vitals..

i love my job. i get to spend some of my time reading up about Things That Ought To Be Read

and today i read this...

Between a 18% to 32% of rough sleepers were once in Local Authority Care as children (Randall and Brown 2001, CHAIN London 2001/02). This compares to national figures which show that only one per cent of all those under 18 have been in care (SEU, July 1998)

you can read it here..

i don't know the local authority care system. and i am not judging it or damning anyone working in it. i still think i would like to work in it myself one day, as a foster parent. but for now its hard to dismiss the kinds of facts avilable about life after care.

shpwp 2006...!!

allllllllriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhht

so in honour of the late, great smash hits magazine, and its annual feast of a poll winners' party, i have decided to host a poll winners' blog party of my own. (not to be confused with bloc party, although similar in funness..)
the pwp was traditionally held at around this time of year, on a sunday afternoon, and i would be covetous of anyone in attendance. i have lately found that a dear friend of mine once went to it, and i was green with envy!

so anyway, without much further ado, my winners for the year 2006 are.....

best album
the kooks: inside in/inside out
other nominees were...
kathryn williams: old low light
fiona's compilation cd
phil's birthday compilation cd

best song
nitin sawhney: the promise
other nominees were...
josh ritter: you don't make it easy
the kooks: naive
panic! at the disco: build god, then we'll talk
neil mcsweeney: long way round

best gig
jason mraz: the academy
other nominees were...
jason mraz: the apollo (and james blunt!)
the feeling: the academy
the band at claire+anthony's wedding

best dinner
steak with russell at goucho grill
other nominees were...
every evening meal in spain with the hall family
the place near dunham massey with caleb, oria and russell
first meal after daniel fast
iain's salmon risotto

best book
nicole krauss: the history of love
other nominees were...
khaled hosseini: the kite runner
joy dawson: forever ruined for the ordinary
alexander masters: stuart - a life backwards

best new clothes
jeans: asda, £10. i havne't owned jeans since i was 15!)
other nominees were...
mt: brown coat
ireland: black skirt
dorothy: 3 tops the same in different colours!

best new flip-flops
ripcurl: brown
other nominees were...
reef: green + pink
black+whites from mt

best night out
(in mcr) in sept/oct with caleb, russell, matt and fran
(in the shire) nick's birthday at the cafe rene
other nominees were...
new year's eve...it spilled over a good seven hours into 2006..!
with the staff of the blood bank office last week!
the night of fi + lizi's 21st...my word..what a mess that was..!

best surprise
liv turning up for my manchester birthday party
other nominees were...
caleb turning up at my shire party!
laura+paddy turning up at my shire party..
meeting a very beautiful man
enjoying london in february..thanks to liv+hats for that!
the sun turning up for our ireland holiday in april!

time most clearly hearing from god
the 1st week of june re work, men, grace and many other things
other nominees were....
"move to blair road..." thanks for that one jesus!
at the end of the daniel fast " don't do law.." ! what a get-out!..phew...

best laughing
in ireland with claire, emma and drago
other nominees were...
at mt with katie when amber one of the helpers was telling us about her photocopy art..
with fiona on new years eve..mostly at fabian the pirate boy, stretch, kinky ken and rob

best film
the life aquatic
other nominees were...
v for vendetta
schindler's list (no really, i'd never seen it before!)
not quite a film, but i DID very much enjoy my week's rental of dawson season 6....man, that was a fun week!

worst film
broken flowers
other nominees were...
wedding crashers
mission impossible III (esp the part where they were wrecking all the wind turbines.......sob...)


THE END.
...SHPWP...RIP...

holy ericsson batman

i can use the radio on my phone...!
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah i'm so excited!
on the way to work this joyful morning i listened to the last half-hour of today...
i have never heard it before...!
all these mornings i have had to leave the house at either 7.40 (blood bank on a 8-4 week), 8.40 (blood bank on a 9-5 week), 7.50 (salford foyer) and now 8.10 (mt) i have never, ever heard the end of the today programme...
that cna't be true really.....but its still exciting...they are always about to talk of something fascinating, just when you have to leave the house, but as of this very day, john, caroline, edward et al are coming with me on the 85...!!
thanks mother for my new (your old) phone...
over and out amigos x x

winterly watching..

so i have decided that since the coming five weeks makes me an equivalent giddy to sal at the start of the world cup, i am going to celebrate in style.
the style, rather than cullinary expeditions, shall be winterly watching, of christmassy movies, at my house, once a week during advent...
i think sunday evenings would be good (this is up for negotiations...), i think company would be great, and i think you guys should get on board and let hollywood bring you that sense of wonderous anticipation about celebrating the birth of our lord through films that are generally..in fact invariably, nothing to do with him at all, but are snowy and splendid nevertheless..!

