Christmas 2011

What a mental Christmas break this year.

We all came up to Richmond on the 18th Dec from Derbyshire, and moved into the guest room at my parents' house. Me and Dad went to see my grandad, who is now in a nursing home and is very frail indeed. I was honestly scared to see him because he was always my favourite grandparent and to see him in a deteriorated state would be too upsetting, but he was surprisingly himself. He was very shrunken, and his responses were slower and sleepier, but that was definitely my Grandad, he was still totally himself and totally there. It was a bittersweet experience but I am glad we visited him.

Christmas Eve was an emotional rollercoaster ride; mid afternoon I was on the verge of a full-blown anxiety attack because for 6 days I had been unable to escape continual noise (house full of family), excessive heat (everyone else likes it toasty), and clutter and mess (a 2-person house is now holding 5 and one of them is a toddler). For someone who gets an enormous sense of wellbeing from a tidy, quiet and cool room, 6 days of wreckage, noise and sweltering temperature was taking its toll.

We then went to a local church (which shall remain nameless) for a Christmas Eve service, which was literally the dullest thing I have attended in my entire life. There were about 15 over 60's in attendance, and one family, and the service was 1 carol followed by a long meandering story which could be permanently filed away under the 'dreary' category. Joel went home with his grandparents, and me and Sydney went out to meet up with a bunch of friends in the Black Lion pub, where I caught up with about a dozen old school friends, some who I hadn't seen in over 10 years! It was a great time, and well worth enduring the church service for. Later we bought and ate a kebab, and made our way home. Then at 5 in the morning, delirious with tiredness me and Sydney lapsed into unstoppable, uncontrollable giggling because she said out of nowhere 'what about team sleepy?' with wide puppy-dog eyes. You had to be there for that one I think. Married couple in-joke. But wow. I laughed hard. For a long time.

Christmas morning came, and I made Christmas dinner again this year. Turkey, ham, stuffing, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, fresh vegetables, rissoles, gravy and cranberry sauce. Definitely a success on the cooking front this year - I reccommend (of all the bizarre things) using goose fat to make your roast taters and parsnips. 'Tis righteous. We opened our presents and then at 3 watched the Queens speech. She kinda preached this year, she acknowledged how much suffering the world is enduring at the moment, and then basically pointed to Jesus as the answer. The experience of sitting there hearing her say those words, and knowing that probably almost every other TV in the country was tuned in and hearing the same thing was a deeply spiritual experience. I know my faith is all topsy turvy and being worked out again from scratch at the moment, but hearing Queen Elizabeth say those things to millions of people brought tears to my eyes, it was inexplicably beautiful.

The last 2 days have contained a bigger range of emotions for me than a year usually does. Pretty wild.

Well, anyhoo, here is the rundown of this year's present haul.

An Xbox 360! (my mate Jono gave me this because my old one broke and he had a spare. Awesomeness!)
Skyrim (I expect to be posessed by this game for the next 6 months ala Oblivion GOTY version)
Michael Buble's new Christmas album! (I will also be pointing and winking at people while saying 'bada-bing')
Harry Potter 7 part 2 DVD (expelliarmus)
Avatar DVD (blue meanies)
A notebook (good for writing in)
Some hair wax type product (good for frying an egg in)
Shower gel (good for making me smell like man)
Gourmet choccys (good for making me fatter than I already am)
and generic Boots anti-perspirant (good for informing me I smell a little too much like man on occasions)

Berry Crimpmas Everyone!

Why Wikipedia Is Awful/Awesome

I printscreen captured this from wikipedia. Observe the accurate lyrics (click the pic to enlarge).

Are You A Pillar Of The British Empire?

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you have a huge bushy moustache, and wear tweed jackets.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you smoke a pipe and reminisce about being stationed in Africa.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you use the word 'droll' instead of 'funny'

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you drank so much rum with the brigadier during the war that your nose glows like a reindeer.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you describe your opponents as cads, bounders, and beastly rotters.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you demand some figgy pudding.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you regularly shout the word 'BALDERDASH'

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you  have ever leaned over to a complete stranger and said 'boi-oi-oi-oi-oing', raising your eyebrows suggestively.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you have ever bellowed 'Wife! Stoke the fire!'

