Oli Otya?

The answer you're looking for is "Gyendi!"  ("Hi, how are you?" "Fine thanks"), at least if you're where I've just been.  I've just returned to the lovely drizzly British Isles after spending ten days in the significantly hotter, but equally wet (it's the rainy season) jungles of Uganda, where I've been volunteering with the Quicken Trust in a village called Kabubbu.  They like their visitors to get stuck into life in the village, which is just how I like it - our family don't really do spectator holidays!- so I've been throwing bricks and painting walls, playing international Tug'O'War, eating (and for the most part heartily enjoying) every bit of food put in front of me, and walked everywhere surrounded by a gaggle of small clingy children whose English is surprisingly good!

Making new friends!

A typical house in Kabubbu

Uganda is an amazing place.  From meeting with Geoff and Geraldine Booker from the Quicken Trust I did have some idea of what I might see before I went out there and was surprised to find that I wasn't particularly shocked by anything, as I expected to be.  With hindsight I think that the media portrayal of African countries by the West is often very sensationalist, and even with doing some background reading before I went out my understanding was not good.  Some of the people I met on my travels were in heartbreaking situations and hardships, but I also met a vibrant and character-ful community who were resourceful, hard-working, and more welcoming to us mzungu (foreigners) than most of us in the west remember how to be.  That side of things doesn't get shown on the news very often.  On the plus side, not knowing what to expect meant that I got to see everything with fresh eyes.  It's funny how you go to a new place and the things that strike you the most are the ones that make you reflect on life back home.

The outskirts of Kampala, Uganda's capital

I've come back with a head full of stories and ideas, and as usual I've recorded the entire trip in words, photographs and drawings.  Over the next few weeks I'll be posting it all up here, hopefully a new diary entry every few days as most of them are quite long.

Here was our team:

Time out!

Time is ticking down until I leave for Uganda after work tomorrow, but despite that I've still managed to have a very busy weekend.  As well as helping out at the Tigerlilies Cancer Research fundraising group's first ever Easter Craft Fair, I've been going places, having fun, and tying up a few loose ends.

Movies
First things first, I went to the cinema on Friday!  To watch this:



I only saw the trailer once and instantly knew it was just the kind of wacky time-wasting nonsense I'd been missing!  Managed to get my friend Disco, -also a connoisseur of the bizarre- to come with me, and wore my pirate hat in the cinema for the entire film.  It was great!  Aardman have a history of producing stop-motion films with a very 'British' sense of humour; Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, and TV's Creature Comforts, however I was worried they'd lost the plot slightly with Flushed Away which kept the humour but tried to use CGI to replicate the look of the plasticine figures they are so famous for.  Even with today's high standard of CGI there's just nothing like a 'real' object or person to carry a performance and I felt it lost something in the attempt.  With Pirates! however, they were back on form, using plasticine models for the characters and close-up sets, while using CGI to enhance the performance with green-screen backgrounds and a very convincing ocean, rather than try to carry it the weight of the acting.  The first two thirds were very good, with some excellent laughs, and then it the final third it really stepped it up and accelerated into Outright Brilliant.  Disco and I were cracking up over and over, and may I humbly suggest to you that you simply haven't lived until you've seen an irate Queen Victoria arrive on scene by way of being folded into a Dumb-Waiter.  The expression on her little face was priceless!

Drawing
Also, I finally got round to drawing down what I remember from my night walk up Bradgate hill.  In the moonlight it was a very surreal sight and it really stuck in my brain.

Outdoors

This morning, after helping out with the kids group at church (always a fun challenge!) my friend Tatyana and I headed off to Bradgate Park for an aimless wander and some cookies sat in my favourite tree.  It's such a peaceful place to be, and a great spot for finding shots that just seem to jump out at you.  

Looking up - a tree trunk from the inside

I still can't believe how many deer there are there, and how chilled out they are about you wandering around - provided you don't get to close.  When they stop and look at you, you know not to go any closer or they'll just run off... although this wasn't obvious to everybody.  We saw one leash-less Scottie dog get out of hand and send the entire herd running, followed by two separate groups of wanderers who just didn't understand when to leave well alone.  It was both amusing and a bit pathetic, but became funny again when a hi-vis-wearing warden stomped over to give them what for.  Justice, we both agreed, had been served.

