Saturday, April 10, 2010

Waiting for a Towel

Right. I've just put my towel in the washing machine, ready for tomorrow. I had to pull out a load of James's stuff; shirts and stripy socks, swimming around in the empty tub. It'll all go back in in thirty minutes.


Tomorrow it's baptisms, and I'm going in to do some dunking. Actually I'm a bit nervous because the last time I was in the pool, we didn't quite manage to get the person being baptised fully underwater. Yinka made us do it again. We're a funny lot us Christians sometimes.


The house is quiet tonight. James is in that schroedinger-state of being out/asleep (I can never tell which it is) and Reuben is canoodling. Oh and I'm not entirely sure where Danni is. She seems to exist inside a sort of cyclone that breezes in and out, taking a collection of bags, clothes, keys and shopping with her, with never quite enough time to just stop. I wonder whether some people are just great at creating that life around them, and others do a bit too much stopping. I suppose I'm kind of envious of the whirlwindies - although on balance, stopping is great.


And so, I'm here on my own, stopped, and waiting for the washing machine.


It's been an amazing day today: blue skies, warm sunshine, light breezes - a proper spring day. I went for a walk by the river at Pangbourne. Narrowboats and leisure boats were moored up, dogs were racing around after soggy branches and tennis balls, and the Great British Public were lazing on the grass as though it were the height of summer. I suppose, given the way these things go, it may well have been. It was nice to see happy people too: mums with babies, couples lounging awkwardly, and kids on bikes. Days like this are good for reminding us that not everyone lives in Eastenders. There is some goodness in the world.


I wonder if my towel will dry by the morning...


Saturday, April 3, 2010

Some Curious Events for a Saturday

A number of strange things happened today.

Firstly, I overheard a conversation between two middle-aged women who were swearing like sailors, in Costa. Maybe I've been brought up in an environment where middle-aged women arrange flowers and make quiche, or maybe the world has just changed, but it isn't right that.

I was there to mark some essays, but it was so noisy I ended up just doing a bit of general observation. And by that I think I mean eavesdropping. While the coffee machine foamed and the heavy chairs scraped across the faux-wood floor, couples chatted about the merits of Facebook and Twitter, newspapers rustled, and kids, bolted into their pushchairs like little POWs, stared wide-eyed at the world of false lighting and arty pictures, while their mums supped from steamy lattes and mocha-frappa-skinny-choca-ccinos*.

I think maybe hanging from the eaves of a house, cupping one's ear to the wall in some desperate intent to 'listen in' for the latest bit of juicy gossip, is different to overhearing isn't it? I do hope so. I mean it's quite different when a conversation just encroaches into your life. Take last night for example: I sat on the 17 bus and two gay guys sat in the seats behind me. I wasn't listening out for a broadcast of a day in the life of a homosexual man and his dramatic rollercoaster with curtains, ex-partners, dodgy-nights-out-in-Southampton and The Malthouse*. But that, folks, is what I got. It is quite emotionally complex being a homosexual by the sounds of it.

The second odd event was hearing Yinka teaching in French. Yinka's taken me by surprise a few times recently. The other morning I flicked the radio on to BBC Radio Berkshire and there he was talking about TLG* - I had a chuckle at that and then forgot which lane I was supposed to be in to get onto the M4. Today, I was at his house as he was teaching the young adults from France. Fascinating. I learned some things:

(1) La croissance = growth
(2) Je suis un fils, je ne suis pas une fille (I got those mixed up and told them all I was a girl)
(3) French people don't eat frogs' legs.

The other peculiar thing that happened to me was that I managed to spend exactly £66.66 at Tesco.

"Ooh, that's a bad sign," said the checkout lady. Had I been quick enough I would have glanced at my bulging bags of lovely shopping, and quietly said, "Yep. It's the Mark of the Feast."

In a way though, I'm quite glad I didn't.



Notes
*I made this up. Then, I'm not sure most of the names in some of these places aren't any less ridiculous.
*Although this sounds like the title of a homophobic podcast, I'm not kidding about the content...
*TLG is The Lighthouse Group school, which our church recently set up to help educate students who've faced a crisis point in conventional education.