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you have an outdated racist term for everyone outside of your English county.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you refer to America as 'the colonies'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you consider trapping needlessly respectful younger people into listening to long rambling semi-incomprehensible monologues for hours at a time 'a corking good night out'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you think they should bring back flogging.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you say things like 'my teacher used to beat me with the cane every twenty seconds until I was 50, and it never did me any harm'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you think that young people listening to their crazy jazz records will inevitably lead to widespread drunkeness and the general collapse of civilised society.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you will only drink a cup of tea if it has been placed before you in a position which compliments the symmetry of the table.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you regularly use the phrase 'I dare say' more than eight times in any given sentence.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you have ever referred to the Prime Minister as an imbecile.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you went to public school.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you look like a morbidly obese pig forced into a five-sizes-too-small tuxedo when you go out to eat.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you determine your bank manager's worth solely by how pompously he pronounces your name.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you equate the word 'common' with 'bad'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you wear a bow-tie to work.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if it is your fondest philanthropic hope to one day civilise savages.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you tell your children 'the Queen Mother wouldn't do that'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you get all hot, flustered, red in the face, stammering and awkward in the presence of an attractive younger member of the opposite sex.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if someone who beat you at a game definitely cheated.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you wear a white judges wig to Tescos.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you think poor people chose to be that way, and should be punished for making such an ill-advised decision.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you fart loudly at the dinner table, don't apologise, and glare menacingly at everyone else as if daring them to mention it.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you describe working class people as 'the criminal class'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you refer to the opposite sex of any age as 'strumpet'.

You are a pillar of the British Empire if you have piles.

When Apple Releases A Mac Game Console...

Apple are rapidly overtaking Microsoft in having a finger in every pie, but their games console is strikingly conspicuous by it's absence. The world runs on money, and there is no question of the money to be made in this arena, so it's not a question of whether they will release one, it's just a question of when. When they release something new, they tend to only be willing to venture into new ground if their release will blow everything else out of the water, so I think it is not too far a stretch to assume that when the MacBox 360 is released, it will be something immersive on a scale not seen before.

Total immersion MMORPGs are probably going to be their direction: you know, like a wii crossed with World of Warcraft on crack. Virtual Reality contact lenses, wired gloves, socks and other attachments, supernatural video game powers you dont just see on a screen, but experience and feel in real life. The sensation of blasting lightning from your fingertips or feeling the force actually flow through you in a Star Wars game, dizziness and vertigo as you fly through suspended islands on a dinosaur in Avatar, learning and perfecting your 'expelliarmus' in a Potter game, or being a hobbit / elf / ranger in Middle Earth and actually interacting with millions of other people all over the world in realtime. It won't just be fantasy sci-fi geeky stuff either; imagine Grand Theft Auto, or Medal of Honor! Imagine going to the movies and seeing an incredible film, and knowing that for £30 you can get the game from Tesco and actually explore and experience the world you just saw, with it's smells, smells, textures, tastes, people, customs and quests. People will not leave cinemas wishing they could live in the world they just saw, the films will serve to sell them that world, and they will go to Tesco and buy it. Incredible genius.

The thought of combining the determination of Apple to out-do every competitor, with the level of sophistication now available in the games console world, leaves me wondering how long it will be until they suddenly push the whole market ten years forward from the Wii and Kinect, and provide something which many gamers will retreat inside, rendering the real world their actual 'second life'.

Exciting and terrifying times!

The New Comedy... Parks and Recreation and The Office are not funny anymore

Anyone who has regularly followed the American version of The Office, will remember how in the second and third seasons the script drew you in and told the whole story just with glances, micro-expressions and an implicit understanding, and how totally unique that made the show. You had a banal story on the surface about something like a girl coming into the office selling handbags, while the real story in every episode was found by reading between the lines of the dialogue, catching the tiniest inflections in a character's voice, or noticing a brief moment of unspoken pain on the face of Jim. It connected with its watchers by relating to the social undercurrents we all experience everyday, and drawing us into an underdog love story without words. No other show did that, and the hilarious, tragic empathy the watcher felt with the characters back then in the invisible storyline was what made the show great and impossible to stop watching.