Tree climbing.  Naturally!

Tatyana's one of those people I'm always pleased to bump into,but don't often get to spend a lot of time with, which is a shame as she's such a fun girl!  What's that thing? -let's go find out!  The path goes this way? -we should go the other way!  You hungry? -I brought cookies!  Definitely doing this again :)

Dinner

And finally, tonight it was my turn to host a Come Dine With Me for my housemates.  My melty Camembert cheese with toasty bread and cranberry sauce, veggie-friendly Sausage Casserole, and Brownie goo with ice cream failed to beat Natalie's Peach Cobbler but I totally expected that because it was divine.  In the end I got a respectable score with extra points for presentation (I love my flowers!  Half of them came from the shop, half from an obliging bush) and for my entertainment being massive boingy balloons!!  We get along really well and always have a laugh, so it's nice to deliberately decided to have that time put aside just to hang out together, and to serve each other with tasty food.  

Adding a touch of class to the proceedings!

All for a good cause!

Spent my Saturday volunteering at the Tigerlilies Cancer Research fundraising group's first ever Easter Craft Fair!  After all their hard work the day seemed to go really well, and I'm so pleased and proud of all the time and effort they put into it, and how nicely it all came off.  I was assigned to the kids activity table, which I obviously loved.  I'd already helped decorate some biscuits to sell, some more imaginatively than others...

"You're a chicken, Harry!"

The Craft Fair was held at the Fabrika IAC (independent arts centre) in Leicester, a venue for arts and culture events.  I actually attended the launch three years ago as part of a group doing circus skills to draw in the foot traffic, so it was really nice to see a few familiar faces and catch up on how the place was doing.  Having found it again I'll be very interested to see some of the events coming up there in the future.

Michelle kind-of-doesn't-exactly-do-Lent. Again.

This was my dinner today (fork included for scale), and has been my dinner for the past 7 days.

What was I doing?
In a nutshell, the Tearfund Rice and Beans Challenge.  I was Fasting, but rather than cut food out altogether as I have done before, instead I limited my diet to the kind of menu that nearly a billion people in some of the world's poorest countries have to get on with - rice and beans, and not a lot of either.  The  money I didn't spend on food that week is being donated to the Quicken Trust.  My menu for the week was as follows:
Breakfast - 25g porridge oats
Lunch and Dinner - 35g rice and 30g beans, and a tablespoon of veg for the day (I used onion or tomato to flavour my meals.  It works out at about an eighth of either per meal)
Drink - Tap water

Why was I doing it?
Although it is still Lent, this isn't exactly Lent-related (I don't like arbitrarily giving something up just because you're supposed to.  I'd rather use the time to respond to an issue that's on my heart at the time.  See Last Years Lent where I decided to experiment with Fairtrade shopping, buying things instead of abstaining from them!).  In less than a week I'll be heading out to spend 9 days in Kabubbu, a village in Uganda, as a volunteer with the Quicken Trust.  This charity has been working with the villagers to help make Kabubbu self-sufficient and self-perpetuating, so that the people there can provide for themselves in every stage of life.  As you can imagine I'm both excited and nervous about this trip, what I might encounter there, the people I'll meet, and what it will mean for the way I live my life when I get home.  I think as a Christian it will be especially challenging because issues like God, suffering and man's place on earth are all thrown into the mix.  Also, living away from home, I'd been a bit left out of the loop in terms of organising the trip, so I was feeling unprepared about that too.  I felt the need to present all these issues to God somehow, to get his perspective on it all, let him start preparing my heart for this trip, and to start grappling with these issues now, as well as just packing my bags.  Rather than pray in words I decided the best response would be to do something practical as a prayer, so I used the Rice and Beans Challenge as a guide and extended it to the whole week.


What were the results?
This month has been a real grower for me.  I've been taking lessons on the economy, reading about gender issues and sustainable living in my own time, and through this fast I've been empathising with people across the world and learning about corporate and global injustice, so all these things are combining and interlocking in my brain at the moment, but I can identify a few general ideas that stuck out from them all.

