Wet weather

I have a friend at church whom I'll call Melanie who is a very lively, outgoing, beautiful person and livens up all our lives. Over the last few weeks she has been running a housegroup at her home but in a couple of months she is going to Bible College in America. On Thursday we had the last housegroup meeting and she'd cooked some yummy food for us - 'Chinese Chicken' and rice and salad and strawberries and cream. We're really going to miss her.

Woke up feeling really tired this morning. My body didn't want to go to church but my mind over-ruled it. There was a talk on healing and prayers for healing afterwards but I didn't go up which may have looked a bot strange seeig as I went out in a wheelchair but sometimes I just know it's not the right time to have prayer.

This year we decided not to go to Faith Camp for the week although we might pop up there for a day. Hope they're coping ok in this wet weather. Camping in the rain just isn't all that much fun.

Was pleased to see that they're putting in some new drainage at the bottom of our hill so hopefully it'll mean an end to the lake which forms at the bottom whenever we have heavy rain.

Pretty flowers

Here's another picture from the piano exam garden.

Lows and highs of being a Maths tutor

As I've said before J's school started this scheme where sixth formers would be paid by the school to tutor some of the younger pupils in Maths and English. The teachers thought this was a good idea - hopefully it would result in better exam results. The sixth formers thought it was a good idea - useful experience, would look good on UCAS forms and money. The sixth formers' parents thought it was a good idea for the same reasons. Presumably the parents of those to be tutored thought it was a good idea.

However 

There was one group who didn't seem to think it was quite such a good idea - those being tutored. Staying behind school for an extra hour of Maths or English? Yeah, really good idea!

The girl J was tutoring only turned up on two occasions, never seemed very enthusiastic and showed a rather irritating inability to let him know when she couldn't make it. This was frustrating for him as he felt he could really help her with Maths.

However he is privately tutoring a 9 year old boy for the summer and he came home on quite a high from the first session: - "He's engaged, he wants to learn, we had a good time!"

Needs to work at his time tables a bit though.


 

Wrong Decisions

Have you ever done anything that's just really stupid? Well this is my latest really stupid, can't believe I did that, just thankful it wasn't as bad as it could have been, deed.

J had to retake his piano exam - the examiner described the last one as 'deteriorating as it went on'. These things happen. In fact once a music exam has begun to deteriorate it's very hard to get it back on track.

Anyway the retake was at a different centre, in someone's private house where we hadn't been before. This was in a town about half an hour away at the most. We left early because you never know with journeys and it was important to get there in good time - we actually allowed nearly an hour and a quarter. P said he knew the way, off we went.

As we went along I read the directions they'd sent out to all the parents and it gave instructions for how to get there from the motorway. At this point my brain completely shut down.

"They're saying we should go on the motorway," I said.

(NO THEY WEREN'T, THEY SAID HOW TO GET THERE IF YOU WERE COMING OFF THE MOTORWAY, THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHERE WE LIVED, THEY WEREN'T SAYING WE HAD TO TAKE THE MOTORWAY)

"Are you sure?" asked P.
"Yes."
"Well ok."
So he headed towards the motorway, he turned off, we got to a roundabout - turn left to go South on the motorway, turn right to go North on the motorway.

P:    "Which way?"
Me: "Don't you know?"
P:    "No! Don't you?"
Me: "No!"
P:     "We have to decide now!"
E:     "Turn right."

A few minutes of driving North.

Me: "We got it wrong didn't we?"
P :   "Yep. What's the best thing to do?"
Me: "Turn round at the next junction."
P:    "How far to the next junction?" 
Me: "Er quite a long way." (Like 8 miles).
P:    "Look how the traffic's building up on the other side, there's been an accident or something, if we turn round at the junction we'll get stuck." 

Sooo... we turned off and headed into the outskirts of a city with the satnav navigating and we went through what seemed like endless traffic lights and got stuck in traffic jam after traffic jam and we were horribly conscious that we could be late for the exam and he might even miss it altogether and last time we trusted the satnav it all went horribly wrong and this was all my fault and at any moment P could lose the admirable restraint he was showing and point out that it was all my fault and I might just say that seeing as he'd lived round here all his life he could have just told me I was wrong from the start and gone the way he'd planned all along which would have been a bit unreasonable really and a conversation like that wouldn't help J to stay calm.

Anyway we made it with three minutes to spare and the lady of the house said we could wait outside and there we were in one of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen with lovely lilies and a water feature and birds singing and a studio where her husband was painting and a walkway under trees to a summer house and it was all so restful and calming which was just as well really.

 I could have stayed there forever but J had to go in and do his exam and came out again and said it went ok apart from sight reading and singing and it was a lovely piano to play and a nice examiner.

 Then we all went and got ice-cream.

Lobby Life

I spend quite a lot of my time sitting in lobbies while my family go upstairs to look at things. I took this picture at St John's College Cambridge while P and J were upstairs looking at accommodation. We only looked round three colleges on Open Day, although J had previously been round Trinity. The guide who showed us round Gonville-Caius (pronounced Keys) raced round at high speed and talked very fast so we didn't actually understand very much. He ended up racing up a flight of stairs and didn't mention that there was a disabled lift round the side. Never mind. The guides at St John's and Magdalene gave us tours just for the three of us and had a much more leisurely approach. When we went into the garden at Magdalene Rowan Williams was standing there (he's Master of the college)! P and I were being very embarrassing, nudging each other and saying "That's Rowan Williams". Anyway we went into their new building and the very nice and highly intelligent Science student showing us round couldn't find the key for the lift he said, so I sat in the lobby while they all went upstairs. While I was waiting there some people walked in, went over and pressed the lift button, got in and up it went. Then, while I was still waiting there, in walked Rowan Williams and he said Hello to me. Wow!

Bristol

Going over Clifton Suspension Bridge

The bridge from a distance

The harbour

We had a little wander round Bristol on the Friday night.