for our first out of school excursion on Thursday.  I can't disclose the location or anything, but let's just say there'll be a lot of wheat being moved in a futile cycle by eager and naive children who can't perceive the ironic foreshadowing in their joy at seeing hours of their clammy labour amount to absolutely nothing due to the obvious meaninglessness of everything they're investing in.  We're not going to that museum from Pilgrim's Progress, but we may as well be.

[Second sitting]

I'm back.  I'm now properly engaged in some half term relaxed funsies, even thought it's still technically only the weekend.  The legend that is Izzie Keane preached up a storm last night at XL, and, in theological terms, murked man.  She's taken up five pages of my precious preaching notes with the exact opposite of claptrap.  Mad stuff like the love we're called to show not being based on emotion or like, but compassion and (for want of a less gay word) heartache.  Also some cheeky convictions splashed in, like not being argumentative with people who think you're stupid, because you're basically just defending your own intellect, pride and discernment whilst telling yourself you're 'witnessing'. Still, at the end of the night the best point was generally agreed to be (and I quote) 'Just take drugs.'  Both a hillariously taboo blunder and a sharp, concise observation that knowing God isn't a constant stream of spiritual euphoria.  Also I'm taking drugs now.

Today's been another mad one, with none other than Peter Butt (I know) delivering an awesome word on the doctrine and practice of impartation and a spirit led, evangelistic lifestyle at some kind of leader's meeting I got roped into somehow.  Challenging stuff, plus awesome brunch consisting entirely of all the best fruit and a selection of tea-time treats.

I think I should be packing now for going to Wales on Monday, because I'm at my lovelly grandma's all day tommorow, but my mother's not here to encourage me, rendering me completely incapable of any organisation whatsoever.  Speaking of Wales (that place I'm headed for my gap year), uni choices and the like are still mad.  I mostly don't want to go, but am lacking the necessary planning / direction to justify this.  Praying time, says I. 

Also, I'm still massive hyped for secret society outing on Thursday, and really love this song (like, in a not cool, I think it's really lovelly kind of way.  I know, double lame.) 

Peace out, avid readers.

Wait, turns out I'm not done.  Me and Claire (read 'I', by myself, while Claire was somewhere in the house) were busting out some moves to aforementioned daft punk, and I was reminded of my recent realisation. 

I don't really like parties.

I know it sounds really lame, but I just don't find drunk people exciting, and I think it would be really awesome to meet up with my friends and dance wildly whilst doing stupid things, but the best thing about parties is that there are loads of awesome people there and alcohol (in my somewhat limited experience of parties, I admit) seems to dilute the personality and behaviour of someone until they're just over excited, uninhibited, and altogether formless and bleak. 

Cid has maintained his cuteness throughout the day, and is currently being cute in a lying down with his tummy in the air sort of way. 

Actually for real now,

GLD.

A scrap with the fuzz.

A lot's happened in the last while, but I can't really remember that far back, so I based the title on very recent and extremely exciting things.

Andy Lovell, David Glover and I were all walking back from Bridge 2 in Buckhurst hill to Andy's own abode in Woodford.  We'd had a pretty live night at XL and it seemed like a good idea at the time.  It actually still seems like it was a good idea now.  I guess it was a good idea. 

We spent the first few minutes of the walk talking about muggers and what we would do if confronted with one.  We all had this wonderful and naive idea that muggers are stupid, and that if you talk to them or just (as Andy Lovell put it) 'completely spazz out', they get really confused and run away.  I like to think that I could talk my way out of getting mugged, and I've heard mad stories of Christians who get mugged and then start shouting in tongues at the knife wielding delinquents threatening to stab them.  Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, you'll probably just back away if the person who's wallet your trying to take starts yelling gibberish at you with disturbing fluency.

Anyways, I started thinking it would be hillarious and ironic if we all got mugged.  What happened next was equally hillarious, and also somewhat ironic.  We walked past Woodford station and then on down the foresty road when a police dog van stalled behind us and then pulled up.  "It's alright lads, I don't think she's pulling us over." Joked Andy. 