• I fasted once before (a total fast, no food, only drink), God used that to teach me how he is the most essential component to life, even more so than food, and how we need him continuously, not just once.  This time round I sort of levelled up and learned how God also designed us to have lives that are full and display how good he is.  A big part of this is variety and how it displays God's creativity and goodness - turns out variety actually is the spice of life!  There's a difference between existing and living.
• Became very aware of how of just much we consume as a nation, how we expect food, money and other resources to just be there for us if we want them, even when we don't need them.  Our culture has told us that we should be able to have anything and everything we want; but in reality this is not possible, or sometimes it brings terrible consequences when we do.  We hurt other people, both directly and indirectly, in order to benefit ourselves.
• I think there needs to be a point somewhere between the two where we get to experience life's diversity but do it in a way which doesn't damage other people, or the world as a whole.  Where we are grateful for what we have but don't get greedy for more.  This is going to take a massive shift in culture and attitude.
• Accidentally (!) lost a few pounds in weight, which sounds great until you realise that the people who have to live on this diet permanently will continue to lose weight indefinitely until they begin to starve.  I've only been doing this for a week but some people have been living this way their entire lives.  Food (or... lack of food) for thought.

I kept a diary of each day, included below the read more if you want a bit more of an insight as to what the experience was like and just what was going through my head.  As is usual with my diary-write ups I've improved some sentences, but not left anything out.

Spring Colour Challenge 2012

I got out of work early on this lovely and sunny first day of spring, so with the extra time I set myself a Colour Challenge.  Basically I have to find as many colours as I can within my time limit.  Here's my results (click to enlarge)...

If you want a go, here are the rules:

1)  You have half an hour to find as many colours as you can, record them with your camera, and get back to your house.  Get your skates on!

2)  You must do this in your local neighbourhood.  The boundaries are as far as you can walk from your house in 10mins, or cycle in 5 mins in any direction you choose.

3)  The colours have to be 'alive'.  A red letterbox, purple wall, or blue jumper doesn't count.  Animals do, if you can get them to stay still long enough.

4)  Don't trespass on private property or make a nuisance of yourself (not that I think you would!)  So you can lean over a fence, but no sneaking round other people's gardens :)

5)  Different varieties of a colour is fine (e.g. light yellow, dark yellow, butter yellow, greenish yellow).  Green doesn't count.  I did start trying to do green but I think that's a whole other challenge!

6)  Post your discoveries on your blog/Facebook/Twitter page so everyone can see all the cool stuff you found.  GO!!!

It's time to play the music...

I've been really appreciating band lately.  I play first clarinet in Loughborough Concert Band, which I joined after I graudated and was trying to find cheap ways to occupy myself whilst jobhunting.  Since picking it up in high school (although I'd dabbled in a few other instruments beforehand - we're a pretty musical family) I'd been playing pretty constantly throughout the years but it fell by the wayside in uni due to my lectures not fitting with the days their band practised.

I didn't really realise how much I'd missed playing in a group until I started up again, but there's something about playing alongside others that really takes you out of yourself.  Practising on your own just isn't the same, even if you try and play with a backing track.  I think other people have the same thing with sports.  I spoke to a friend who does rock-climbing recently and part of why she finds it so relaxing is that when you're dangling off a cliff-face you really can't think about anything else.  It's the same with music.  When you're playing you have to concentrate on one thing and one thing only, because if you don't play your best it ripples throughout the band.  Everyone's got their heads down (or up, rather - observez le conducteur!) and is pulling together to produce this sound, this movement of music.  Everyone is vital, everyone is necessary, and if they don't play, you notice.  The balance is thrown off.  This is especially true of the lower instruments; the trombone, tuba, french horns and bassoon.  Those instruments whose parts are often simpler, or don't play the tune.  It may seem like they don't get a lot of time in the spotlight but I miss them when they aren't there.  There's a depth and breadth to the sound that is absent without them. 

Existential Crisis

Last Saturday I went up to Bradgate Park with my friend Katie.  I was having a very busy day, dashing about trying to get through as much of my to-do list as possible, and was even late picking her up.  It was just one of those weeks where there's too much to get done, not enough time to do it, and when your goal is something that takes a little time (in my case, trousers that fit) the result is usually frustration and stress at your own ineptitude.  Despite this Katie and I hadn't seen each other for a while and I'd forgotten just how well we get on.  Within minutes we were cackling away at pretty much everything, including our inability to actually find the park!  We got there in the end though, sneaking in through the back gate

Suddenly I felt completely calm.

