Andy's 'tell me a story...' blog

There is a joke spot on Holiday club every day and the material tends to vary from mildly amusing (not all of the laughter is forced) to fairly depressing (at least the groans are real). I have already included a personal favourite in a previous post but the thing that has brought the biggest smile to my face was a joke from a particularly nervous 8 year old that went somewhat awry:

What do you get if you pour hot water down a rabbit hole?
- Hot cross rabbits

I saw something which will probably be of interest to Anna whilst waiting to pick up someone from the train station a few days ago.

Just outside the station two older chavs were teaching a younger lad how to walk. The style was the sort of spring off one foot, roll shoulders, land on other foot, and repeat (ad infinitum/nauseum) that is standard amongst the chav community. The only thing more entertaining than watching them demonstrate, pausing periodically to explain some of the finer points of the manouvre, was the fact that the novice chav was quite obviously not a fast learner and was clearly causing his mentors a great deal of frustration.

Finally... let me warmly recommend this website about ninjas as the sort of comedy goodness that might add some much needed joy to a day of dissertation research.

= Holding hands before marriage! Josh Harris would not approve...

(I = loser!)

I don't seem to have any good stories at the moment and so in honour of kids holiday club, which is going on this week at church, I'm going to forgo the usual in favour of the best joke I have ever heard from a seven year old:

Why do the French eat snails?
- Because they don't like fast food

Also, I stole some nice photos from Vicky Cooley's msn of summer fun in Wollaton park so I think I'll scatter them about so that we can get excited about the summer which may or may not be just a few short months away (depending on global climate change, el niño, the next ice age, any major eschatological events, the white witch taking over, George W. Bush declaring 'war on summer' or the very real possibility that it might just be cloudy for the whole of July/August).

I have my interview for the apprenticeship at Christ Church Bromley tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I have the job, assuming I don't say anything too crazy, but I still feel fairly nervous thinking about having the formal interview!

I'm looking forward to dinner and drinks with Mark, Caz, Jess and one or two other London based fun people tomorrow night. Should be a welcome break from essays and maybe it will provide me with some stories.

If you are in London and can tell me a story, or just fancy coming along (and for preference know me...) we will be meeting at 7pm outside Covent Garden tube station.

If you are not from London but have a story for me anyway please email it or put it in the comments.

Finally, the big debate:
Is the delivery room any place for a man?
- I realise that there is a lot of cultural pressure these days to be there but I wonder whether we are really any use at all?
- Would the lady's mum not be a better source of support?
- What is wrong with pacing back and forth in the waiting room?

Those who know me will have some idea where I intend to be!

Please post your comments below...

Maybe I'm working too hard but I found the following story quite chucklesome:

'After eye surgery in 1924, [James] Joyce was forced to recuperate in a dark room with his eyes bandaged. Myron Nutting visited the clinic in Paris and experienced a moment of peculiararly Joycean surrealism. The now-famous writer was lying on his back in the dark, his eyes under dressings as big as small pillows. "Hello, Joyce," he said cheerily. Joyce remained silent and motionless for a few seconds, then reached under his pillow and drew out a composition book and a pencil. Slowly and carefully, by touch, he made an entry, put his book and pencil back under the pillow, then held out his hand to say, "Hello, Nutting." Aware of his friend's bafflement, he took up the notebook again and showed him the words, "Carriage sponge," which left Nutting no wiser.'
(Mark Wollaeger, Between Stephen and Jim: Portraits of Joyce as a Young Man, p. 352)

Tonight's blog is brought to you by the letter B, the number 2, and chicken breasts wrapped in bacon with melted cheese inside.

B is for basking in the comedy of placing my cardboard cut out outside my housemate's door so that when he woke up he was confronted with it an inch from his face. Oh, the joys of having a lifesize image of yourself!

B is also for birds pooping on people.

Last summer I went to Hyde Park to meet a friend for lunch, which is about a 20 minute journey from Bromley. I arrived, said hello and sat down to eat my lunch. Within 30 seconds a bird had pooped on my arm so massively that I had no hope of cleaning it up in the toilets. I had to catch the train home.

It makes me feel much better to think of EK (always a source of good stories), who was hit in the face by a poop so big it "completely covered my face" (Pretty bad). "Some of it went in my mouth" (worse). Still credit to her friend who suggested she could just wipe it off and get on with the day.

2 is for the number of friends I'm going to have in Bromley during the Easter holiday now everyone has a job up North/ clinicals/ a language year abroad/ has disappeared for evermore. Please contact me if you are from London and fancy going for a beer.

2 is also for the number of stories I have about someone from Nottingham CU involving crashing someone else's car. Once into the back of Seb's car, once into the back of a bus. I'm not mean enough to reveal her identity but you know who you are!!