She was.  It doesn't even stop there.  She gets out the van, approaches us and says policing things like 'Excuse me boys, can I just ask you where you're going?"
We all tell her we're going to Andy's house and, when questioned further, that we had come from Buckhurst Hill.  It turns out that a crime had happened on a train coming from Buckhurst Hill, and we'd just left the station, which probably made her a bit suspicious when she asked how we'd gotten here and we said we'd walked.

"Yeah sorry," she says "It's just that a suspect's been reported to have been wearing a jumper that looks a lot like yours." 

We're a little bewildered.  She's talking to David Glover, who's wearing a very Glover-esque mulitcolored, stripy, handknitted number.  He pulls it off nicely, but if you saw someone wearing it you would know for a fact that they had never commited any crime in their entire life.  She does a little bit of radioing and, just like in the movies, three police cars all pull up at exactly the same time around us, six constables get out and mill around in a circle.  They look like they kind of already know we aren't criminals, and are probably thinking sexist and unproffesional things about how their female colleage has managed to "apprehend" another "suspect".  Then one of them looks Dave up and down and says, "No, that's not him.  He wouldn't have survived."  Survived?  Seriously?  This is all pretty exciting now.  They let us go, and on the way back we see a low flying police helicopter doing a sweep, and a train stopped on the tracks, with all the lights on and all the doors open.  We're very excited, and I keep wanting to be arrested again for Dave's illegal jumper, but it doesn't happen. 

Anyways, my shortlived scuff with the feds has come to an end and now I back to my first day of proper school. 

****
(More than a month later)

Hello again.  I didn't publish this, so now I will.  I'm back on the blogging hype now.  You've heard it all before.  Anyway, hopefully you'll be getting your regular fix of Dave a little more frequently now.  Also on my list of things to fail at committing to are:
- Resuming my proactive approach to study.
- Understanding / doing UCAS things
- Writing outside of study and blogging.

In recent news, I just handed in a personal statement applying for engineering.  It was computer science a couple of months ago, and I might make the next one English.  Fun, indecisive times.  I'm making a poll as to what I should study at uni.  I don't really care what you think, but it adds user interactivity.  Maybe I should put some of my smaller decisions down to a user vote.  I like that idea. 

Audacious

I'm in the in-between turn around betwixt '!Audacious' [sic] and WEC, two of those happy clappy Christian summer things I do.  Basically, Audacious was phenomenal, and this post is an overview of what madness and antics I've been up to for the last four days, tied in nicely with some lovely things I learnt.

Perhaps the most stupid thing I did was to deliberately lose a competition in order to cram a free haircut into my hectic schedule, only to realise my own foolishness when the Audacious preshow over ran with me still left on a stage in front of over a thousand people, with a professional hairdresser trying her best to finish one side of my head with severely inadequate clippers while a presenter attacked the other side of my scalp with craft scissors.  The resulting style was much better than you might think, but not the extent that I won't be shaving it all off at the next available opportunity.

Audacious is fun, but the best part is undoubtedly what you come home with.  I learnt some great little things, like that I need to change my attitude towards people God has appointed as leaders and understand that they exist solely to serve the people they are leading.  I've also realised that whilst I have the kind of character that makes me fine with dancing in front of complete strangers and having my head shaved on stage, I'm not actually bold.  I'm naturally an extrovert 'popular sanguine', as it were, but that doesn't make me bold.  Boldness isn't about being comfortable with doing things, it's about doing things even though you're uncomfortable with them.  Hopefully that means that if things were ever uncomfortable before, they'll get even less comfortable now that I've been inspired to ditch any shame I might previously have had about the liberating madness that is Christ overcoming death and all that.

I don't mean to wear you down with all this personal revelation stuff, but for me a massive highlight of Audacious was hearing about people who'd sacrificed they're lives to Christ and realising just how nang the gospel is.  I'm aware that saying the word nang is uncool and perhaps a little annoying, as is droning on about God, but it's hard not to come home a little inspired when you've heard gang members talking about how they're praying for wisdom and protection so that their family won't be attacked when they break the news to their gang that they're ditching their no-hope, dead end lifestyle for the tangible and freeing hope that they've found in Christ.