3D or 3Don't?

There's an interesting article in The Guardian today about the rather dissapointing sales of 3D cinema tickets in 2011.  Initially the 2009 reboot of 3D films that avoided the old red-and-blue glasses of the 1950s proved very popular, with James Cameron's Avatar being made specifically as a flagship for the technique, and no one can say that it wasn't a very pretty film (even if the plot wasn't as groundbreaking as the effects.  The jury's still out on whether it was a blue version of Pocahontas, Fern Gully or Dances With Wolves). 

For a while 3D films did well, but now their popularity seem to be declining rapidly, with more people opting for the standard 2D versions.  The author of the report on this believes that now the inital period of experimentation is over it's mainly due to the recession.  When a 3D ticket costs half-again as much as a 2D ticket it's just too big a spend, espcially if the cinema trip is a family outing.  Additionally those with contacts or glasses may find the 3D specs hard to wear, and a friend of mine who is partially blind in one eye can't see 3D at all - she has to wear the glasses just to stop seeing the picture in double!  However the theory that it's all down to the recession has a problem as it assumes that once the economy picks up the 3D ratings will return fully to their old figures.  I don't think that will be the case, in fact I think there's something else going on altogether.

ENFP

Sorting through some papers, I found something I'd forgotten about; the results to a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator I'd taken part in a year or two back as part of a group exercise.

Screw your brains in...

Spring cleaning

There's something about the whispers of oncoming spring that makes you just want to Get Up and Do Something.  Winter is a time for bunking in, staying warm, eating hearty foods, huddling and hot water bottles, everything slowing down in a subconscious effort to preserve heat and energy, regardless of how good your central heating might be.  But even if it's still chilly you know spring is coming.  The world around you is stretching itself, ready to burst back into life and you can smell it. I'm not kidding, you can smell the day that one season becomes another.  Try it sometime.  I'm not the only one to have noticed this, so I'm going to defer to Mr Badger and Mr Mole at this point:

`Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.  It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor [...] and bolted out of the house without even eating to put on his coat. [...]  It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting--everything happy, and progressive, and occupied.  Chapter 1, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham

'...once the year has really turned, and the nights are shorter, and halfway through them one rouses and feels fidgety and wanting to be up and doing by sunrise, if not before--you know!----'  Mr Badger, Chapter 4.

Illustration by E.H. Shepard

The other thing that spring is good for is giving you a good kick up the behind.  In winter everything slows down, and it's often hard to keep up with the good intentions you had during the lighter months when you weren't so tempted to bundle it all up under thick jumpers.  It hit me yesterday that I've become a bit lax in some areas over the cold months, and now that the sun is coming back I want to pick up the slack.  That in turn got me thinking about the changes I've already started making over my life in the past year...

Anticipation...

The more I see of this film, the happier it makes me.

When Merida rips the constricting clothes open yelling "Curse this dress!" and starts firing off arrows I want to cheer.  For her culture it may be completely out of order for her to "shoot for her own hand", but all she wants is for someone to recognise her for who she is, and to not be paired with a man she doesn't respect.  This strikes me as very sensible.

It reminds me of a scene from Studio Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart, which is about a girl who is inspired to pursue her talent for writing when she meets a boy whose passion for violin making is deciding his whole future.  Through the film they get to know each other better and early one morning the boy arrives back from studying violin making in Italy and immediately cycles over to see her.  He wants to show her the sunrise from his favourite spot on the hilltop so she hops on the back of the bike and off they go.  But on the road up the hill the boy starts to struggle.  She asks:
"Should I get off?."
"No, stay on!" he replies.  "I decided I was going to ride up this steep hill, carrying you with me."
Her face says it all.  "Who said you could decide that?!"  She jumps off the bike and starts to push from behind.  "I don't want to be just a burden for you.  If I'm going with you I'm going to help you."  He agrees, and they reach the top together, each pulling their weight.

