Leaving Do

Saturday night our friend Ruth was leaving Exeter to move up to London to make a career for herself in singing and songwriting, and we met up at The Living Room in Exeter to see her off. There were some songs from Ruth herself, including a requested version of Big Yellow Taxi, and then her brother Sam played a few songs with his “Peachy Farmer” band mate. Great fun evening and just about dodged the worse of the torrential downpours!



Most of the weekend, however, was spent watching the Olympics. Can't believe how many medals Team GB (Why GB? Why not UK?) have won, I regret not having taken a few days off to watch it.

This weekend I am off to Greenbelt (http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/), quite under prepared for camping this year, but hopefully a trip to Sainsburys tomorrow night will get me all the essentials I need (Cereal bars, Wine and Torch Batteries). Really looking forward to Beth Rowley and Jo Enright, but most of all catching up with old friends!
Will blog again next week...

5 Things on 2 days off

I am on the second of 2 days off work today, I had built up a fair bit of lieu time so booked 2 random days in August off mistakenly thinking the weather would be lovely...

So instead of laying around drinking cider in the sun here are five unrelated things I have been doing and thinking about in the last week.



1. I am getting rather excited about the Olympics, generally I am indifferent about most sport, but this seems an exceptionally large and important event, with all the added side news stories of human rights, smog and drugs. From tomorrow I will be glued to BBC1 and FiveLive.

2. Been watching a few films, Anchorman last night (never seen it before, and although it's very silly it made me laugh lots), some fairly poor Woody Allen efforts, Stardust, and on Sunday night re watched There will be Blood, which is just as good, if not better the second time.



3. Amazon sent me an email this morning telling me about a new book. “As someone who has purchased or rated books by Sophocles, you might like to know his new book will be released on 14 August...” amazing, after 2500 years he is still churning them out!

4. The SPCK bookshops saga rumbles on, I feel that some of the bloggers on this issue are getting a bit obsessed and occasionally silly about the whole matter, but it has been interesting to see that Private Eye magazine have picked up the story (http://spckssg.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/better-than-a-cartoon-private-eye/) and my sense of vanity notes that I got a mention on Phil Grooms blog (http://spckssg.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/sunday-sermon/).

5. Not totally unconnected from the previous point is the fact I have finally booked to go to Greenbelt this year. I was in two minds about going (saving money for the Rome trip being the main concern), but have decided to book it anyway. The year I missed going to Greenbelt felt odd, like I had not had a proper summer, or space to relax with like-minded people. I have also not seen some people for ages, such as Dave and Maddie, Ship of Fools people, Steve and all the other people I bump into year after year. The Wibsite (http://www.wibsite.com) gathering is also always an event to remember.