Hope you're having a nice Christmas. P developed a cold Christmas Eve but still cooked some wonderful food assisted by J. Had Mavis for the day - seemed to enjoy it. I sat on the sofa watched the Queen and fell asleep. Went to 'old church' in the morning with J, nice to catch up with people. Been nice relaxing time really.
Seriously shopped out! The problem with Christmas shopping on a scooter is that they cram as much stuff into the shops as possible so you can scoot down an aisle and find you can't turn the corner because of a pile of bargan books or an inflatable santa. You then have to reverse all the way back and turn into a crowd who aren't necessarily feeling very patient and may even make remarks about women drivers. It's all done now anyway, unlike the cards - haven't even started.
Wednesday was Coffee Morning Christmas lunch. Very nice except the banana (well I think it was banana) sorbet which was a bit, well, horrid. Had to eat my chocolate santa to take the taste away.
Last night was our housegroup social. Had a good time, conversation got a bit heavy - for some reason we started debating the death penalty but then someone suggested charades which was a lot of fun.
Also had second-from-last-ever parents evening yesterday. Person who says I mustn't mention him is doing fine.
Last Thursday night was GCSE presentation evening at which they got presented with their certificates. Bit of a struggle to get J to get his hair cut but in the end there he was all 6 foot 3 inches of him - neat hair, trimmed nails, polished shoes, smart trousers, shirt and tie. Thought it might be a bit of a boring evening but it was actually very enjoyable - they showed a video at the start showing them at various stages from Year 7 to 11. Then when they awarded the subject prizes they played an 'appropriate' tune for each subject eg 'Chain Reaction' for Chemistry and the '2468 song' for Maths. And talking of Maths - J won the prize! He got presented with a great big shield to keep for a year and a glass trophy to keep for ever. Well done J - so proud of you!
Some time ago we won a prize in a Premier Radio competition which was a voucher for a Mexican restaurant. We went the other week - the three of us and a friend of J's and the food was quite nice, well the starters and mains were very nice ( I had chicken burrito) but the desserts weren't so good. In fact we passed the churros around so we could all taste how horrible they were - too much cinnamon. A nice evening out though, thank you Premier.
P meanwhile is being kept busy because he's now Chairman of Governors at J's junior school. He says he was forced into it and it's only temporary. Hmm we'll see. It means lots of meetings. Actually it's quite nice to get some time to myself.
He's also busy writing a report on the history of the Bible. One of our pastors asked him to do it, not quite sure what he's going to do with it.
He's also still busy working outside although the rain has been a problem of late.
He's also busy ferrying J around. J is doing an Alpha course now together with his friend Tim. J still goes to 'old church' where they have a Sunday youth meeting and a monthly youth club. (His friend Adam is working, having got an apprenticeship at the firm where he did his work experience).
P's also busy cooking and hanging up the washing and cleaning (now and then) ...
And me - well I sort the washing, tell P what setting to put it on, sort out our endless stream of paperwork, spend some time reading the Bible and praying, some time online and otherwise largely resting except when we go out shopping. I don't like it when people ask what I've been doing because it's usually not very much. Actually yesterday we went to a charity lunch - it was baked potatoes and they gave me three different toppings - the wheelchair works wonders. There were people from both old and new churches there. The minister at old church has resigned having found working and being a minister too much really. The associate minister has increased his hours but sees his role as a pastoral worker and not so much as a preacher although a couple of the others will do some preaching. They're going to work out the way forward anyway.
I don't know if I've said this before but how I ended up at my uni was:
I was sitting in the 6th form study room filling in my application form and had put down four choices and needed a fifth. Someone had left a prospectus on the desk for King's College London, I glanced through it and thought 'that'll do, I won't be going there anyway'. On the way to an interview at Sussex uni the coach drove past King's and the moment I saw it I just knew that that's where I would go. And it was.
Well here we are well into November. Sixth form is still going well and J has looked round 3 unis -Warwick, UCL and an Oxford college. We all went to Warwick Open Day and all really liked it, in fact we couldn't think of anything that was wrong with it. They had a very impressive brand, spanking new Physics dept with an amazing electron microscope - we actually saw atoms! They make offers purely based on academic ability.
P and J were up in London the other week and thought they'd just do a 'self-guided tour' of UCL. They found therre was actuually a pre-booked guided tour going on which they were allowed to join. J liked it but not quite as much as Warwick.
He really liked Oxford - as you would - and they had a very nice lunch - turkey wrapped in bacon.
Still some more open days to go to in the spring and summer.
What he needs to decide is exactly which course he wants to do - Maths, Physics or Maths with Physics.
