Hello! Bit of the old church this morning. I asked Mum about the lack of OT readings in the lectionary. She said that were sometimes some gaps, but usually there was one. I find this very odd. I mean, if you open a random page of the bible, you're more likely to find yourself in the OT than the NT. Bashed through some songs; that side of things went okay. No Mum though. I think she said, but I wasn't expecting it. She was at work. I can never think of much to say to the grown-ups after church, so I opted to play floor tennis with the Hooper kids, which was fun.

Mum asked me to do her readings next week at church because she's going on holiday. It's Proverbs 22:1-2,89,22-23. Lot of editing there; goodness knows why. I also had better try and persuade someone else to sing.

I never saw Some of my best friends are... Jewish which I think is rather a shame. I'm now reading What's So Amazing About Grace? by Mr. evangelically ubiquitous, which should be good. I've a mind to reread Grace Abounding too.

Had some port. It was quite good.

"When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. So shall it be with this evil generation."
- Matthew 12:43-45

So one needs some new spiritual furniture as it were. The question of what exactly one does, on a practical level, having been saved "by grace" and "not because of works" (Eph. 3:8-9) always seems a bit tricky to me. There is grace. There are spiritual disciplines. I'm fairly sure God's a fan of both. It's like some bizarre kind of theologically-blindfolded mental balancing act trying not to abuse one or t'other.

I refer the honourable reader to the post I updated some moments ago.

Update: [Sigh] Will's blogged the interesting portion of this day. His permalinks don't work though. Oh actually, come to think of it, I did some other stuff, but Nick blogged that.

Okay, let's do this again:

• I swept a bit too, and did some drying up. I feel I have been neglected in Will's account. And never in a million years did I say "What on earth do you think you're playing at?", that being far more the kind of thing Will would say.


• Will doesn't much care for coleslaw, and he is not shy in expressing his distaste.


• I think Rosie played better then last time.


• We wandered round a bit afterwards and had some ice-cream. Rosie said she was thinking of getting fit this year. She mentioned Pilates, and I said I wouldn't do something that Madonna is reputed to do if I could help it.


• Will and I bartered for the price of seeing me jog round a field. £2.32, but I didn't do it, because there were people watching, and I didn't really want an audience.
  
• We went over to the miniature railway, but it wasn't open. There was a "TRIM TRAIL" through the woods though. We had a brief mess about with some parallel bars.


• Rosie's getting a guitar from Argos (The Greek God of pointless queueing)! I gave her one of my guitar books and lent her another.


• The phrase Nick was searching for is clearly "I feel like chicken tonight." The popular media has clearly met it's match in The Incredible Slogan-forgetting Boy!

Off to Lille. The mots justes will probably follow tomorrow.

Update: Nicholas wrote some very creditable mots. You should read them if you want to know what I got up to. I'll say some other stuff later, but I'm tired and I want to go to bed. Fare well.

I'm rereading it now, and working out what I might add:

• I didn't much fancy porridge that had been left out overnight, so I had Kellog's Just Right. It was delicious.


• We didn't play I-Spy in the tunnel.


• The Warm Goat's Cheese Salad was great, but it did have unexpected bacon.


• The only word of French which I spoke to anyone French that day was "Merci".


• Nicholas, I gather, doesn't know much about art, but he knows what he likes. He was keen to point out that he felt most people spent too long looking at paintings. He gets the gist and moves on he says. I started slowly, looking at the informative English language cards for the rooms, but went sped up, as time pressed. I wish I has worked out that the medieval stuff was in the basement. I probably would have started down there.


• The pictures of Christ coming down from the cross were good.


• I had some Lipton Ice Tea. I didn't, as Nicholas noted, play bingo, or get a mullet thereafter.


• I left my coat at Nan's. It's black, faded and it's got a pocket NIV and my passport in it.

Just got back from Pizza Hut. Rather good. Blog properly later. Must get to sleep; early start tomorrow.

Update: Hello. Well this was a very pleasant evening. The catalyst for it was that Nicola Watson, who is one of Adrian's friends and who went with myself Adrian and Ruth to a bible study group called Sunday plus in the last parish in Farnborough, was back from Jersey where she now lives, married with some guy I haven't run into yet. Indeed, I haven't even seen her since before university, and now, as I may have mentioned, I've graduated, so that's pretty weiord. I had a chance to see her last year at a kind of second wedding reception she had, but I couldn't get back. She wasn't back in fantastic circumstances, as her grandmother is ill, but she did want to see some of her friends who she hadn't in a while. They would have gone out somewhere posh, but unemployed 'ol me was the limiting factor, so Pizza Hut it was. I don't think anybody minded anyway. Dad offered me a lift, and then didn't. Neil did however, so I got to have a drink outside of the house which was nice.

Neil picked up Ruth and Nicola and we met grumpy Sarah and her current squeeze Simon who I haven't run into before. I can get away with calling grumpy Sarah grumpy Sarah because Ruth doesn't have the internet. She was in good spirits after a token period of grumpiness though. We talked of many things, including films especially. Probably because Nicola mentioned that Jersey had got a ten screen multiplex. It was nice, and Nicola left the crusts, and I was aghast, at least until I ate them, whereafter I was satisfied. I had a Margerita, but Simon left a slice of his meat-based one and I had it; if you must cook animals, you might at least not waste it.

Blogger is getting on my nerves of late. I wouldn't mind the random insertion of numbers so much if it just got the width of the sidebar right.

