I'm in trouble again

On Friday morning I was dropping my daughter off at school (she was late back from her paper round). The road outside is narrow and quite busy, with cars parked on both sides of the road and traffic weaving in and out. I stopped to give way to a wide box van coming fast towards me between two parked cars in front, and as soon as it had passed I moved into the gap. Except that some lunatic cyclist had flown through the tiny gap between me and the fast-moving box van, so just as I pulled out to go round the parked car he was there and my front offside wing pushed him sideways off his bike.

He fell quite heavily, but got up quite quickly and I picked up his bike. Back on the footway, he was still groaning but professed to be OK. He declined to take my details. We exchanged apologies, and went our separate ways.

Turns out he is in my daughter's registration class.

On Tuesday I had to drop off my daughter at the school again (she didn't want rain on her art homework). I was met by a policeman looking for a car like mine. "Excuse me sir, but please don't be offended if I ask if you were involved in an incident with a cylcist last Friday?"

It turns out that in the evening he went to hospital, and was told he had a broken arm and a broken leg.

So I face probably two years of hassle and paperwork and increased insurance premiums.

In terms of responsibility:

He should not have been flying through that gap
I should have checked my mirrors.

So I suppose it's 50/50 and one for the powers that be to resolve.

But when I am thrown into the deepst dungeon and they throw away the key, please come and get me out!

Unemployment prayer group II

Only one person came last night - the new woman from last week.

So I breached all the churches policies re not being alone with someone of the opposite gender, not praying alone for vulnerable people etc.

Next week we will meet in the foyer, which is a bit more public than the pastoral room we have been in.

I actually reminded all the people I set up the group for, but none came. "I have bought me a cow", "I have married a wife", etc. I originally booked the room for 4 weeks, so I will give them two more goes. If they still don't turn up, I will close the group. The new lady will be happy to go to the ladies 'Finding Your Way' group instead.

What do your kids look like?

I was giving my son the briefest of introductions to ethical methods of selecting the gender of your children, e.g. adjusting diet and the timing of those special hugs. We had tried these, and it worked. But it occurred to me that this may have been more God honouring our wishes (faith seen in actions as per James 2) than any real scientific value in those methods.

This got me thinking about Jacob and Laban - you remember the story of how Jacob was paid in stripy sheep so when the sheep were mating he put stripy things in front of their eyes, and lo and behold out came stripy kids. Probably not scientific, probably God working miracles.

So in my reverie, I started an imaginary sermon on this: "..... if this was a scientific principle, all your kids would look like the back of bike shed....."

Shall I do it next time I'm in the pulpit?

Parenting Course

My wife and I have been asked by the church to run a parenting course. That is to say, it is our initiative, but endorsed by the church. Which is nice.

It grew out of discipline issues in the various toddler groups (which my wife runs), with the softy-softly mums and the strict mums both having naughty children fighting each other. One Mum asked for a 'session' on discipline.

We asked the curate for support, and she went of in the wrong direction trying to bring in a child psychologist to do the talk, but in the end we brought her down to earth. But she did delay things a lot and so Mrs quiety did a discipline session with the mums on her own. It went very well.

But the book she used had the details of how to run a parenting course, and we approached the curate and asked if we could do it. She resisted, saying she would prefer us to do the 'New Wine' parenting course. When we got home nd looked at the book again, we found it WAS the New Wine course.

So now everyone is happy, and we are doing our first session of 13th September. Hopefuly at east one parent will turn up!

Righteousness

Read this useful summary in the case of Piper v Wright. (I go with Wright - righteousness is a state of existence, not a measure of sinlessness, and is not a thing that can be imputed)

I'm mean!

For the duration of a recent visit to the supermarket my 2 year old daughter sat in the trolley prodding my belly and saying loudly "you're mean!"

Shall I hand myself in to the NSPCC now?

Unemployment prayer group

Since there are a few people without work in our church, I did a straw poll and found that they would like a prayer group to pray specifically into their situations, opportunities, etc. They told me Tuesday night is the best.

So, with the Vicar's endorsement, I set up the group, booked the room, etc, and had the first meeting last night. None of my candidates turned up. Except for one who arrived and said 'what uneployment prayerprayer group? I'm here for band practice'.

So it looked bad.

But all was not lost - a lady who has only been coming to the church for tthree weeks came, and turned out to be full of faith. She also brought her friend from another city - another prayer warrior albeit just visiting. And another unexpected attendee - a man who has a job and jsut wants to support any prayer group taht's going, particularly one for the unemployed.

So mixed news. But it was a good night overall - one of those prayer meetings that overruns without anyone being aware of it (expect my wife stuck with baby at home)

Ordination

You may recall that early in my unemployment I was looking at applying for ordination, only to be knocked back on financial grounds.

Now that I am back in work I can start to look at options to sort out those finances. So who knows what will happen next?

It's never straight forward!

My agent sent my pay check to someone else's account in error. Tey are trying to get a correct payment to me, but it means that I am out of pocket for now, just in that awkward moment between my benefits stopping and pay starting. I have £5.93 in my account, my wife has £20, and we've got to do the week's shopping for our large family as well as pay the gas bill and phone bill. Oh, yes, and the mortgage too.

That's all the agent's fault. BUt then for next week, I forgot to update the date on my timesheet, so by the time I had managed to get a manager to sign the altered version I had technically missed the deadline. So next week looks bleak too! At least the week afetr that should be OK.

I'm Back

Yeehaa! I'm Back

Not helped by Blogger locking me out of my account for several months!!!!

The main news is that I am back at work. No longer unemployed! It was 16.5 months between finishing my old job and starting my new one.

I am back at my main client between 2006 and 2009 - same money, nearly the same desk, basically the same work.

Basically, my testimony is that the Lord cared for me while I was off work. I'll give more details in future posts.

The main thing is, I'm back.

However, I won't be posting long or frequently - one of my new resolutions being to be more diligent at work and less abusive of the company's internet provision.