its time for the truth..

i know most of my (two) readers already know about this particular truth, but the notion of my moving back to manchester has retained a bizarre, dream-like quality for far too long now.
its time, i think, to just admit that it is actually what i want.
there, i've said it. and i'm excited, too.
i love the idea of loving the place i live in. and not waiting everyday for a chance to leave. i've lived thinking like that for quite a long time..except forty days in barcelona..but now that god has stormed my barricade of no ways, nevers and under no cicumstances, and brought to me the reality of him getting to choose, and me learning to love his ideas, its all looking rather new..

i don't want to be the kind of person who only agrees to something or gets excited about it if they think it was their idea first. some people would say that that sums up most of the world's men, but i say it is one of the cunningest ways that god has to get us on board. well, maybe its just me.
the fact is, i want it, now. and he wanted it first...but he has allowed me to swan around for the last two months dreaming tiny day dreams and thinking it was all my idea. these things never are though...there isn't a single heavenable dream on earth that he didn't dream first..

i was there this weekend...and oh how i laughed..i fear i may have been slightly raucous..a bit like tom p after four months of living in spain with no-one to think he was funny and then i turn up on his doorstep and he's saved up months' worth of showing off...i felt a bit like that..
..a bit like an uncaged bird..
there was cord, and beer, and old friends..and tefl friends..and rageful shopping..and new nero's..and a party full of new friends and add ben to that..kat's feet...kat being the most grand embodiment of all that kat always ought to have been but never quite was...and now she entirely is..and the sick mallowdale twins and emma and her capers and claire and her man..i lacked little...or nothing, in fact.
and then thought.....i want this, now..

la terra gallega..

well yes, happy birthday to me..
and what a birthday
i was in santiago de compostela, and you may see the feast o'photos for yourselves..
i laughed a lot, ate a lot, drank a fair bit and laid in the sunshine.
we were slightly at a loss to know what to do with our time in a rainless sdc....it struck the three of us one sunny afternoon that we'd bascially been forced into hibernation that year that we lived there...life became a daily series of scuttling from one place to the next, trying to keep the bottom of your trouser legs off the ground, avoiding getting swept along on rivers of rain, and cursing the lack of heating anywhere....
no such horror this time, the sun shone, alot alot...
i ate pulpo..still not convinced about it but i tried it. twice.
we went for another slightly less harrowing but still fun coastal drive..ended up at the naked beach..we always do, somehow it just happens...i just kept my head down, read my book and tried not to watch the overly-active strange beach tennis going on sin ropa..
my birthday was a day of being happy. i had cards over breakfast at the chicken sandwich place..then afternoon in the park..with sprinklers..and beer..
then sleeping..then eating - oh! that was the night forrest was going to arrive at midnight...just in time for the end of my birthday...so he made us swear we wouldn't be drunk when he got there. this meant we ended up having supper three times, because we ate, then went for wine, realised it was working a bit too well, had to go eat somewhere else...three times we did that..plus one time having birthday cake..and it still didn't work..we were in the weeds when the boy arrived. ah well. we went and danced in asbestos..particularly on the stage at one point, as i recall..meandered home at about six in the a.m..had a nice lie down on the ground outside..you know..
oh and timmo you will be pleased to hear i went in the cathedral
i thought it horrid. but i went.
when returning home via london i happened upon a spanish tapas place right next to where i had to wait for my bus home..happy coincidence...they served estrella galicia..and the old barmen were from galicia and they thought i was too and confusion ensued...
and i've now got that lovely feeling of knowing that the old place is still partly mine...
no rush.

makes you feel small..

stopped in starbucks on my way to work earlier for a misto and a spot of first corinthians.
look what i found..
"we speak of god's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that god has destined for our glory before time began."
what on earth...?!
sometimes the whole thing is just....baffling.....

the barfly and the scream..

ooh you just know, some days, don't you, that it'll be unlike any other..its the feeling you wish you had everyday, although if you did it would be lost on you..
anyway
yesterday hewo and i went on a ramble over to cardiff...enjoyed the *new* bridge, the car showed its low on fuel light for what claire assured me was the first time ever (imagine that catelin..!) and the signs telling you precisely when the speed cameras of the good old m4 were coming up were much appreciated..the reason for the very last minute and probably quite impractical trip was of course our dear stoney+....
and they did not disappoint..they were wonderful..
the fact was that claire and i both knew that god was about to finish us off this weekend..both had had a strange and often unpleasant six months, and both felt assuredly like it was to abruptly end, at least in its present form, but knew nothing more than that..
we dodged him most of the day today..ate good food chez mr+mrs hewo, slept, pottered about..then he cornered us.
we met with him on a hill, it - not surprisingly - was spitting, the day was grey and felt not at all like we were about to re-start 2005..
but we did, or rather he did, in a genius way. like only he can i suppose..i can't speak for hewo, but i know that for my part, i stood on a hill and he made me love him again...
and then we screamed.

today i fell in love, part two..

this evening i arrived home from work giddy, knowing that in my inbox would be a gift waiting for me..
it was a (yes, stealing, i know..) file packed full of magic numbers songs, all winzipped together like a bundle of joy
and i heard them, and it was exactly like i imagined it would be
thank you phil

unobtrusive tones..

do you know, sometimes i am struck by the way we talk to each other. this isn't negative. its just, spending time with people i know from manchester, there or somewhere else, i really notice now after six months away that there is a casual and easy manner in our voices and our words that the het-up and still relatively formal culture around us hasn't yet wholly made room for.
the life at home, with family and with friends, is somehow not as free, in vocabulary, tone or sentiment. but i received an email today which i think can highlight my meaning here. other than a greeting and ending, this was the email's entire content.
>>>>Thanks sweet pea. Come and hang out any time – knock on the door and sit your ass outside in the patio for a brew and some tunes when you’re next up.>>>>>
see? maybe you don't. this tone is normal, now, i know...but equally its not, we all like to think we are this unstructured and untempered now, but there are social codes and airs and graces that remain. i like to speak freely. that's why i like it here.