I’m becoming used to these nice long Saturday morning lie-ins. I think it aligns well with my natural tendency to sleep. 🙂 Another cholesterol loaded breakfast of bacon, eggs and tomatoes, and then down to the park with Sam for some footy.

When we got there, we met up with the others – It was freezing! I think this was the general consensus! Once the game had started, things improved as the cold was less noticeable as we ran around a little more. The aim of this after noon was to improve our game playing as a team, with an emphasis on passing, marking and positioning. I think we did rather well, and the team which kept thinking about its strategy won out in the end.

A nice hot bath and a clean change of clothes later, we (and some of the girls) descended on Sarah’s house, for an interesting cooking competition. (Sarah’s idea, not mine!) The aim was to choose a recipe from a list of eight, purchase the ingredients, and then produce the final cooked product. In the interests of health, the recipe was a dessert. The group was divided into two teams, and the criteria would consist of time taken to purchase ingredients, budget considerations of ingrediants, time taken to get food into oven, presentation, texture, taste and cleanliness of resulting kitchen. The two teams chose their recipes and were off. After 2½ hours of slaving in the kitchen, the two teams had their creations ready for Sarah’s parents to judge. The team consisting of Dave, Deanna, Karen, Susanna and Tim was declared victorious, despite a little protestation. A fun evening, and interesting insight into the culinary skills of the participants. Maybe the next challenge will be a little greater…

A good day. 🙂

After a pleasant lie-in, I finally awoke and cooked myself a breakfast of bacon, eggs and tomatoes….mmmm. Plenty of calories for the day!

Met up with some of the lads from the church – and some others who were brave enough to associate with us – for a game of football. Despite the injury I sustained on Monday, I was able to move, albeit slowly and without too much vigour! The teams were very even, ending in 3-2, which is very low for a five-a-side game.

After a quick shower and McDonalds, we were off to Premier Karting in Reading for Nigel’s stag evening. Once we’d all convened, paid-up and digested a quick safety briefing we were racing! The evening was broken up into 24 heats of 6 contestants per heat, culminating into a final of the top 8 drivers. It was very well put-together, and you weren’t left waiting around for too long if you weren’t racing. While Nigel didn’t end up as the winner at the end of the day, that fell to Trevor, he did have the honour of having the fastest lap time during the heats. I came 10th out of 24, which wasn’t bad considering the competition. A fun evening, and I even managed to get some photos. 🙂

Managed to damage myself somehow on the football pitch this evening. I tried to quickly change direction and suddenly found pain in my lower back! I didn’t do much running or direction changing after that. Maybe I’m getting too old for running around?

Anyway, after a rather painful game, I sauntered up to Hayes to the Grapes Tandoori to celebrate Richard’s birthday with a few others. I remember when he used to be a plucky teenager – another hint I’m getting old! An enjoyable evening spent relaxing, chatting, adjusting my back and celebrating.

I’d received a “Sorry we missed you” note yesterday from Royal Mail. I’d been sent a parcel by Recorded Delivery, but wasn’t in, so I had to go and collect it. At my previous address, I would have to pick up such parcels from the Brentford sorting office, but today was my first foray to the Slough sorting office. As I approached the sorting office, my heart sunk as I caught glimpse of a large queue coming out of the entrance. I parked up the car and joined the queue – at least it was a nice sunny day. I was quite surprised that within a few minutes I was signing for my parcel and walking out of the office with it! This would never have happened in Brentford, even with a tiny queue, you’d expect to spend ages waiting. Maybe Betjeman was wrong, maybe things aren’t so bad in Slough after all?

The afternoon was spent at the induction service of my friend Robin Asgher at Cranford Baptist Church. He’d been working there as a full-time evangelist. However the church didn’t have a pastor and so he was effectively doing the work of a pastor, so it was good to see him officially given the title of the pastor of the church. The Rev. Gary Brady delivered a well-focussed sermon on Acts 6:3,4

We will… give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.

The primary role of a pastor is to pray and to preach the word, and the pastor, the members and the community must always remember this. For without prayer and preaching, the pastor may as well give up.

After the service, I spent the time catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a long time – a good afternoon!

The day finished off at Ridley Hall evangelical church for a talk on Christianity and other religions. The speaker didn’t run through a comparison list of religions, but instead took us to the core of Christianity, with it unique message of God, in his grace, seeking man and reconciling himself with men, unlike all other religions which tell of man seeking God and trying to reconcile himself with God. For Christianity isn’t a religion of blind faith, but of a seeing, thinking faith, a religion which ties up with truth and fact. The more we understand the truth in the word of God, the more we live it and the more it speaks for itself.

Well, I’m now living in a new home, both physically and virtually. Moving home is hard work, and that was just the virtual side of things! After significant help from Ally, David, Dave, Deanna, Jason, Nigel, Sarah and my brother and his wife, all my physical worldy possessions were packed and transported safely to my new abode. Some of it was even unpacked for me at the other end. After a few weeks of slowly unpacking everything, working out where things were, sorting out utilities and surviving Christmas (cards, presents, parties…arghhh), as well as carry on with life, I was finally ready to set aside some time to transplanting my blog. This wasn’t helped by Blueyonder terminating my account immediately!

After a little rummaging around, I found that WordPress was quite popular with bloggers, and had a Greymatter import facility! A few attempts later, I have a working blog again. Now all I need to do is tie up the loose ends and all will be well again. 🙂

If you find any errors in the imported blog entries, please let me know.

The week has been pretty much going along as usual. There have been a few memorable points though. On Monday evening, Derek scored two goals. On Wednesday, I must’ve witnessed one of the more unusual fouls ever committed in a frame of snooker – Ed was chalking up his cue and fumbled the chalk, it then landed on the green ball which was minding its own business on the baize – easy four points for me!