10 favourite tracks

One or two chums on Facebook are posting their 10 favourite tracks of all time. It's impossible to pick 10, so at this present moment here are those which come to mind, with a 'subs bench' of honourable mentions. Ask me in a week and it'll probably be a completely different list...

Shriekback – Hand on My Heart

Newsboys – God’s Not Dead

New Order – Plastic

Jean-Michel Jarre – Ethnicolor

The Choir – The Forest

Adam Again – Dig

The Teardrop Explodes – Reward

Steve Taylor – The Finish Line

U2 – Magnificent

Leona Lewis – Run

Subs bench: Evanescence – Everybodys Fool, Matt Redman – For the Cross, Kathy Burton – Great is our God, Keith Duke – You Lord are In This Place, Saint Etienne – Like a Motorway.

It is possible to run a half marathon in a cassock and surplice

possible, but I wouldn't advise it as a habit.

https://www.justgiving.com/David-Keen4/

Help the Rev Run!

This Sunday (Palm Sunday) I'll be running the Yeovil Half Marathon in full clergy gear, to raise money for a project to refit our parish church. We have the great problem that the congregation no longer fits in the building, and having an uncomfortable, inflexible, often cold church isn't a great experience for the thousands who pass through our doors every year.

https://www.justgiving.com/David-Keen4/ is the place to go if you'd like to sponsor me.

PS don't tell the Bishop, I think we're all supposed to be on duty in church on Palm Sunday. Do you think anyone will notice?

Run, Fat Vicar, Run

Cassock, dog collar, running shoes. I've probably set myself a stupid challenge in trying to combine that outfit with the Yeovil Half Marathon in March, but it's all in a good cause. If you get anything at all out of reading my blog, then please do consider sponsoring me. 

I'm planning to run the 13 and a bit miles in full clergy outfit to raise £2020 towards a refit of our church (600th birthday in 2020). Neither the congregation nor the community fits into it any more. Either we adapt, or we move out, but it's such a beautiful and prayerful place that abandoning it for a shed on an industrial estate isn't an option.

Not that I'm competitive, but this chap up the road did the full London Marathon, and raised more than 5x what I'm aiming at. He also looks like he's fit enough. Me? Well, I've done 21k on the exercise bike...... 

Desert Island Discs

This post has been sitting on the mental back burner for ages, and it's been impossible to make up my mind on the final lineup. To be honest, I still can't, so here is this weeks top 8. It'll probably change by next week, but for the moment...

Shriekback - Hand on My Heart
My brother 'built' a radio as a teenager, a real mongrel of a thing but it worked, and picked up Radio Luxembourg, Radio Hallam and the late night John Peel show, which I listened to when I was supposed to be sleeping. Peel was where I first heard Shriekbacks 'Lined Up', and when 'Hand on My Heart' just sneaked into the charts and was played in the top 40 rundown, I was straight out to Roulette Records in Sheffield to buy the LP, Jam Science. I ended up with a collection of just about everything Shriekback had ever released, including some (so I thought) extremely cool 12" singles. It felt even cooler that hardly anyone else had ever heard of them.


New Order - Crystal
Looking back, it was an awful gig, Sheffield Uni students union, New Order didn't even come on stage until about 10, by which time the hall was filled with drunken Mancunians. The band weren't in a great mood, but Peter Hook never is. But it wasn't enough to put me off. It's hard to pick a top tune, but this will do.


Newsboys - Breakfast
I'm not a Greenbelt groupie but hearing the Newsboys live there was a major highlight (along with Andy Hawthorne getting everyone doing 'Jumping in the House of God'). 'Christian' music has, by and large, been flaccid and uninspiring, you can't say that about this lot. The lyrics are great too "That day he bought those pine pyjamas/his cheque was good with God"


The Choir - Fine Fun Time
Another Greenbelt revelation, my first ever CD purchase (remember cassettes anyone?) and probably my favourite band. Consistently brilliant over 25 years, atmospheric, mysterious, and if I can't think what else to put on in the car, it's this lot. If you want a flavour, try Circle Slide, probably their best album (20 years old this month). Again, hard to pick a favourite, but this one always puts a spring in my step. Not an official video, just a random set of home movies, but it gets the spirit of the thing:


U2 - Gone
Like most people who converted to U2, I did so round about the Joshua Tree. They probably peaked with the next one, Achtung Baby, and every CD since has been a real mixed bag - but each with 2 or 3 classic tracks. My longlist of U2 songs for the desert island reaches about 20 (Zooropa, Acrobat, Magnificent, Every Breaking Wave, Invisible, Zoo Station, Red Hill Mining Town...), but Gone, from the Pop CD, clinches it. Couldn't find an official video, so here's a live version.