all in favour, say..........santa claus the movie....!

all suggestions welcome as to what our collective top five christmas films might be, as there are usually five sundays in advent it would all work out beautifully!

woohoo and yay

marketeering..

so today the christmas markets start in manchester and i am so excited.
it sound like a very lame and dull post is about to come, mes amies, mais non!
the markets are so lovely. you feel warm in the cold, you feel at home in the town, you know it but its new and the smells are of christmas and winterly weather and food and people and sweets and leather handbags and scarves and hats, and naturellement, the gluwein......yes the spicy wine of loveliness and warmth is back on our shores once again, and i for one cannot wait!
some jammy people that work at the town hall and the like have probably already been there, at lunchtime. curses. ancoats is decidedly disadvantageous for market-attendance, but do not you worry, i shall be there, come the stroke of 5 o'clock i'll be out the door, shawl on, gloved up and my heart glad, for christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat.

feeling it..

so i went to see the feeling last night at the academty with sal.
they reminded me of the supernaturals.
they also made me think - and this is kind of wierd and you'll porbably disagree with me entirely! but it made me think - maybe the beatles would sound like this if they were around now? to me, that idea is nowhere like abhorrant or disgraceful as some make out when they bang on about how the beatles were the best band of all time. for me, they had some great songs* but most of them were average and in the light of all that has come since, they do not stand out particularly, except that they have longevity and are therefore anthems each in their own small right. anyway, the feeling have really good songs, some of them they even mean, i'm sure. the one about rosé wine is sadly funny, and the one sal loves which i don't know the name of is lovely, and the one about -at least they're not lonely- is brilliant. anyway there is youth in there and very good singing voices and something pleasantly individual. kind of like the beatles. well done.
*my top five beatles' songs..
back in the ussr
st pepper's lonely hearts club band
get back
a day in the life
hey jude

psalm 7: 99 - 06

i celebrate today, with heaven and with jesus who cannot love me more now than he did then, but who i think i love more now, in that rusted, sometimes tired, sometimes christmas-morning-excitable way, sometimes in yawns and sometimes in new words found, sometimes like i can't think straight, sometimes in a -oh, you're still there- way, sometimes in a -oh, you were there....what happened?- kind of way..

today i celebrate seven whole years passing since i gave my life to the lord. many of my fair readers were present that weekend, two of you were there at the very minute. what a strange old time it was..i was hesitant....reluctant...even scoffing of the idea, right up until the second it happened. mrs p and dr knox had pinned me to the floor a couple of hours before, and forced me to voice my oppositions to becoming a christian. there were many, and they dealt with which ones so ever they were able. it was not enough for me. i resolved to go outside and smoke. smoke i did, several, i imagine, and upon my return into the building, i was adamant that i was not going to do it today, but when i was 26. i had decided some weeks before that being a christian might be good, helpful even, for the unstable, emotionally wraught na that attended a CU houseparty under duress and without a bible. but that night as i went back in after smoking, it was clear to me that i needed to go away, study the bible and i'd get back to them when i'd had a few more years of enjoying myself (which i actually wasn't, you understand, not at all...). as i went into the room where they all were....mrs p, andy, cate and caroline....i was so sure...and then i sat, and it all went away and i knew right then that the tired and emotionally screwed up me, the scared and small part of me that felt so, so awful, most of the time those days, would only know peace, or win any kind of contentment, or even just get through the night, with jesus in charge and winning it for me. it was so sudden that i think i almost gasped. it struck me. and i fell for him.
they prayed me towards him and i went, i made my choice, for him and all that that has meant and still will mean.
my praise goes to him but some of my thanks goes to those four people. and to trev who the next day told me i could be in his cell if i wanted. i had no idea what a cell was, or why i would want to be in one with him, but he grinned at me and we buth knew i'd go. there, i met penny and rachel, and andy p, and ollie, and eddie. the next week or two weeks later i met the first ever 24-7 prayer room outside of chichester. the first prayer room i had ever seen. and i didn't want to go home. god was scarily, overwhelmingly present in that room, and all i wanted was to be with him and others in there finding that being scared by god and not of god was the only way forward.
the months that followed were largely horrible, and the overcoming was slow and painstaking.
but others met my path with theirs and life got fuller and fuller.
for me, the idea of singing, unrestrained, abandoned and with tears, was all i'd ever wanted from church. st peter's catholic church and school in gloucester offered me a great many great things, but that was not one of them. all my life i had known that god wanted to hear more of me, like l.m.montgomery says of her readers, they always -wanted more of anne-. and like anne of green gables later puts it on one occassion, -it was as if she had set lighted candles in all the windows of her house of life-
i think that was true of me that evening and the days that followed, as i could sing and sing to god, having always known that's how i wanted to love him, and how i would best find him, and where i would want to stay with him. so i sang. alot.
thanks and love to you and to jesus, the ever-lovely.

