Colourful Dreamer

Sunday was a gift of a day. I trained back into London, and had planned to stay with the sisters at St Alphege's. But they had COVID, so I booked a fairly cheap place on Hotel.com. The Euro Hotel is one of quite a few guest houses/hotels on Cartwright Gardens in a pretty central part of London. They are on a curve, and each one has a slice of the what looks like one building around one edge of the garden. I had a private bathroom, which meant my bathroom was at the other end of the passageway and I was the only one with the key. Not what a older male who has to get up during the night wants. Hei aha! But is was quaint, old and lovely. The staff were super helpful. I enjoyed my stay. Initially I was going to spend the day with Rebekah, but she had a work trial, which was awesome for her, so I ended up with this quiet gift of an afternoon to rest, do some work on the computer, stroll about and enjoy some coffee. I did some of the things I had not finished for IPTOC. I sorted some pho

Week two began with me boarding a train on Friday lunchtime this time heading for Liverpool. Bonnie and I came to Liverpool in 2017 for a few days in 2017. It is a beautiful city. This time I was focused on one thing - the Liverpool game at Anfield against Bournemouth, the first home game of the EPL season. I'd bought the tickets from footballticketsliverpool   one Saturday when I was supposed to be writing a sermon, and the email popped into my inbox. I must have signed up at some point. So I checked to see what games were on while I was there and how much they were. Before I knew it I had a "cheap" ticket for Saturday, 19 August 2023 at 15:00. And I had a bit of a plan emerging for the first few weeks on my time away. End of week one, be in Liverpool. Wonderful. I've supported Liverpool on and off for a long time, since the glory days of Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness, Bruce Grobbelaar, Ian Rush, and many others,  and all those glittering trophies. I once visited

Over the last few years when attending TSSF events I have taken bags of Whittaker's  Mini-slabs, Artisan Squares, and Cocoa-pods (which are to die for, really). Maybe a sixth of my bag was taken up with chocolate when I left last year - gifts for people I/we were staying with, and gifts for IPTOC. And 5 cakes of Whittaker's Creamy Milk chocolate for Rebekah - because she needed them. It was a lot. And it weighed a lot. But it meant that I had room in my bag, space and weight wise for what I might accumulate over the next 11 weeks. A great plan. And to be honest the chocolate was well received by all - except by diabetics. O well! And then , with all the walking i was doing in my old NB shoes I got blisters. Even putting on anti-chaffing cream around my toes and heals - too late - I was hobbling.  In Liverpool I decided I needed new shoes. I tried Foot Locker for some new NB or anything for wide foot - but they were pretty uninterested in serving me. I have wide feet,

The grand adventure continued with me being in tourist mode, coupled with catching up with people mode. I was still trying to work out what the first few weeks were about really. Holiday mode. Chilling out and recovering from a tough few years. Visiting people. All of the above and more it turned out. I wasn't super organised, as I have already confessed. Too tired. Too busy. Too stressed. But I knew I had to be in Liverpool by Friday, and I wanted to catch up with Jacky in Hereford, and Helen and Dave in Lytham. Looking back I have a lot of good memories from this week. Surprising things, like Blackpool, and the joy of spending time with people. And having time on the trains to read my wee book ready for Israel. Monday morning I jumped on my pre-booked train (which I had booked to a different station to the one I thought I had - my brain kept failing me) and visited my good friend Jacky. We were at theological college together, and did youth ministry together. She used to mock me

Sabbatical 2023 - let's crack on reflecting on that. I arrived on Friday 11 August. I was staying at a friends place in the Isle of Dogs. Thanks Caroline for your amazing generosity. I stayed there three times. It was a great place to be based, once I worked out how the public transport worked. A quick bus ride into Canary Wharf, then the Elizabeth Line into central London. The Elizabeth Line also runs to Heathrow, so all good. I did get lost in Canary Wharf a few times, but that is the fun of large underground malls, especially at night. London was all about spending time with Rebekah - our youngest. London was and is tough going. You can read some of how tough here . Lots of young Kiwis and Aussies. No jobs with hard to get accommodation. It has not been the great time she hoped for. But she can escape to Europe, and has whenever the money allows. So it was so good to spend those first few days with her. I have blogged about that here . My rule was - you choose what we do, I'

It is just over a year since I went on my three month sabbatical last year.I cannot believe how fast that time has gone. I am enormously grateful for that time away. It was a life saver really. It gave me space to reflect on life and I made some big decisions while I was away, like stepping down from being an archdeacon and retiring this year. Looking back I was pretty exhausted. The COVID years were tough. While some of that time was exhilarating: working out how to be church in lock-down, how to be church when we came back, how to gather safely, how to help people reflect on that time in a healthy way, how to navigate the restrictions and vaccine passes and all the raruraru  around that; it was also draining. And then people changed their attendance habits in the middle of all that, so the numbers attending church dropped by a third. We were not unique in that. But it was hard seeing all that work over 10 or so years undone. and people were left tired, and it was hard to get things g