I've use that scene to explain to people how I feel about particular issues in the past; mainly money.  It seems like a good model for a relationship; two people who both bring something different to the table but neither plays second fiddle to the other.  Each of them gets to do what they can to contribute, and they move forward together, facing the same direction, and each supporting the other so that no one person is forced to bear all the weight.  If and when I do find myself getting into a relationship, although I know there will be times when one of us needs to lean more heavily on the other, for the most part I'd expect to be allowed and supported in being fully myself and contributing to what we're doing together.  And my partner should expect exactly the same from me.

Until that time comes, I'll be shooting for my own hand.  If he wants to match me, let him.

Geek Safari

I've been wanting to do this for a while... Welcome to My Comic Collection!!!

Now calm down, I know what you're thinking, but there's not a superhero in sight and it's only a small collection because I'm actually very picky about what I buy.  I'll borrow from friends and raid the library and get hold of digital copies (I have most of Nightwing on the hard drive) but I love the whole 'Book as Objet d'Art' thing where issues are all bound together with designed covers, can sit on your shelf proudly, and are also reasonably hardy.  This can, however, make them a bit more expensive so I tend to wait until I see something I really want, dither over it for ages, and then give in and splash out on a couple at once.

So here they all are, in the order I bought them over the past four years:

1.  Blankets by Craig Thompson

A friend of mine introduced me to the local comic book shop shortly after I started my degree.  In fact, my first comic book shop.  It hadn't taken me long to work out that I was really into sequential narrative so I was in heeeeeaaaavvveeeeennn!  I had heard about Blankets in a class and although I couldn't shell out the money for it at the time I kept on going back to that shop to flick through it's crisp monochromatic pages, longing for my birthday when no doubt money would be bestowed on me by loving relatives (it was) and I could spend it frivolously on that most nerdy of literary arts, the comic book (I did).

Blankets is 1.5 inches thick, and the first major comic I'd ever seen that wasn't superhero based.  Instead it's a semi-autobiographical story of a young man trying to discover himself through the dramas of his first love, his religious upbringing, his hopes and fears... just the little stuff.  It is beautiful and quiet and deep and I just keep re-reading it.  From then on I was hooked...

Discoveries

Went home for the weekend and found out that my parents have every card I've made them out on display, even ones from last year!  Parents are lovely :)  I even found a card I forgot to scan (yes I shamelessly nicked the line in it from 500 Days of Summer but only because it was such a good one)

... but today you get a card!!!

I also found some photos of me and one of my sisters from when we were little and photographs were still physical objects!  I kind of miss those shiny album photos.  I must be about four/five years old in these.

Our conservatory going up.  It's being replaced this week, so it's weird I found this.
Even at a young age I was all over the paints!

I remember this cake!  I was starting to think I made it up!
Also, check out those rad pajamas :)  

Weather report, and Massive Self-Improvement Drawing Project

Sooooo, what been happening?  Well we've had snow for starters.  Some of my work colleagues weren't too happy about it but I refuse to complain about snow.  We get it so rarely and for such a short time that it's always worth making the most of it while it's here, which essentially means doing everything you would normally do, but outdoors and in a woolly hat.

Life has been getting busy again, but despite the odd week of short-temperedness and panda eyes (partially caused by what I think must be squirrels in our roof that keep thumping about and waking me up at unreasonable hours, but mostly self-inflicted) I'm determinedly clinging onto my resolve to push myself in the areas I want to improve at.  'Good enough' is no longer good enough, and I'm trying to take everything one step further than usual.

I did another doodled Bible passage video the other day, very rushed and not even coloured.  After the last one had a 2-week deadline on it Amy and I asked for more notice for this one so that we could make something a bit more worth.  To be fair they did give us twice as much notice... but the passage they asked us to do was twice as long so I'm not sure they really understood what we had been trying to say.  Anyway, schedules being what they are we managed to get together a few times and get something done but it was not my best work and I felt it.  Someone described the one we did for Christmas as "homegrown", which is absolutely fair and true (and I rue my continued lack of laptop, with all the better programmes on it that would let me add moving parts) and it was fit for purpose, but it's getting to the point where yes, that's fine, but I don't want to be making homegrown stuff any more.  I want to put proper time into things, to bump them up to a more professional level.