no smoke without fire..

so over the last three days i have -happily for you- not blogged through my cold but sat around and watched rubbish television with my duvet and felt generally sorry for myself.
i have been genuinely ill, and still am, although i am at work. this is a bad idea, not only for me because my head is throbbing and is verging on that sinus -ouch- thing where you want to shout at your head and tell it to fuck off for being so full of almost literal shit. it is also bad because i work surrounded by people who are poor and therefore probably of the low immune system variety, homeless people not often caught eating fruit, asylum seekers living on food vouchers probably not prioritising tubes of effervescent vitamin c in their £39 a week budget.
so i feel i am probably doing them a disservice.
but am here nonetheless
thing is, what has struck me over the last few days, is how badly i cope with pain on unhealth of any kind. we've always known i was a complete child when it comes to discomfort, but it strikes me that as someone who smokes, i am inviting pain upon myself.
this is obscenely stupid
as a somewhat flighty person (less so, as the years pass, i like to think..), i find it hard to think -in thirty years' time, i may well have a stroke- and take what possible precautions i may now while i have the chance. i have seen what strokes do to people, and it is vastly unpleasant. i saw my aunt, my godmother, mary, reduced for some time to the physical capacity of a baby and the mental understanding of a child, after that one horrible day. and even now she cannot do the crossword, or read books.....formerly two of her favourite pass times.
she smoked in the age when smoking wasn't really known to be all that bad for you. and then stopped. but even now she has what my mum insists on referring to as -a sedentary lifestyle-, which is precisely what you ought not to have if you wish to avoid a (second..) stroke.
i watched my grandmother collapse on Christmas morning last year. it turned out to be an angina attack, but at the time even the nurses among the haywards present thought it was much worse than that. her breathing over the last year has been reduced to puffs of air that look like a monumental effort to take it or let out. again, she smoked at a time when no photo was complete without cigarettes, shift dresses, gin somewhere and beautiful shoes.
i know what it does. they didn't, not really.

that's because you go to bed too late..

when i was a kid living at home, whatever was wrong with me, headache, spots, period pain, you know, my mother would say -that's because you go to bed too late-...
mouth ulcer, sprined ankle, split ends, you name it, it was because we didn't go to bed early enough...
and now, finally i believe...
i do, i believe it
i want to publicly acknowledge the wisdom and general wonder that is my mother, and salute you lucy, you were right all these years
i have the Winter Sickness already, you see, and I know now,t hat it is in large part due to my self-neglect, mainly concerning lateness to bed.
i did the right thing this morning, and came to work. but i am going home soon i think. i feel like crap and i can't think straight
over and out my loves, and remember, listen to those older and shorter than you, its a winning combination on the wisdom front
and eat your greens

on a lighter note, mind...

here is something for your thursday afternoon amusement.....
no quite pirate, but here is some hints on how to speak glawster, should you ever find yourself alone and misunderstood in that fabled city..



This has recently appeared in Tourist Information Leaflet for those people intending to vist our hallowed City.

Glawster

The first point all tourists must learn is that this is not Gloucester at all but Glawster, and is situated north of Bristow and south of Chewksbree and Burmagum. The accent is simple and easy to follow, provided you cut out this article and keep it about your person at all times during your stay. First, transport hints for travelling during your stay here. The best way to get around Gloucester is aboard a large vehicle called a buzz. These are found at buzz tops. At a buzz top you ketch yer buzz.

ATTRACTIONS
Once in the city centre, known as up the town, attractions include the Po Stoffice where you can buy post lorders, stamps etc. Ladies queuing in front of you may be holding children in their arms. These are known as babbiz.The Po Stoffice is open all week Mundee to Sardee, but never on a Sundee. The same is true of Omes Tores, the well-know Sainsbriz.

FOOD
The correct way of saying hungry is 'Ant add nutten teat all day' - a suitable reply is 'Ant ya?' To satisfy your hunger you have to find a place where you can summit teat. When you find one, you say 'yer tiz'. If it's a self-service place you greet the owner with the phrase -'ow be?', he will reply, 'Notsa bad, an you?' Indicate the food you want by saying, 'I'll ave some o' them chips'. You should always say them instead of 'those' and 'er' instead of 'she'. Hence the phrase 'Er et all them elvers on Sardee'. Similarly 'im is used instead of 'it'. For example, 'werz me wheelbarra? I ad im yesde.'

