Ramblings along the narrow way

A nice leisurely morning, with a nice soothing bath and a good breakfast of sausages, eggs, bacon and tomatoes, which I managed to grill (apart from the eggs, which were still fried) without setting off the smoke detector!

The afternoon was spent wandering round the Tate Modern with Daniella, trying to fathom out the various works of art. I must admit, I’ve never been very good with contemporary art, and this afternoon was no exception! I stared a little at the great crack in the floor of the turbine hall, puzzled about its creation, but didn’t see the point. Some of the pieces made more sense than others, but I must admit, I’d be happier with something slightly less abstract. I think the piece which I got on most with was Water-Lillies by Claude Monet. Before we headed home we had some noodles at Wagamama, although the Udon noodles weren’t quite as expected. We then embarked on a slightly unpredictable journey on the tube, with closures and delays all over the place.

A good day. 🙂

After purchasing a drill in Argos in their clearance sale (£20 off a 700W hammer drill), and purchasing some shelves and fixings from B&Q in their clearance sale (£2 a shelf, 50p a bracket – bargain!), I finally put up some shelves a few days ago! Hopefully the shelves will stay up – the drill makes a huge racket as it hammers through the masonry, so I don’t want to be doing it too often!

I have now organised all my DVDs into order and finally have an idea of what I have. The only thing is, with this new clarity, I’m sure I owned some DVDs which haven’t surfaced. I guess I must’ve loaned them to people. I can only surmise this as I also found a few DVDs which I don’t own, but seem to have borrowed from others for quite a while! I shall endeavour to return them!

A slightly earlier Saturday morning as there was a working party at the church. Plenty of people turned up, and there were plenty of jobs to do. It was good to see people of all ages working together, working on tasks as mundane as shampooing the carpets, to carrying out maintenance on the noticeboard. By the end of the morning, we’d carried out a lot of jobs, with a distinct feeling of satisfaction.

I then wandered down to Lampton Park to play football, although no one turned up. after sitting around for 30 minutes, I went home and found out why – England were playing Estonia for Euro 2008. I guess I should pay more attention.

After a quick shower, I headed down to Feltham Evangelical Church to listen at their monthly preaching meetings. Ken Morey spoke on the Holy Spirit, and how as Christians we can grieve him. It was an edifying, if somewhat sobering, message. We were reminded that, as Christians, we should remember, repent and return to our first love, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

A quick burger from BK, and rest of the evening was spent chatting and relaxing at Sarah’s

Today was one of those funny days. It started off well, as I used my new shower in anger for the first time, and it performed superbly. The water was nice and hot, with plenty of pressure, turning my little bathroom into a mini sauna! I felt thoroughly clean and, after getting dressed I then set off for work, and the day took a weird turn.

I shut the front door behind me, pushed the door handle up, inserted the key, deadlocked the door and pulled the handle down to confirm the deadlocking… The handle span freely about its axis… This wasn’t good. I tried unlocking the door with the key, but the handle was required to retract the deadbolts! I was effectively locked out of my house, even though I had the key in my hand! After a little messing around with Allen keys and pliers, I decided to call a locksmith.

When I first moved in, I wasn’t entirely sure I had all the keys to the front door, so I searched around for a locksmith to change the lock. I found a little company called Try Security. It looked like a one man operation, but the one man was friendly, reasonably priced, and, more importantly, highly competent. With this in mind, I contacted Try Security again and, within an hour, my front door was open. He also fixed the badly-installed door handle so that I wouldn’t have a repeat occurrence! After all those shenanigans, work was rather dull!

A number of us ventured down to Box Hill for a ramble. On reaching the car park, we were surprised to find it had been invaded by Ford enthusiasts, with Capri’s, Cortina’s, Escort’s and numerous other Ford-made vehicles squashing out the usual bikers. Anyway, we donned our boots and we were off to enjoy some slightly more natural scenery. The weather was a little cloudy at first, but brightened up after lunch, becoming quite warm and pleasant in the end. The colours of Autumn were in abundance, and the bright afternoon sun brought them out in all their magnificence. Hopefully, this’ll will become a regular occurrence again!

Afterwards, I met up with some others to celebrate Joe’s birthday at TGI Fridays, in Kingston. The food was tasty, but a little cool, but the company and service made up for it!

After almost a year of very dodgy TV reception, due to what appears to have been a botched DIY attempt with the aerial by the previous occupant of my house, I now have a crystal clear picture.

Alas, I didn’t rectify the botched job, but circumvented the whole thing. Courtesy of Az,  a man from Sky to come round to fit a satellite dish to the side of the house, install some wiring and provide a Sky+ box under the telly, all for the princely sum of nothing because of some promotion.

Despite the huge number of channels available, I’ll probably only watch the usual five channels which are available to analogue terrestrial viewers, with the sole addition of BBC News 24! Ah well, we’ll see how I go.

After a relatively lazy day, I trundled down to Ridley Hall, in Battersea, for a talk on the origins of life. The journey into town was slightly eventful, with a slightly complex jaunt around Earl’s Court!

The speaker was from Creation Ministries International, and he presented a significant amount of evidence, and scientific thought, refuting the Theory of Evolution. It takes an honest atheist to admit that atheism is a faith, and that evolution is merely another step of faith. I don’t claim to know how exactly the world came about, I wasn’t there, but from the evidence and with scientific principles, I can’t say I evolution is true. An interesting presentation!

The evening finished at Ally’s new accommodation, where she provided us with tea and biscuits. It struck me that not all university accommodation is created equal – far from it!