Overdue football post

I went to watch Aston Villa v Tottenham recently with my Best Man, Mark (his dad used to play for Villa). As a neutral I very much enjoyed the game and Martin O' Neill has really shaped Villa into a tighter and more attacking side than they were under David O'Leary. The big talking point was when Juan Pablo Angel - Villa's main striker - missed a penalty and then scored an own goal all within a couple of minutes!

The final score was 1-1 . Here's a couple of pics I took at Villa Park:

"What I reckon is..."

Here's a couple of great articles I read on t'internet recently:

John Nicholson on how lower league football offers something better than the Champions League

Stephen Tompkins says that Richard Dawkins' book 'The God Delusion' has got it half-right

Party Part 3

And finally...

We booked the upper floor of 'The Phoenix' pub in Camberwell to round off the birthday celebrations.

Party Part 2

More piccies from Sara's 30th....

Loads and loads of thanks to Ellie (below) who helped Sara bake all the cakes for the afternoon tea party. (Look at the state of that kitchen!) It was a bit of a squeeze, but we somehow managed to cram in several families including a dozen kids into the flat!






More party shenanigans to follow...

Mmmm, jazz.....

As most of you will know, Sara celebrated her 30th birthday on the 25th September! We had quite a few events and things going so we could celebrate with as many folk as possible - piccies to follow!

First up were Dave's mum and his youngest sister Colette who popped down a few days before the birthday itself. We went to a fabulous local restaurant in Camberwell, 'Buddah Jazz'. The theme is Vietnamese, but the food is a broad mix of dishes from across Asia.

University Challenge

Wow, it's been a really busy September! We'll try and post all the news over the next few days.

To kick off, Dave is a student again. He's started a 2-year part-time course for a Masters degree (MSc) in Human Resources at South Bank University. So far, after three weeks, things are going well although it is strange to be back on a campus again and makes you feel old! Juggling the studying with Dave's full-time job is going to be the biggest challenge...

Cornwall

We're now back from a week's holiday in Cornwall. We stayed in Boscastle and had a great time walking around the spectacular Cornish coastline. You can see some pictures on our Flickr page.

Things to Make and Do in Leeds

When we were back in Leeds recently (see post below) we stayed over with Sara's auntie Jan and uncle Richard. They have a wonderful dog called Logan and Dave in particular looks forward to seeing him whenever we're up that way!


We had a free day before the wedding so we spent the morning ski-ing at the Xscape snow dome which was great fun and had us pining for the alpine slopes again...

In the evening the four of us went out to a terrific old country pub, 'The Chequers', (this is a review from the BBC Leeds site). It doesn't seem to have changed at all in the last few hundred years, it's a real warren of nooks and crannies inside and has lots of character. They also served free non-alcoholic lager to drivers which was a nice touch.

...And the Weddings Keep on Coming

It was Jo and Garath's turn recently. Another trip up to Leeds!

Here's the happy couple:


Chris had an excuse to carry a sword in public:

A very tired-out Rhys by the end of the day!

The garden could do with a tidy...

Sorry for the light bloggage recently. 'Tales' is on its' own summer holiday at the moment ;-)

We were helping out last week with our church's social/community action project 'God Loves Peckham'. We got stuck into a neglected community centre in North Peckham, the Bradfield Club, mainly painting and general decoration. Around the back of the centre it has it's own garden but as the piccie above shows nobody has looked after it for some time! Fortunately the jungle of weeds, bushes and triffids has now been hacked away. By the way, none of this is a criticism of the Club's fabulous caretaker, Tigah, the first rastafarian caretaker we've met! He really looked after us and was so pleased to see the Club looking good again.

There's some more photos of what we and our team were doing at the Bradfield Club on our Flickr page, plus some other new pics of things we've been up to.

You can read more about what the project was doing across Peckam on our vicar's blog.

The Great World Cup Adventure

The World Cup comes to an end tonight...

We went over to Germany for the first week of it and it was terrific. We saw a few games at the 'Fanfest' in Frankfurt - above is a piccie of us at the screening of the England v Trinidad game. There were thousands of fans from countries all over the world and everything was good-natured. We also took the opportunity to explore some of the Rhineland, a beautiful part of the country. We've put some pictures of the holiday on Flickr and you can see them by clicking on the nifty little 'badge' on the right.

A Weekend with the Roberts (and a spooky story...)

Sara's cousin Garath, his fiancee Jo and their lovely boy Rhys popped down for a weekend in SE5 recently. It was so cool to see them and we're really looking forward to their wedding in August.

On the Saturday we had a day out in central London starting with a picnic lunch on Hyde Park. Actually, we were joining Tim Mungeam and a cast of thousands to celebrate Tim's 40th birthday (congratulations, Tim!) and despite the rain we had a great time and managed to stay mostly dry by camping under a large tree.


Here's Tim himself celebrating with a bottle of champagne!


Afterwards, we moved on to the Natural History Museum. Somehow we had never been there before, but it's a fantastic monument to the Victorians' commitment to providing free public museums. Here's a pic of the Roberts clan studying a bizarre giant bear-creature from South America:

And here's the famous dinosaur skeleton in the main entrance hall:


After that, we went round the corner to the wonderful Science Museum. We went to see the Pixar Animation Exhibition. It featured an amazing '21st century zoetrope' in which physical moulded Pixar characters on a carousel appeared to come to life, jumping and dancing before our very eyes! It would take too long to describe how this animation marvel was achieved so you'll just have to go and see it for yourself!