PHRASES
Questions begin with the words 'Wer?', 'Oooo?', 'Ow?', etc. Answers are 'tis' (positive) and 'tent' (negative). The word 'yes' has been abolished in Gloucester and replaced by 'aah'. If a local is not certain whether a thing 'tis' or 'tent' he will be non-committal and say 'spexso', 'praps', or 'spose'. In Gloucester you must remember that you never go TO a place but UP it. So you should say 'up the doctor's', 'up the library', ' up the vets' and 'up the bingo'. Housewives are often to be seen going up the shops. Occasionally, words are added to the end of a sentence to form a question such as 'ennit'. Example: 'Good up yer ennit?'. Another such word is 'cannus', as in 'can't do tall at once cannus?'. Quite often the word 'mind' is added at the end of a sentence for emphasis. For example if someone asks you where you are going: 'Were ya going?' 'Up town mind'. The word 'mind' is often used in rugby. For instance: 'ees a big un mind' or 'played well mind'. (Note: rugby is the most widely worshipped religion in Glawster.)

COMPLIMENT
People and things you like should be referred to as 'proper good'. You also use the word 'proper' when you want to emphasise another word, as in 'Them cockles was proper tasty'. Strangely, you can be 'proper drunk' and a 'proper devil' too. If you stop liking someone then you have 'gawn awf' them. Mouldy cheese is also described as 'gawn awf'.If during your visit your health goes awf, be sure to get a doctor's sustiffcut. The highest compliment you can pay to people you are fond of is to describe them as 'dead good', 'dead generous', etc. A cheerful youngster is a 'dead appy babee'. It is also possible to be dead lively and dead awake. Now try these for practice: I sin im yesdee. Me babbiz lost her at. Tent right. Tis! Praps, praps not. Givus un yer. Werya bin? - Werja think? Preferably this should be done late at night, to the noise of car doors slamming and the sound should be loud enough to carry four times around the block. To your 'Ta-laas' they will shout the traditional Gloucester phrase, 'Seeya gen'.

Hope you coddit all proper clear - SEEZY ENNIT?

holy mother..

so last night i heard the joyous and mildly traumatic sounds of childbirth under my very roof...
yes indeed, hannah flint gave birth downstairs from me last night, and while all along i have sworn i'd be exiting the building just as soon as you can say -waters br-------- i stuck around to do the upstairs praying....
and so was born jocelyn lucy flint
a happy day in blair road indeed, and for flints and butchers everywhere.....!!
jocelyn, i will always have gum x

bonjour, mes amis...

oh please forgive me.
for the love of internet! i have some at my new house...and no computer...
i have some at work and no access to blog sites...
but then - i found that one can email to one's very own blog
geeks are so smart. blogger geeks - i salute you!
commentators.....again, please forgive my neglect....
i have not one excuse. not even a bad one, so i offer none. i am crap.
well, i'm not sure about that last part, but i am sorry
i could write one of those nice long list-posts, i think i'm quite good at those...
or i could not say anything at all about what i've been doing, and just start with today.

truth is, not much has happened.
i am not near to god, in my heart, and therefore i am not changing. and not changing means there's really not much to tell.

but, i have moved to blair road, finally taking my turn at living in the wezzle homestead. the top floor flat is mine all to myself with no smelly boys, no disappeared toilet paper and no washing up left around the place.
the night before i left heald to go there, helen spied me looking rather nervous. she was like -oh, you know jesus is waiting there for you, don't you! nowhere to hide, nowhere to go, just you and him- and she smelt the fear. and now i know that the fear was entirely founded, in the reality that when left alone, backed into a corner with god, he's there waiting and i think he's been waiting a while. he's staring at me and its making me nervous. i now live with him, and no-ne else, and he knows everything about me. and he still likes me.
thunderbolt city.

i am now learning that life fully with jesus, with all the ups and downs and questions without answers and challenge and intensity and quietness and general collage of contradiction, is so much better than the last six weeks or so, probably more, of bland, quietly-corrupted, self-absorbed, prayer-less unholy holiday....it really has been rather alot longer than six weeks, too......there have been moments, where i have wanted to know god, and been temporarily committed to that idea, never really gaining enough speed with it for it to be mistaken for pursuit. but i do not want moments anymore. i want whole afternoons, days, weeks and decades of walking with god. enoch managed 300 years of walking with the lord. imagine.

i know i have made statements of intent, and rash promises, on these very pages enough times before, so i am not about to do that again today. but i do want to break this cursed cycle of a jesus-less autumn, because it is, after all, my favourite time of year, and you should always be with those you want to love the most at your favourite time of year.

look at it! just look outside - shiny and blue and clean and freakin cold - my all-time favourite weather......

hats on people, mitten up, its time to read the bible....