It was my birthday yesterday.  I had a lovely time and got some wonderful things (mostly instruction from God and a free haircut).  A lot of people wished me happy returns on my wall, with varying degrees of sincerity / relevance and I liked the ones that I liked because I see that as a pretty good way to use the like function.  After I'd skimmed through all my birthday messages I scrolled the big 'main wall' thing to see what was going down and saw a photograph of a jet gravestone made of polished marble.  It was that of my cousin, Dawn-Joy, who died aged 22 four years ago today, the day after my birthday.  I remember something a pastor called Rich Wilkerson Jr. (a man who looks like Leonardo DiCaprio and can't stop making jokes about having sex with his wife) was talking about what we're willing to sacrifice for Christ, and how when we die nothing on earth matters in the slightest.  All of a sudden I find myself hit by the previously almost unnoticed juxtaposition of the anniversaries of my birth and my cousin's tragic death and I'm not so much disheartened as I am inspired by the life my cousin led, and the uplifting verse on her grave that reads 'for me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.'

 When I read that and remember the life of Dawn-Joy Lovell, I want nothing more than to cast aside every inhibition I have, stop investing worry and doubt into this life, which will be gone in the blink of an eye, and live as a man who recognises the goodness of God above the inferiority of everything this world has to offer.  My cousin lived like someone who was entirely ready to die, and in the suddenness and tragedy of her death I've seen that everything we build up on earth is destined to be destroyed or fall into the hands of some other bozo, and thus the only investment you can make in life of any realness is to exchange all the temporary crap for an everlasting relationship with the God who made you, and the more you commit to it, the better everything is.

Sorry if you didn't like the post being pretty much entirely on revelations from God, but that's all that's really happened for the last four days.  Peace out, haters.

Super Shirtless Summer!

I love being shirtless.  I am shirtless right now, and it is liberating.  It's really nice to be able to feel the air moving round your torso and the like whilst being unchained from our society's gripping regime of shirt wearing. 

I am definitely escaping the clutches of society - I leave for audacious tomorrow, where there's all kinds of that super hippie spiritual Christian breakthrough stuff, acompanied by the usual regime of shouting, praying, generic funsies and all round madness on a 7.30 to 1 am schedule.  After that, it's two weeks of WEC, where I'm going to it, then leading it for small people.  That's more of the old Jesus stuff with the whole 'in a field' twist.  (And during the later week, the wonderful twists that are 'being in charge' and 'attacking children')

Going away for three weeks straight (There's a turnaround between the two events that spans about 10 hours, most of which I will be asleep for.) requires a three week supply of trousers.  I happen to have the wonderful combination of two of the worlds best ailments - being dangerously manly and dyspraxic.  That's not the sort of lifestyle that really supports having trousers and wearing them, but the whole 'regime of society' thing requires that I do this.  What this means is that I have to be constantly replenishing a small supply of trousersat the same rate that they are destroyed by falling out of things, or pavement grating my knees after being thrown off my kickboard.  I don't fall of my kickboard anymore, because it is dead, but the lack of trousers it gifted me have haunted in a way far more real than the painful memories of its passing.

By way of conluding this drawn out and woeful period of my life (represented mimetically by the above nine line paragraph that basically reads 'I don't have trousers.') I went trouser and short shopping today, and came home with everything I left with, only less money and more trousers and shorts.  Through this proccess of money-losing and trouser-gaining, I saw a great many things.  Most of them were trousers (or indeed shorts).  Some of the shorts were orange, and I nearly bought them, but they were for fat people.  Apparently a lot of shorts are for fat people, because there was hardly anything in my size.  If I were a woman I'd feel really good about it, but I'm just tired from looking for shorts.  I am also dissapointed by society, because today I realised that a lot of shorts for men have flowers on, and regardless of what anyone says or thinks, that is not cool.  Flowers, gentlemen, are for girls.