Finally, we uncovered an amazing coincidence as we chatted with Garath and Jo. Dave's mum booked a mini-break at the Manchester Hilton hotel for Katrina and Dave's honeymoon last April. And who was the very friendly girl from Q Hotels she chatted away with on the phone as she booked it? Yes, it was Jo!

Be seeing you...40 years later

One of my all-time favourite TV shows, The Prisoner, is to be remade for Sky. The latest rumours are that none other than Christopher Eccleston will play No.6 this time around...if they do it right, I'm convinced this will be the best thing on TV.

The 1990's wasn't a good decade for quality UK TV drama - only a fews dramas such as Our Friends in the North and Pride and Prejudice (as Sara reminded me!) stick in the mind. However, the 2000's (or whatever you call this decade) has produced some amazing shows such as Spooks, Bleak House, Life on Mars and the new Doctor Who. Will the new Prisoner join the list?

The 1960's version of The Prisoner was filmed in Portmeirion in North Wales and we visited it a couple of years ago as you can see above. Needless to say, Patrick McGoohan is one in the top picture!

Another Brick Out of the Wall

We popped up to Leeds last week to visit Sara's parents and had lots of fun demolishing their kitchen wall! Due to a rather unfortunate blaze, they're having a new kitchen put in a bit earlier than originally planned...so the wall had to come down.

ps - smashing things up with a heavy mallet is a good way of releasing tension!

A Very Warrington Wedding

Congratulations to Katrina (Dave's sister) and Dave who got married on the 21st April - now Mr and Mrs Taylor!

The wedding was in Warrington and the reception was at the fantastic Statham Lodge hotel in the Cheshire countryside. Dave was an usher and said a reading at the church service(his second wedding reading in a month!) and Sara got to look after our gorgoeus nephew Leo. Will post some more pictures when we get the photos developed but here's a few we already have.

The happy couple, plus chief bridesmaid, Dave's little sister, Colette:

Dave and Leo, who looked very smart in his waistcoat (Leo that is):

Leo being well looked after by his big sister Rosa!

Passing Out with the Queen

Just before Easter, we attended Chris's graduation ceremony at Sandhurst (above, he's the one in the middle!). Needeless to say, it was a big day for everyone, not least because the Queen, Charles and Camilla also popped in to have a gander...

The main event was some impressive marching around the parade ground by newly-commissioned officers and the Queen "took the salute" ie watched and then inspected them.

It was a great day and we're very proud of Chris or 2nd Lieutenant Wilcock, to give him his proper name!

Here's some more piccies. Chris with mum and dad...


with granny and grandad...


and the paparazzi!

This season, success was just staying up

I've not written much about Tranmere this season because: a) there's been very little worth writing about; and b) there's very few people who want to read about Tranmere anyway. However I ought to make a passsing mention to the dramatic relegation dogfight match last Saturday with the accursed Milton Keynes Football Franchise. Tranmere's winning goal (scored in the injury-time of injury-time) had the marvellous double-benefit of not only guaranteeing our survival in League 1 but also probably condemning Franchise FC to League 2. I'm not sure which of those two I feel more happy about to be honest....

But Saturday aside though, it's been an awful season. The quality of the top teams in League 1 was well below normal (how can teams like Southend and Colchester be promoted to the Championship?!!) and we should have been at least challenging them if not beating them week in, week out. We need a big clear-out of players and manager this summer to make a fresh start next season.

You're a Philosopher, Charlie Brown

I've always had a soft spot for Peanuts' Charlie Brown. I loved the comic strips when he and his best friend Linus would sit under a tree and discuss the mysteries of life.

Most comic strips are, of course, about superheroes but Charlie Brown is one of life's losers, perpetually insecure and always having to pick himself up from the latest disappointment that life has served up for him.

I recently stumbled on this article about the philosophy of Charlie Brown. It's an interesting read although I don't agree with it's opinion that Peanuts was about coping with the meaninglessness of life. I think Charlie's Wikipedia entry puts it better:

"It could be considered a metaphor about God; The other characters have given up on the idea of his actual existence (and Snoopy has stopped caring altogether, indulging in pilot fantasies), but Linus and Charlie Brown haven't stopped hoping that he is out there. When Charlie Brown insanely continues to play ball on a rainy day, he is essentially declaring his hope for God, and a determination to find God"

Wheel Changes and Wedding Bells

We drove down to Chichester in West Sussex yesterday for the wedding of our friends Colin and Victoria. We almost didn't make it...

We had just started to get some speed up along the A3 out of London when we heard a a strange flapping noise coming from the back of the car. We were driving to a wedding, Dave was to deliver one of the readings in the sevice, so of course it had to be a flat tyre. Fortunately we were able to get off the road quickly and call out the breakdown service. We feared we'd miss the wedding and called Colin to advise he put someone on standby to do the reading but amazingly, the breakdown truck got to us in only 15 minutes and 10 minutes later we were on our way again!

Thanks to some brilliant map-reading by Sara we got to the church with 15 minutes to spare. The church, by the way, was very old - part of it dates back to 800AD!

It was a gloriously sunny day and the reception was held at a stunning hotel in the country. We seriously thought of selling up our London flat there and then and moving out to Sussex!


Sara pretended she was in a Jane Austen novel...


Congratulations guys!

Celebrating Nigel Williams

We were very sad to hear of the death of Nigel Williams last week. Nigel used to be a member of All Saints church before moving to Northern Ireland and although we only knew him for a short time we were really struck by his friendly nature and wisdom. A website to celebrate his life has been set up and even if you did not know Nigel, it is well worth looking at it to see the astonishing impact this humble man of God had on so many lives.