I walked past a guy on a bike with a huge white man's afro into town, where I wandered around a few shops to kill time until my Jobcentre appointment came up. In MVC I saw a Dogtanian and the Muskerhounds DVD, which is presumably the same one that Phil bought. It was in the 2 for £10 section. Personally, if I had a DVD player and a spare tenner, I'd buy it with Taxi or perhaps make it a bumper cartoon double bill with Around the World in Eighty Days with Willy Fogg and that sinister fox guy with the glinting eye. Then I went to the Jobcentre to sign off for the weekend so I can go to Lille tomorrow.

A fairly productive day today, especially compared to some other recent ones. I finally sent off for the application pack for hostel worker. It'll be a tight schedule to send an application in if I do turn out unexpectedly to be suitable. Then I worked out the route from 5 Cowley Bridge Road to County Hall via bus for the interview. I started on one application only to work out slightly too late that it asked for office experience and I don't have any. But it's okay, I found another one. I also found out that the thisis network job section doesn't just link to fish4 like most local website, but has it's own job section. I couldn't find anything promising there though. Hopefully it will be easier to find jobs in Exeter in the local papers than online. I've saved up another 200 pounds to put in my reserves. I'm just going to phone Direct Line and sort that out.

Hello. Today I went to Exeter with Neil. On the way we listened to Radio 3. The presenter seemed to be in a daft mood, playing a piece from an operetta I think, in which vegetables take over the world. Actually, scratch that; it's clearly the composer who needed to be locked up. Imagine trying to get funding for writing that. Later on was Composer of the Week. This week it's Bernstein. I wish I'd known beforehand - Bernstein rocks. Everything on it was good apart from the last piece, which went on for about half an hour. Bernstein wrote a Kaddish, which, as I understand it, is a genre of Hebrew poetry, wherein the protagonist makes a complaint against God for being abandoned, then apologises and then praises. It was rubbish - worthy, turgidly chaotic modernist stuff. It was interesting though. God came across, in Bernstein's words, narrated in the recording by his wife Felicia Montealegre, as a type of impotent old man, who after seeing what mankind had made of mankind was in great need of a hug. Very revelatory I thought.

Neil got his passport alright so we proceeded to the new house. Luke was in, and no-one else, so we wandered around a bit and I moved some boxes of things into someone or other's room. Not James'. Dan's. I was quite keen to get a key for Luke's room so that I didn't have to worry about it anymore, but some muppet had taken it already, apparently deluded. Therefore I probably added to the confusuion by taking the spare key to Adam's room, which will let me in the front door, and we should be able to sort it out later.

We went past Mere on the way back.

Neil drove all the way to Exeter, and I drove part of the way back. After the first stretch my back was regretting it, so I had to take a couple of painkillers when I got back.

In the evening I got round to phoning Vicki, and then Will and then Gavin, whose land-line I finally determined by ringing up his mobile and asking him outright. He said his interview thing went well. Vicki and I are going to meet up probably the Saturday after next, but this Saturday Will and Rosie are coming over, to play Pigeon Putt among other things. Huzzah!

I finished reading Yancey again today. It's a good book I think. It doesn't exactly provide solutions to anything much, so much as point out that if faith seems hard, then you're in good company.

My friend Vicki, with whom I was at Sixth Form yet hardly ever speak to now, sent me a text today saying that her first day at work went okay. That she had a job was news to me, so we exchanged a brief flurry of phone calls and I said I should probably phone her instead. She's doing market research (glorified data entry quoth she) in Bracknell now. I didn't phone her before phoning Rosie though. I just had an idea that I should phone, and we talked of various fun non-things for a while. In my confusion, I was not aware that Will was at Rosie's. When I found it it was tea-time, so I didn't speak to Will, and instead ate Dad's patented throw-everything-in-a-big-pot-and-add-chili-powder chilis. Dad was faux-moaning about having to go to the inuction of a new vicar over in West End. I thought I might go, so I did.

I thought the induction was quite good; a jolly upbeat sort of an affair. We arrived pretty dashed early so that Dad could robe up, and he sat up at the front in an official capacity, so I was left to wander round on my own for a bit. I remembered that I had neglected to phone Vicki so I texted to let her know that I wasn't likely to. The church was pretty small and old-skool, but it was packed out with people dressed up nice. I should have known, but I was the only casually-dressed person there. Apparently, Bruce Nicole, who is the vicar of a church down the A30 a little way, is the Rural Dean. I had no idea. The bishop was there, doing his thing, giving a sermon and saying bits of the welcome at various times. The hymns were to organ accompaniment, which makes a change, at least for me. We did a version of "Be Thou my Vision" in a dodgy rewrite with key words missing which messed up the metre something chronic, and well had a good stumble over that. At one point in the service-book there was a little instruction to kneel, where everybody looked at each other and the bishop said sitting would work. The procession at the end was a little silly, only because the organ voluntary was ludicrous. Just you listen to this (right-click: save as should work) and try and tell me it doesn't sound like clowns should troop out to it at the circus. I feel I have probably dwelt on the negative too much. Possibly because the good bit wasn't so memorable, but it was fine.

Yesterday i convinced my mum that south american killer seaguls were invading the country because of the hot weather.

Much as I cannot condone such flagrant deceit (though I did once persuade Nick, many years ago, that Jeanne d'Arc was a famous taxidermist), you've got to admit that that's no mean feat.

It seems I'm going to Exeter tomorrow, though I'll probably only be there for about ten minutes. Neil needs his passport to go to France on Friday, and his passport's in Exeter, so I agreed to help him with the driving. I thought I might be able to see some people too, but it's not looking likely. James intends to be at the library all day and Gavin says he might have an interview. I'm not sure I'd want to work for a company that didn't tell you, until the day before, whether or not you had an interview. Luke may well be in though, and I might be able to dump some stuff, probably pots and pans and suchlike.