By Season 5 things were going downhill coherent-plot-wise, Steve Carrell left in season 7, and the current season 8 is just not great. The writers appear to have lost sight of that magic which made seasons 2 and 3 so brilliant, and lost the thread of an underground unspoken narrative, instead just constantly rambling down dead-end red-herring directions which either end abruptly or peter out into nothing. The show used to have a unique selling-point in making the main stories of the episodes meaningless everyday office busywork and the underlying implied narrative a consistent thread throughout a season. It has now reversed somewhat, and instead contains no secret script, has a very random 'going nowhere' storyline on the surface, and abandons interesting storyline ideas everytime it wanders more than 5 minutes in their direction. The show has now come to reflect the dull and random nature of everyday life with it's lack of meaning or overarching narrative, and we all have everyday lives, and so why would we want to watch more of the same? The pleasure at the heart of watching a show ultimately boils down to enjoying good storytelling - its the modern day equivalent of sitting round the campfire as an elder in the village talks about an ancient myth - it is supposed to be unreal, exciting and unexpected! If he told a long rambling tale about hunting for deer, not getting any, coming home and having a fight with his family, putting wood on the village fire, then going to bed, I expect he'd have no audience left by the end. That's what's happening with the Office.

Greg Daniels and Michael Schur from the Office writing team have also started Parks & Recreation, another awesome show which seems much more 'in its prime', but is starting to show some of the same symptoms on a smaller scale. People enjoy a clever plot! Stop randomly developing genuinely really good ideas which are just never ever picked up again. What happened to the Scranton Strangler? That plot idea could have been awesome, but it just dissolved and was never seen again. Who cares whether or not that would happen in real life? If a show becomes social observation/commentary with a side of humour and plot, people won't fall in love with the story line or characters, but if a show doesn't get too pretentious and manages to be fun and interesting, there is no limit to the social comment which can be made when plot and humour come first, and commentary second.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Rock Version, Featuring Cliff Students!

On the 26-27th October 2011, I recorded this version of the famous Christmas Carol 'Hark The Herald Angels Sing', with me playing all the instruments. I then mixed it down to mp3, and on the 28th Oct 2011, myself and a bunch of the students here at Bible College with me all worked together and made this video! Which is now on youtube, and is also terribly agreeable.

Family Before Ministry

I have made a decision.
As we review 2000 years of Christian History, there is a continual theme which I have seen emerging amongst the men who changed the face of the world through missionary work, through their outstanding leadership, through their vision, passion, and ruthless unstoppable commitment to furthering their cause... Total, real, stupidity with women and with their families.

Martin Luther, began the Protestant reformation, but approved bigamy

John Wesley, spearheaded the greatest English revival of Christian faith in all of history, but sabotaged his brother Charles' marriage which resulted in an unhappy marriage to another woman, and John himself also married badly, and his marriage collapsed after a few years.

William Carey, moved to India to establish missionary outposts, plant churches and translate the Bible. He took his family with him, uprooting them from middle class Britain, and relocating to an Indian tribal jungle. His wife lost her mind completely, and he was totally neglectful of his children, who grew up wild and rebellious.

Karl Barth became the foundational theologian of modern baptist theology, but spent the majority of his working life with his much younger female secretary actually living in the same house with him, his wife and his family, much to the personal hurt of his own wife.

My personal reading and understanding of the Bible and the New Testament texts tells me that as a Christian and a husband, my first, primary, overriding, top commitment in serving God, is faithfulness and service to my wife and family. On those grounds, I will not undertake any missionary activity which uproots and damages my family. They will come first, missionary activity comes second.

Some might argue that we as Christians are called first to serve God, and our families second, but I would counter that the Bible is clear that supporting and protecting your own family is much more important and foundational to a life lived in commitment to my religion, than going to an alien culture and evangelising there. I would argue that by putting my family first, I am actually putting God first, and remember that the New Testament describes anyone who does not take care of their family as 'worse than an unbeliever'. So from a certain perspective, the rejection of your family is worse than rejecting God!

The questions and implications are huge. Would I rather; transform the country, see thousands of people come to faith in Jesus, inspire a revolution, or; take care of my family and live a quiet normal life?
My answer is simply that I can not pursue the former if it ever threatens the latter. I would rather take care of my own and not spark any revolution at all, than transform the world and have my family fall apart. I know that goes against the grain of radical Christian missionary passion, but I don't care. I'll do a smaller, less noticeable revolution - rejecting all the Christian Superstar Mega Hero stuff, saying 'thats not for me', remaining happy to not be a 'story of encouragement' from a pulpit in the future, if it means I have to mis-treat, mis-manage, or neglect my family and their needs. I would choose their financial, social and emotional stability and security ever time, over and above the passionate desire for 'souls'. That desire has a place, but that place is at all times, under my family.