all these things that i've done...

gosh i am so sorry for being such a crsp blogger....there are all kinds of blogger awards these days you know, i'd like to nominate myself for least consistent, but sadly i think there are quite a few of us who could be in the running for that one these days...!
well i am doing seperate posts for each recent event that is worthy of note...not sure why
on a whim, i suppose
lots of love and all apologies...
loveanna xx x x x x x

i had my birthday party...
that was really fun
i loved it..thanks to all of you who came and for my cards and presents and kisses and love....
amen

went to the lakes with cate and timmo and russell and caleb and hope....
five get eaten alive..
five go to the lakes for less than 12 hours...
five manage to avoid getting fined a thousand pounds each for having an illegal fire...! (caleb let on about that one about ten minutes after us all getting comfty round the fire...!)
five realise on the way home they they are actually six, if the blyton standard is being used, since timmy in the original Five was, in fact, a dog....
anyway the whole thing was lots of fun and remember cate's handy hint everyone, eat more marmite and you can remain smug and unbitten like she and i...!
thanks guys it was brill

ooh, one joyous Thing..
i found my magic numbers cd...!
its been gone for nigh on six months....am reunited with it, and bopping away on the bus once more....
if i were still a catholic i would be praising st anthony, but i'm not, so.....
thanks emma and claire for digging it up for me at your house!

had THE nicest dinner i can remember having for years, at the argentina steak place...what's it called please....? with russell the other night.....all food has tasted kinda rubbish since, in comparison...i hope that wears off soon...!

have bene shocked by how much i have enjoyed the world cup so far...not been getting carried away, and certainly am maintaining staunch realism about england's slim chances of being good enough to win it, but nonetheless am firmly in the spirit of the thing, and am therefore suffering from Wimbledon Tedium Syndrome since tennis is, frankly, shit watching after football, which is turn is still a slightly poor summertime subsitute for rubgy, but i shan't moan about that because i shall get yelled at or some other such rubbish but anyway, i am enjoying it
and no-one is more surprised than me....!

met a beautiful man

so i finished my ten-week-work embargo...i knew about a week before that god was saying to fight my way out of it and to ensure that i had done what the time had been set aside for me to do...so the aforementioned joy dawson book was a big help, and i ended the happy, sunny days of lunch club, afternoons with fran, stoop-sitting, house-painting, house-cleaning, oswald-reading and penny (as in money, not mrs w)-saving and opted for the miraculous employment which is detailed below....
i would like now to offer a huge and hug-ful thank you to those who fed, prayed with, sat with and suburbed with me during the ten weeks that would have been alot harder if god had just put me to task in them and not allowed it to be such fun...emma, fran, matt, kat and josh, penny and the girls, iain, cate, mattie...! all good day-time pals at times, at the time, merci beaucoup, mes amies....
big thanks, too, to the sun, for making me brown in my unemployment....it sure was worth it...
and to the lord for the gift of being fed and looked after while not earning, and for the lessons along the way....

besides which i got a better idea... .....after the sheer madness of the -european urban cultures ma- idea, which was brought swiftly and painlessly to a close by the pienaars and their shrewd and honest questioning one aftenroon about the time i last posted (mrs p-this is absurd, why would you, you, want to study cities?! you've never been about cities! it makes no sense!-), (tom-so come on then, what do you want? what do you really want to do?!, no more dumbing yourself down and finding the easy ideas, what do you want to do , because we think you're capable-). something wierd happened that afternoon, where i honestly said the things that, intelligence, training and money aside, i actually wish i were doing with my life. and they let me think it....they added to it and questioned parts of it. and it all comes back to advocacy.... so they went away that evening, and i went to my room and prayed away a spirit of distraction in my life, which had lead me originally to the absurd european cultures idea...so that was gone, in a flash. then that evening, i wrote The List. I will write The List on here one day when i have a bit more time, but for me it was, over a bottle of pinot grigio and a couple of rollies, the greatest release of truthful ideas about me that i can remember letting happen. it was ace...the things i want to do, see and become, the things i know i am called to and the ways i want most to be effective and loving. i recommend personal, insightful list-writing. that very same night, when The List was done, I found out about The Job

which is now mine, after praying, fasting, applying, interviewing and more praying, its mine. I, as of july 24th will work at moutard arbre and boy am i nervous, but also thrilled to have such a brilliant opportunity to learn, and to use the skills that i know i have, but have never got to use before in work cos of having shite jobs since i left university....
thanks jesus, you know i'm gonna need you for this one, right....?