Also my sisters and mum helped a friend of ours move and they found an old gameboy and gave it to us.  When I say old gameboy, I mean first edition 'first handheld videogames console to have ever existed' kind of old.  It's all rather nifty, because it came with Super Mario Land, and Ruth just have me SML 2 for my birthday.  (It's in four days, buy me stuff.)

Anyway, roll on summer.  Have a good one, avid readers!

Live One

Mate.  This post is live.  I've got no idea why you keep coming back here, but a process of logical elimination would point towards it not having anything to do with regular posting.  This means that it must have something to do with the content of these posts, which is good, because this post is going to be good.  Remember our old friend logic from two sentences ago?  Some of you may have used him yet again to deduce that the goodness of the post is directly related to the madness of my current circumstances / experiences, and thus you will have deduced that everything has been lovely of late.

One of the lovely things is that Andy Lovell was in my house a few hours ago.  We did procrastinating and bible reading, as well as some manly 'tactile lethargy'.  In case nobody told you, Andy Lovell is a good guy.

"A lot of the good things happened over this last year or so, but it was all worth it in the end. I'm so happy that I got to meet all you people. You've been the best people ever.

Even when I lost my foot in a plastic dinosaur recycle plant, and the council said they couldn't get it back. I couldn't do anything because I though I was a chicken but you guys, you hounded them like angry bees in a freezer. If it wasn't for you, I would now be in someone else's digestion.I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve, but whatever. Tea and Crumpets and all that".

Ruth Lovell wrote all that while I left my computer up.  It's another time again.  I know you guys are probably getting tired of the posts being written over several confusing sittings, but it means I have more madness fresh in my mind and ready for the transcribing.  

I'm sensing that this post is going to be rather long, but I've still decided to keep the extract from Ruth, because it ties in rather nicely with the subject content, which will take us back in time...

wibble      wobble 

            wibble      wobble

wibble          wobble

It's last weekend.  I'm in Wales.  I'm speaking in engaging present tense.  All these things are happening because I'm at a weekend run by World Horizons (bunch of Christians doing the next level gospel spreading ting.) for people considering gap years.  I've met a lovely chap by the name of John Bamber, and we've spoken complete nonsense for about an hour.  Not just silly, satirical conversation - hardcore nonsense, straight-up mindless drivel, like an enigma which is mostly a joke.  

It was an awesome weekend, and I learnt a lot.  There organisation is so big on the living by faith thing that nobody working for them gets paid, they're all supported by charitable individuals and ultimately God.  They've got this thing down to the extent that if you can't afford your gap year, they just let you do it, knowing the money will turn up.  I've heard enough testimonies from various individuals within W.H to see why that is.   

I also heard some pretty rad missionary stories.  My favourite is this one:

"In September 1866, Rev. Robert Jermain Thomas with his clothes on fire leapt overboard the vessel he was on outside of Pyongyang with his remaining Bibles and wadded to the bank and frantically gave them out. The entire crew were executed. Thomas’ executioner accepted the last red Bible from this martyr, and as Tertullan said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” "

It gets better.  The guy who executed him was one of those new age creative types, so he used the pages of the Bible to wallpaper his house.  (If you've heard accounts like this before, you know the guy's in for it now.)    Tottering round his house, the executioner starts reading the Bible pages, commits his life to Christ and feeds the growing Christian movement of the time, which culminated in the 'Pyongyang Great Revival (1907-1910)'. 

At the time, Korea was pretty much unreached by the gospel, but now there are probably a few thousand Christians there, who are among the most persecuted in the world.

*Side note*
Just read '.  So:-' on a sheet of paper next to me.  That is not punctuation.

Anyways, I'm sure you're dizzy from all this time travel , so I'll throw you back into the present.  I just got back from Southend, where Joe and I came 7th at Time Crisis II.  I also had an icecream, a large bannana milkshake and a new twisty madness thing from McDonalds.  (Those things really are insane - have you tried slurping chocolate syrup through a straw?)

Peace out, famalam.