So this doodly slideshow/video was rushed through and went out as normal, but it was pencil lines only and privately I wasn't too happy about it, but then the schedule for the talks changed and it wasn't used.  Brilliant!  I snatched it back off Dropbox and set to work colouring the thing - at least I could show a modicum of effort.  It's still a quick job, but I would have hated them to show a piece of work I was ashamed of.  All in all I guess it just goes to show how much I care about my work these days, which has got to be a good thing.  It's all part of...

Operation Better Drawinger!

In other news I have finally decided to start acting like a Proper Drawrer.  I've been looking at a lot of artists blogs and artwork, compared it with my own, and have picked a few things I need to work on:

1) Draw bigger.  I'm so used to doodling on whatever small scraps of paper are laying around, or in travel-sized A5 sketchbooks that even on bigger paper my drawings are small and I lose a lot of detail.  I tried switching up from A4 paper to A3 once I got past the rough draft stage and the difference was instantly noticeable





2) Ink my drawings using a brush rather than leaving them in pencil out of fear of screwing it up (sometimes pencil is appropriate, sometimes it's a cop-out).  I went out and after a lot of deliberation brought some brushes to try and found 2 of the 3 I really liked.  The third brush was too small to be really useful; I think I just wanted it because it felt safer. They are both Windsor & Newton Cotman 222 Designer brushes, which is a brand I've used before and get on well with. At first I wasn't sure about them because the bristles looked really long in comparison to the short 'n' stubby bristles I usually go for with my blocky and scuffy way of handling acrylic painting, but once I'd learned to hold the brush right and not at an angle like I would a pencil -bad habit- it really follows your hand, holds buckets of ink and you can get a really lovely smooth taper on your line.  It was good to have to lose some control and just trust that the brush would give you what you needed, even if it wasn't what you asked for.  I usually find that I lose a lot of energy between the rough sketch and final drawing because I stiffen up trying to "get it right", so this might be a good solution.  I especially liked it when the ink ran out and the I ended up with a textured, dry-brush line for a while.

3)  Lettering.  Oh my gosh I suck at lettering.  Probably because it holds no interest for me so I find it difficult to apply myself, so I never do any and therefore never improve, but if I'm going to write things on pictures I need to learn to do it right, or with at least a passable degree of skill.  And with the damn brush.  Faith Erin Hicks does it well.  So expect some more of that, and expect it to be very bad to begin with.  I had a go on my sister's birthday card, in Italian, and it wasn't completely awful, although several days down the line I look at it and wince at the inconsistencies.  I also question the straightness of that violin.  Hmmm...  Which brings me onto my next...

4)  Backgrounds.  Again, I've never cared much for backgrounds - they aren't alive and they have too many straight lines in them, but now I'm seeing that I need to consider them earlier in the drawing process and make them work for me.  Maybe try and find characters and narratives in them the way I do in people.  They don't have to be amazing and intricate - a colour wash is enough sometimes- but they do serve a purpose and I need them.  For example, right now I'm half way through a drawing that started as a small doodle and didn't include a background at the time, but now it's bigger it makes no sense without a setting and a context.  I'm hopefully going to hash it out this weekend, and will post it eventually.

All these things I need to work on, and I'll post progress as I do, but lets end on a happy note, an art trade.  Amy, who makes the doodle videos with me, also makes does some beautiful wizardry with fabrics.  When I inherited some clothes that were too big for me I asked her to alter a few of them (for a fee, of course.  Gifts and small favours are one thing, but I don't hold with this idea of not paying your friends for proper projects.  If they're really your friend, respect their hard work!)  She did a great job and I have two new tops and a skirt out of it.  Then, a few weeks later, she texted me to ask if I would draw her a picture she'd had in her head for some time since talking to God about something.  It was of her laying on the back of a lion.  So I texted back "Err... ok!"  Armed with my new inking brush, larger paper, and the notion that the setting for my characters should be deliberate and not a hurried afterthought, I spent a few hours thumbnailing and researching lions, and here's what I came up with:

I am pleased with this. It's simple, but I drew good and had fun and the linework is better and it all just worked.  A week later and I am still pleased.  Amy loved it, and when she asked how much to give me I laughed and charged her the price of altering my clothes.  Paid in Trade!  Also finally discovered the point of the 'Flow' slider in Photoshop, which is nice :)

A rant.