Chicken breasts wrapped in bacon with melted cheese inside are one of the finest foods imaginaable. We had these for dinner at Seb's and I will certainly be cooking them soon because they rule.

I've noticed that other people tend to include comments on their lives, how their day is going, etc. rather than just random disconnected stories and photos. Anna is particularly good at this. Here goes then:

Today I will be mostly:
Getting my hair cut (many thanks to Helen Payne)
Having a friend to cut your hair is definitely the way forward. It avoids all of those awkward conversations about how you are a student, and yes that does mean that you don't work as hard with someone who has a job, and no you don't have a lot of money, and no you don't have much planned for the summer, and wow, two weeks in Ayanapa sounds like a lot of fun, etc. etc. I'm not having a go at hairdressers I just don't have the gift of small talk. Or the gift of discerning between different kinds of Revels (but thats a different story).

Procrastinating and drinking tea
Because I should be doing the reading for an essay about Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but I have that end of term I'm-already-on-holiday feeling and haven't yet developed that I-have-twenty-three-thousand-words-to-write-in-the-next-eight-weeks feeling which would be pretty helpful.

Having dinner with Jamie Keshwara and Alison Birch
I am very excited about this because I have not seen enough of either of these people this year. Also Tom is cooking us his famous (infamous?) sausage and cider casserole!

Some things that have little or nothing to do with my day:

René Descartes walks into his local and orders a pint. While the landlord is pouring his drink he points out:
- There is someone sitting in your usual seat René, is that ok?
- I think not, the great rationalist replies and then disappears.
(Drum roll)

Its not a good joke but it tickled my fancy!

I wish to add my comment to those on Anna's blog and Jon's blog about twentieth-century woman writers. I attempted to take a photo of Frazer performing his women writer face on the handover weekend however thanks to some joker (you know who you are) all I got was the above image of a dinner plate with ginger hair (Insert really lame joke about how in some ways its an improvement here).

And now another story from Tom:

Their family went on a yachting holiday, you know the sort - there is a crew who do all the actual sailing and you sort of prance about pulling the odd rope and trying desperately to pretend you know something about sailing while avoiding being knocked senseless every time the boom comes flying over.
Anyway, Tom's Father, like him, is not really very good with mornings and waking up late one day stumbled onto the deck, said his good mornings and then walked straight off the side of the boat into the sea.

The conclusion of many hours battling with my computer is that I am finally online once again.

I can't help feeling I've let you down, let the internet down, and worst of all let myself down by failing to blog for almost a week but then I wasn't likely to be dynamic enough to walk all the way to a university computer. I see that I have paid the inevitable price as I only had 2 guests visit the sight today and yesterday (I knew I could rely on Jon and Anna not to have anything better to do!!).

Walking to the library today I walked past two girls who were in deep conversation about something and as I passed them I caught just a snatch:
...and I think they were the worst eggs ever, which goes to show...
I just wish I could have heard the moral of that story, what could she have possibly been about to say?

I suspect it would have been something about how battery farming prevents hens from performing natural chicken activities, such as wing flapping and dust-bathing. However, answers on a postcard (or just in the comments box at the bottom).

On a serious note I am reasonably well known for not liking Christian songs that say 'You are worthy' over and over because it has always struck me that a person has to be worthy of something rather than just 'worthy'. The phrase on its own doesn't seem to mean all that much.
Well, I have found out something quite interesting about it while studying Revelation. The phrase 'You are worthy' is used of Jesus a number of times (e.g. Rev 4v11, 5v9,12) in the book in a deliberate parallel with the Caesars of the time it was written. Apparently when a new Roman Emperor was crowned his subjects would fill the streets chanting 'You are worthy' over and over again and the point in John's vision seems to be that the Lion of Judah, the perfect promised King is truly worthy of kingship and to rule. In Revelation Jesus is always called worthy of something (e.g. to take the scroll in Rev4v9, of perfect sevenfold praise in Rev 5v12) but the phrase 'You are worthy' itself was tied up with kingship in the culture of the day.
I'm still not sure I'm sold on repetition of the phrase 'you are worthy' on its own but at least I have some idea what it means now!

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to leave you with a story:

A friend of DG (20 year old male, fan of girl group eternal) thought it would be hilarious to put a hoax product up for sale on ebay and get his housemate to 'buy' it for a large sum of money. He therefore listed:
'One Barrel of Crude Oil' (not forgetting to add a picture of himself in Middle Eastern garb)
Bidding began between two of his housemates... Time went on and the zeroes stacked up... ten thousand pounts, one hundred thousand pounds, one million pounds... The auction ended, the laughter died down and it was forgotten about.
That is until three days later when a letter arrived from ebay requesting the £300'000 they owed them. Turns out ebay charge a percentage commission as well as the listing fee.

