Huge happy birthday for yesterday to the one and only Mark Rayfield!! I also want to apologise to fellow legendee Al Hogg, whose birthday we shamefully missed completely on 3rd April… Sorry!! Big birthday tribute to you too. xx

Joy: Lenny Fontana

…As feared, the rumours are true… I took this photo of Grandma’s handbag whilst she was in the toilet. What can I do?? Is Grandma turning into a chav aged 81??!! I must buy her some chintz…

Proof that Grandma is a closet chav:

1. The handbag!!
2. She won a competition on BBC Radio Glos for knowing the origin of the word ‘chav’
3. She spends an awful lot of time in ‘the closet’
4. She regularly utilises phrases such as “respect”, “Bo selecta” etc
5. I bought her some jewellery and she calls it her ‘bling’

Hmmm….

The case against Grandma being a chav:

1. She accidentally bought a muslim prayer mat thinking it was a pretty rug(!)
2. She attends the happy circle and the lunch club
3. She doesn’t wear Kappa (yet…)
4. I haven’t spotted any White Lightening or Tesco Value Cider in her kitchen, only Bucks Fizz!

I am concerned.

Woohoo! Just been Fopping (avec prize money)and purchased Groove Armada - The Best of (awesome! Fave track is, of course, At The River), Massive Attack Collected (Fave = Teardrop - sadly Hymn of the Big wheel isn’t on there) and Ghost in the Machine by The Police (Fave is probably Every Little Thing She Does is Magic but haven’t listened to it yet!). All good packing music in anticipation of ‘the big move’ on Monday :-S

This evening Steve Clarke and Element hosted a great pub quiz/acoustic night at my campus SU bar… It was a really fun night and we were hoping to come second and win some FOPP vouchers. Miraculously, we did come second!! Hooray!!! Very chuffed - thanks to Steve and the team for a great night.

Today I have been constructing a perfume bottle through a far too complicated process of isometric diagrams, grids and drawing on the Mac. It was fun though and here is the result…(the colours never export properly… It is far too bright and looks a bit naff as a JPEG!!)

…Why is it that male worship leaders appear to be banished from society? I don’t know how many years poor old Matt Redman has been stuck wandering round the desert and I am quite sure that Bennetts and Heaslip have been sat on the naughty bench now for far longer than is fair.

Every time you see these worship leaders on their album covers they seem to be wandering around on their own looking either really bored or totally distracted! Sometimes they clutch at a guitar, as their only friend It is really very sad!!

Graham Kendrick nurses a sickly white guitar, looking a little sadly at his bare (I expect) feet, whilst Tim Hughes has been placed in a little ‘nook’ in the wall… Martin Layzell is lost in wonder (or possibly just Wiggan) with his hands in his pockets, Tim (again,) has nothing to hold back apart from his hands (which are behind his back) and his head which is also looking ‘back’. Brenton Brown is lost up a hill and Matt Redman has been stood up by his mates on a bridge and is looking seriously peed off.

Why do these men have to live like this? All women get to laugh on the front of their worship albums (as does Chris Tomlin) so can’t we cheer them up a little??

….So I got thinking… Perhaps the C of E could use this poignant yet amusing tactic to warn the punters of the general public who fob God off by saying “Ahhh I’ll repent on my death bed!” when in reality the opportunity may not arise. Very few people make their death beds in a conscious state but seem to have this romanticised idea of saying goodbye to loved ones, planning the perfect funeral and burial and perhaps at the last minute, making peace with the big man upstairs.

I think it could catch on, imagine sitting on the tube under the stern gaze of Rowan and trying to avoid God giving you a poke in the ribs!! I am, of course, attempting the humour known as ‘tongue in cheek’, though I have never tried even talking with my tongue in my cheek, so it is a totally weird phrase!

This amused me… Good old London transport!

I love posters like this which utilise a ‘visual trick’. In this case it is perhaps a little morbid, but you immediately know that although it doesn’t say “Be careful that you don’t fall and crack your head open on the escalators”, the thought comes into your head just because of the layout of the type! Nice.

Tim just made an awesome post on his blog. When he was 11, I was 9 and our cousin was 8, we made this potion to make Granny fitter (she tends to sit down all day and this was pretty dull at the time… Now it is just sort of classic). We mixed together various substances from the garden in a bucket and hid it behind the shed. Every subsequent visit we stirred it with a spoon with a bent handle and a plaster on it (for whatever reason?! We found it in the garden!) The miracle is that it is STILL THERE!!! It is now 13 years old and has actually become part of the landscape. I reckon we should bottle it soon, it MUST have matured and is probably valuable by now. Probably the richest sort of compost going! I think one day I might plant a tree in it as a tribute to Granny…

I am slightly concerned that one day she’ll have ‘Peter the gardener’ round and he’ll bin it!! (Granny has lots of handymen who call on her and they are all called Peter… Hmmm….)