I have never been so angry at work as I am right now.  I don't get angry very often; normally I'll get cross or annoyed, but right now it's just ice cold anger that's clenching up the pit of my stomach.

Croeso i Cymru!

A new adventure this weekend - I've been to Wales!  I have proof...

Once a year my church, Open Heaven, has a Weekend Away at the Quinta centre in Shropshire, right on the Welsh border.  It's a chance for us to get away, spend time together to grow as a community, and put aside a bit more space for God in what can be very busy lives.

I really needed this weekend actually.  I've been a bit out of sorts, particularly over the past week as I try to reconcile my work-life balance.  It's a Catch 22 that at the moment my job holds very little interest for me, but takes up the time I need to practise in order to get to a professional level at what I'd rather be doing.  I have to do the one because I won't yet succeed at the other, but doing the one prevents me from succeeding.  It's all very frustrating, and I've been feeling like I'm having to fight for even the smallest amount of time, exhausting myself by dashing around outside of work trying to keep my life interesting.  Vacating the rest of my life was exactly what I needed.  It forced me to stop, to take the time to think it all over, get God's opinion on a couple of things, and be encouraged that I will have to fight for the things I want but it's worth doing because essentially I'm fighting for the things that make me Me.

In the news

I recently wrote a short article for my church's monthly newsletter, about my experience with the Loughborough Street Pastors.  Here it is! 

Even though I've had to take a step back from going out with the team now that I've entered full time employment and need a more regular sleep-pattern, it's been a fantastic few years.  I've been amused, shocked, wet, cold, scared, humbled and most of all, challenged.  It gives you a whole new perspective on God and your town.  If anyone else out there is dithering over the idea of joining, I'd highly recommend it.

I've been reading... and watching... a whole bunch of stuff.

I've been a bit of a culture vulture this week, indulging in a serious film, a not-so-serious film, a book I will probably never read again, and a comic of epic proportions that I still haven't finished.

• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• Julie and Julia
• Foucault's Pendulum (by Umberto Eco)
• Habibi (in progress)

Lost and Found

So my church has no home, which has been fine so far but we're getting pretty big now.  There's an old church building in the student part of the town called St Peters that hasn't been used in years, and along with another church in the town we're co-buying it, doing it up and putting it back to work.  It'll be great to have such a large space we can use whenever we want.

A group of us went over there a few weeks back to talk about what work was going to be done and have a pray about it, and while I was walking round I saw a bit of card leaning against a wall.  When I turned it over it was caked thick in dust, but it turned out to be an original pencil sketch of a church - but not the church we were in!  I don't know how it got there or when it was drawn, but (being me) I was worried it might get forgotten and damaged in the works so I asked to take it home and look after it, see if I could clean it up a bit.  Maybe even find out who it belonged to and give it back to them.  

I spent most of the afternoon stripping off the old mouldy mount and cleaning the sketch up with an eraser and some cotton buds, trying to remove the dust without hurting the picture.  It came out really nice in the end and it's really a lovely sketch.  Next I had it re-mounted and hunted down a frame.  It turned out to be signed T.A. Clarke, and was of Loughborough Parish Church; All Saints.  After a bit of research Mr/s Clarke couldn't be found so I emailed All Saints' rector instead, to tell her what had happened and ask if they'd like it back.  The nice thing about Loughborough is that you're only a few links away from anybody.  A member of her congregation has friends that live on my street, only a few doors down!  I dropped the picture off with them last night.  Felt really good to see it on it's way back home :)

Hourly Comic Day 2012

I did this last year - the idea is to do a drawing/strip for every hour of the day you are awake (see the Official Website for the international collection, now including mine!).  Since I now work full time as a receptionist I didn't quite manage to do every hour, so the gaps are when it got very busy.  If I get the chance I will fill them back in.  That said, the quality of most of the drawings is a big improvement on last year, which is good to see.  Some of the strips are quite large, so after the first one, I'll hide the rest under the Read More.  If they're too small, click on 'em and they'll get bigger.

So please enjoy watching my drawing style change multiple times throughout the day, get better or worse depending on how stressed I am, and alternate between 'proper' observational drawings and ridiculous whimsy.  You know me :)

Edit: Blogger, what is wrong with you?  Why do you resize every image I upload when they all started out the same size?  *sigh*