also i have been listening long and often to the -human- album by nitin sawhney, which i bought as soon as i heard it was out, a couple of years ago, and for some bizarre reason have never actually got round to listening to it. cate played it on her puter at sal's the other week, and i kept finding myself tuning out of conversations, listening intently to this music coming out to the garden from the lounge....after a while i gave up attempts at concentration on other things and went and sat me down right by the stereo, leaving everyone outside and happy just to listen to such beautiful songs.
i realise it is far from new, but to my own ears, it is the best new thing they have heard for a very long time.

another Thing is that i have been working at the salford foyer...whic means a supported housing project for young people...which means kids that are all young and have either been homeless or in care or just thrown out of home.....when i am there, i feel the most southern, the most posh, the most schooled and the most irrelevant and sometimes ignorant i have ever felt in one combination of a seven-and-a-half hour day. this combination is unnervingly and constantly good for me. the timing of this job is one of the most crazy signs of god's miraculous provision, and also, again, a huge indication that he doesn't ever just want us to work soley to make money but also to strech us, show up our weaknesses, make friends with people...learn lots of things...he sure thinks of everything!

book house rules..

so i went to buxton with sal on saturday..indeed, i hear you cry -hurrah!- the return of the super sal saturday, no need for incriminating surnames or entirely transparent child-proof code...
the saturday returned...
having stayed up til four with da costa and the exiting hair-twists, i was weary..we made it over in time for may to do the hair, i consulted with may about the colours and all looked to be well...i set off on my own small tour of the town i have now been to twice....i remembered where everything was, i know, very unlike me, and generally mooched around....i had that lovely sensation of....being out in the really rather cold, knowing that any minute now, i shall be indoors, with coffee and cake..and hopefully a cigarette..and definitely a book....little did i know the further delights that awaited me....
i went first to catherine and pete's, and was half-sad, half-happy to find they were out...
mooching on round the hill further i found a place named scrivener''s bookshop. and oh the joy and wonder....rivalled in recent times only by the green necklace of same.
all books are second hand (i heard a lady ask the old man, mr scrivener, one assumes, -do you only sell second hand books?- -if we can help it, yes- he replied, not knowing if she could really see the tiny corner-mouth smile that gave away the humour underneath the solemnity). when i later handed over my henry james book for paying he asked if i would be reading it aloud in an american accent, as he imagined that would help......i liked the old man so much that i was a bit flustered and murmered something about that not helping and left.....in between the arriving and the buying though, i went to the first floor.....
it was named the fiction and children's floor....so i pottered...i also spied coffee cups on tables...and something like cake under a cake-covering thing..and a girl who looked so far through her book that she must surely have worked there...turns out she did, and after laughing at my gasping at her good fortune to work in such a place, she made me coffee and got me some cake and all for one-pounds-fifty-pence....i thought perhaps the day could get no better...it did..she left...and then i had the whole higgledy-piggledy room, books falling everywhere, all book-smelling and old..to my big fat self and i got the sofa and then i was in an alcove, surrounded on three sides by books, and eating my cake and reading henry james...
done, settled
and then the next thing, my head was aware of familiar things around me, colours of book spines and words jumping out at me...i looked harder and found that the three sides of books around me in my alcove were no ordinary three sides of books, but three sides of books all written by enid blyton.......well, you can imagine! -up the faraway tree- was in my hand in a flash and then it was like 1989 and i was as happy as the 1989 version of myself....or maybe more.
so there you have it. my book cost me two pounds, the hour on the sofa one pound fifty for cofee and cake. you can get to buxton with sal anytime she's due a haircut....just tell her her hair looks a mess and convince her she should go back to see may, but only ever on a tuesday or saturday ten while four because that's when the girl is there with the cake and coffee....k?
brill....
anyway it was a right special treat of a time in the book shop....and lunch was lovely with sal and her new hair..and the drive back with stoney on the i-pod in the car going over the hills was lovelier still.....
saturdays.......good thinking god...