France and wolly mammoths

We were on holiday in south west France last week. It was a terrific break and we both felt very refreshed (at least until we returned to work). We stayed in a gorgeous 'gite' in a quiet valley and the weather was superb - I think it was sunny every day! Here's the gite:


On the Sunday morning we drove out to the nearest market. It was interesting trying to buy the weekly shop at a market, but Sara was in heaven! This pic at the market shows Sara on the right with Andrew and Liz next to her (the couple we were holidaying with):


One of the places we visited was the site of the prehistoric cave paintings at Grotte du Perc Merle. Dave particularly liked the woolly mammoth!

Searching for God Knows What

This is a superb book which I've (almost) finished reading now. It's a refreshing reminder that the message of Jesus is first and foremost that we need to be in a right relationship with God and all the other junk that comes with 'religion' - superior morality, comparing ourselves to others, trying to force others to be more like us - is just that. Junk.

Donald Miller describes how humans, without God, have a 'lifeboat' mentality. We're all stuck in the lifeboat, desperately trying to persuade the rest of the lifeboat we're valuable and shouldn't be thrown overboard. As long as there's someone else in the lifeboat who's lesser than me, further down the worthiness scale, then I can feel safe and derive some pride. The problem is this isn't how we we 'wired' by God. We should be depending on him for our feeling of self-worth. But we don't and consequently we're never completely fulfilled and will envy others...

This is a thought-provoking book that asks questions like: "When did you last see an ugly person on the cover of a worship CD?" I bought it at a CLC bookshop and it's available through Amazon too.

N Ireland 1 England 0

Oh dear, that was painful wasn't it?

Feel too depressed to write anything other than repeat what Alan Hansen said - in the past they said England couldn't win a world cup becasue they didn't have world-class players. Now we have Ferdinand, Terry, Gerrard, Beckaham, Lampard, Owen, Rooney...that excuse doesn't wash anymore!

I still think England will qualify for Germany 2006 but does anyone really think anymore that England will win it with Eriksson in charge?

Birthday Boy

Today is Dave's 31st birthday!

Some random things that happened to us over Christmas...

We talked to Sara's relatives in the States on Christmas day on a sort of video-conference thing using webcams. Although the camera kept going down at the American end (makes a change to things going wrong at the Brit end!) it was an amazing experience and makes you marvel at how quickly this sort of technology has become available to us in our homes. A great experience and a great way of keeping in touch with folks a long, long way away.

We went to Prenton Park to see Tranmere v Barnsley on Boxing Day. We sat quite close to the away end so enjoyed the barnsley fans singing "Feed the scousers, let them know it's Christmas", what a rib-tickler! Sara confessed to divided loyalties as the Barnsley fans also chanted "Yorkshire!" Great to see the ground packed - 11,500. Not so great to see us throw away 3 points when Barnsley equalised deep into injury time which sent the away fans into heaven. Although it finished a draw, it felt like we'd lost the game. Dave met an old school friend after the game who's recently moved back to the Wirral from London and is loving it. Dave felt a twang of envy...

We went out to Lyme Park where some of the BBC's Pride and Prejudice was shot and set off on a country ramble. Alas, we miscalculated how much daylight we would have and were only half way through the walk when we realised it was getting dark very quickly! We pretty much ran the second half and scrambled down a hill somehow finding our way back to the car park in the darkness. Next time we're definetly taking a torch.

The tsunami disaster has had added resonance for us as we were were on honeymoon in one of the places that was hit - Penang in Malaysia -only last March. We haven't yet seen any pictures of what it looks like now but have read that our resort was badly affected. Things like this make you put your own problems into some sort of perspective.

'Twas the night before Christmas...

...and I finally got around to writing my first blog!

Off to a midnight carol concert tonight at the church where we got married - first time back there since we tied the knot!