I had a very nice cup of tea (one of the many I will describe in todays blog) with Pippa this morning. Can you believe that Cate and her are off to Bangladesh? They are going to have an amazing time!

I don't know what the hospital they are going to will be like but at least they won't have to worry about it being short on medicine - it seems like they are bringing the entire contents of a medium to large Boots branch with them. Not to mention a travel dentistry kit (I think you have to be pretty keen to have your wisdom teeth fiddled with on a 13 hour bus journey to Chittagong*).

(* Bus journey may not actually take 13 hours - the above figure was entirely fictional. Also they are flying in. The above bus is entirely fictional. Well, I say entirely fictional, I imagine that such a bus probably does exist and in some possible world it might take 13 hours to get there, but then I haven't specified where it is going from and I don't really know so in conclusion - I'm not really sure why I'm still talking...)

My second (and marginally less lovely) cup of tea came shortly before meeting my dissertation tutor to persuade him that I know something about the problem of divine foreknowledge and free will. I don't really have any good dissertation stories so instead I will share that of my housemate Tom:

He is writing about the politics of Eastern Europe (don't ask me for specifics) and his tutor asked him, reasonably enough, what he considers to be the main factor responsible for the change he wished to comment upon. Tom, having not done any reading in advance of this meeting and not really knowing anything about the topic glanced around the academic's office in hope of inspiration. The largest book he could see on the shelf behind him had just one word emblazoned across the spine, 'Nationalism'.
- I think the main factor... well... Nationalism was extremely important.
- Right then, lets put that down as your topic
Tom is now writing a 10'000 word dissertation on the role on nationalism in political change within Eastern Europe.

A third cup of tea was enjoyed while counting the leftover flyers from the 'Reality' mission week (which I should add was great to be involved in, with the good news about Jesus being really clearly explained and lots of people coming along to hear it and consider it for themselves).

It will satisfy those who know the CU's third, and highly secretive aim (Live for Jesus, Speak for Jesus, Recycle for Jesus), that of the approx. 50'000 flyers of various kinds printed for the week all but just under 5000 were given away to people. Those that were not will, of course, be found loving homes where they will be treated well.

I also noted that the CU is well stocked with giveaway gospels, which is good news (insert drum roll, 'here all week, try the veal').

My fourth and fifth cups of tea (both scoring highly with all our judges, except those from Serbia and Montengro, who were probably voting tactically anyway - Serbia-Montenegro in Pop Song Row ) were enjoyed in the company of Anna Egg-Cresswell as I helped sort out the secretary box for handover.

Highlights included the book which Lizzi had labelled 'This book is unnecessary now but we keep it because it looks old and cool'.

Also had really good chat about various stuff, including spiritual gifts and whether there is a second baptism in the spirit, the nature of the call to full-time gospel work, the role of the Mosaic law for people living under the new covenant, and the tendency of UCCF staffworkers (including Jonathan) to say 'Great', 'opportunity' and 'encourage' wherever and whenever possible. To be fair there was only one of these topics we could really claim to know a great deal about and you've got a great opportunity to work out which one, I'd really like to encourage you to try. Great.

One other topic of discussion was good sermon recordings. So I thought I'd include a link to some really good talks:

atthecastle.org.uk

I've been hearing lot of good things about the AGM on Friday, which I missed by going to Wroclaw ('The Meeting Place'). It seems the cardboard cut-outs of Matt and I went down well. Almost as well as they did with a random young man who saw them on Thursday:

Random student - Those are well cool, where did you get those made?
Matt - The cardboard cut-out shop in town
Random student - (enthusiastically) Awesome!
General awkward silence.. all wonder whether he will spot the blindingly obvious...
Random Student - See you later!
(Random Student Exits stage left)

I'm rather looking forward to walking home with mine. Should cause yet more confusion for the general public.

A quick final note: I want to thank Ali for feeding me. It was lovely. Although I was so full of cous cous I almost couldn't move afterwards!

Poland - great fun!

I feel I should start at the beginning, this seems like a very sensible place to start any story.

Thanks to the decision by Ryan Air to add Wroclaw in Poland to the list of destinations they will fly to for slightly less than the price of a bag of sugar and the desire of Ben C and Danny B to celebrate their 22nd birthdays in a ridiculous over-the-top manner 36 of us jetted off to on Friday morning from East Midlands Airport (equidistant from Nottingham, Derby and Loughborough, the business airport of the future) for a weekend of snow, sightseeing and trying really hard to pronounce the Polish word for thank you - Dziekuje.

I have to give great credit to the stag party that was travelling on the plane wth us for being a lot friendlier than they looked (taught me not to judge a skinhead by how much of the tattoo on his scalp you can see) even if they were rubbish at hangman. What do you mean you haven't heard of Melchizedek?! Guess it didn't help that I couldn't even spell my own name on Friday - you can call me Mr. Feanley!

Particular respect to the man below for taking the obvious opportunity to spoil a perfectly good picture in 'comedy fashion':

Arrival was greeted by the bright white of snow on everything and the even brighter white of Matt's flash as the first of six thousand photos was taken. Notice (below) that he is also a self-confessed big poser:

While Seb's attempt to roll the biggest snowball ever known to mankind failed somewhat building a large snowman was a pretty reasonable consolation. Needless to say there was a lot of snowball related fun throughout the weekend, with most of them being aimed at Caz as I remember. The cries of "I can't hit you back, I'm a girl, I'm not supposed to be able to throw" rang out
Of course this wasn't the end of the drama for Caroline, who got more than she bargained for when ordering breakfast. You'd better ask her about that though...

The truth is there is a great deal I could tell you about all the cultural sights we saw, the panoramic painting that had to be hidden away from the Russians for years, the town square, the cathedrals, the old town, the bins that had 'Transformers' written on them despite showing no evidence of being robots in disguise, the Polish rap bus, etc. but I would love to focus instead on the culinary delights we experienced. Therefore:

7 Polish things that sounded like a good idea when we ordered them...

1. Steak (apparently you have to order vegetables, etc. separately to avoid receiving a plate containing nothing but a piece of cow)

2. Sandwiches for breakfast (which should NEVER contain salami and gherkins)

3. Beer with raspberry syrup in the bottom

4. Meatballs in cracked wheat porridge

5. Pigs trotters in gelatin, with bread and lard

6. Pig fat (which isn't much good on its own...)

7. Lard (which isn't much good on its own... or at all)

I don't mean to sound negative however and so I'll finish with a sample of the general enthusiasm we all felt for experiencing anything genuinely Polish.

One of our party, HR, sits in the restaurant we have finally found that can take around twenty of us and asks the waiter
- What is traditionally Polish on the menu?
- Nothing, the waiter replies, this is Italian restaurant
- Ok... HR pauses, what is traditionally Italian on the menu?
Lengthy pause is eventually broken by slightly baffled sounding waiter
- You know, Pizza, pasta...

I can't believe I'm off to Poland for the weekend tomorrow morning. I think I'm in denial (which might explain why I'm writing stuff here instead of packing!!).

Tonight, being the last night of the current comimtee's stewardship of the Nottingham University Christian Union, seems like a good time to share some of the lovely photos I took on the handover weekend...

It was really nice having dinner tonight (felt weird not having a meeting though!).

All the best to the new exec, I'll be praying for you (including that you get voted in tomorrow).

Cate (above, looking lovely) is going to Bangladesh for her Nursing elective and so I won't see her until May (insert masculine choking-back-emotion sound here), which is a bit rubbish. Have a lovely time Cate - keep loving Jesus, listening to him in his word and talking to him in prayer - I bet you'll learn loads, take hundreds of photos, see you soon(ish)!

Good chatter with Mark (above, looking intellectual) about Song of Songs (giggle giggle) tonight. I think they are betrothed to be married, there seems to be wedding imagery in 3v6-4v16 but it is a poem therefore no linear narrative so I'm not entirely sure...

I promised to use stream of consciousness for this post in homage to un homme de peu de virtue but I'm rather too tired tonight so the more literary amongst you will have to wait for my return from polska.

I'll leave you with some of the beautiful words that Soloman wrote in admiration of his bride (enjoy the imagery):

"Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful!
Your eyes are like doves behind your veil.
Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing, all of which bear twins, and not one among them has lost its young.
Your lips are a scarlet thread and your mouth is lovely.
Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil.
Your neck is like the tower of David, built in rows of stone, on it hang a thousand shields of warriors." (Song 4:1-4, ESV)

Another story which I can't help feeling it would be wrong of me not to post is that of a young lady with whom I was in Halls of residence in my first year.

The girl in question was in the bathroom one night about to brush her teeth when she noticed a spider, of medium size and weight, sitting in the bath. A thought crossed her mind...

'I am so much bigger than this spider, I could eat it but it couldn't eat me...'

She put the thought into practice. She ate the spider.

The scene then shifts forward several months to a night spent staying over at her grandmother's house in Surrey. It is the middle of the night and she lies awake and in need of a drink. After the inevitable mental debate as to whether it is worth getting up she decides to head for the kitchen for a glass of water. Switching on the light our protagonist is confronted with a floor 'covered in spiders and all kinds of insects'.

It is at this point that she draws the obvious conclusion. They have come to get revenge for their fallen (or should I say eaten) arachnid brother.

What is she to do? She really only has one option. She forms a pact with the spiders never to eat meat again lest they come to get her. She begins a life of vegetarianism.

Distressing. True.