Thomas Tallis - Spem in Alium
Best to close your eyes for this, gorgeous, and the only 'classical' piece in here. Run close by the Jan Garbarek/Hilliard Ensemble 'Officium' CD for atmospheric choral music.


Moby - Lift Me Up
I got into Moby about 2 weeks before the rest of the world after hearing Natural Blues. His James Bond theme tune is superb, and so is this.


Jean Michel Jarre - Ethnicolor 1 (especially from 7:45, where it really takes off)
Alongside my more 'normal' early 80s stuff (Madness, The Smiths, Depeche Mode), I had a wad of Jarre and Tangerine Dream, and still put it on in the background if I need some 'wallpaper music' to help me concentrate. Jarre's stuff seemed to get more and more peculiar, this is a long way from the simplicity of Oxygene, and you'll probably hate it....


Honourable mentions:
The Smiths - How Soon is Now?
Kate Bush - Cloudbursting
Depeche Mode - Stripped
Saint Etienne - Like a Motorway
Deacon Blue - Will We Be Lovers
Black - Wonderful Life
Brian Doerkson - Creation Calls
The Teardrop Explodes - Reward
Dire Straits - Industrial Disease

Book: either Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson, or The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder.

Luxury item: a cricket bowling machine (and a set of balls and a bat)

Big changes at my old vicar college

St Johns Nottingham, where I studied in the 1990s, has just announced some radical changes. Basically, they will stop taking in full time residential ordinands from 2016. Here's part of the statement.

The Church of England is currently reviewing its patterns of ministerial education, and St John’s recognises the call of this review to match the needs of the church with available resources. After many months of prayerful consideration, the college Council and Directorate are ready to take the bold step of remodelling the college to meet the future training needs of the church. This plan will see an end to the admission of any new full-time residential students at the Nottingham campus from September 2015, and the development of new models of ministerial formation and training for discipleship. Recruitment of new full and part-time students on all Midlands CYM and Extension Studies programmes will continue as normal. 

Sarum college in Salisbury did something similar a few years back, with the closure of the old Salisbury and Wells theological college, it's still the regional base for part-time training of ordinands, but runs a host of other training courses too.

It's sad to see the 'old' St Johns go fewer residential training centres means fewer choices for potential ordinands, but full-time training is costly, and a lot of training is much more effective when done in context. Probably the best bit of vicar training I did was the Arrow Leadership programme run by CPAS, which is designed for people in full-time Christian leadership already, and is designed to be done whilst 'in context'.

There's also something to be said for many of the trainers to be contextually based themselves. Academic faculties can be good and creative places, but they can also get detached from the realities of church leadership which they were intended to serve.

It's a courageous move, and I imagine there's been a lot of prayer and agonising. Fresh expressions of training?

Ian Paul, former tutor at St. Johns, has written on this in much more depth, and looks at the wider issues of theological training. Well worth a read.

The Complaints Queue

It occurred to me during a talk I heard to day at (ironically) the Bishops Palace in Wells, that I do far too much moaning and not enough thanking. Early candidate for a Lent discipline this year is to spend 40 days being grateful, rather than adding to the complaints queue.

Or I may just settle for quitting alcohol, social media, cake and unhealthy snacks, and take up running on a daily basis. It'll probably be easier.

Thankyou to David Wells for an inspiring and challenging day today.

A few of my favourite things

Inspired by Tanya Marlows post on the same topic (and with a bit of overlap) here are some of my favourite things. I'll probably think of more as soon as this is posted:

Books - fiction

• Jostein Gaarder - The Solitaire Mystery. All his stuff is superb, love the story within a story format.
• JK Rowling - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Especially the last 2-3 chapters. 
• Jon MacGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. Poetic. 'If you listen, you can hear it. The city, it sings'
• Douglas Coupland - Jpod. Well, everything by Coupland.
• Agatha Christie - devoured these as a teenager, think I read every single one.
• Simon Parke - Desert Child. Read this on a particularly awful retreat and it was spot on.

Bands

• The Choir - US Christian alternative rock outfit. Still producing superb music after 25 years. Like this. 
• Shriekback - bit of teenage oddness in the 80s, unique sound.
• The Smiths - musically and lyrically brilliant, marmite band
• Coldplay - also great to play on piano, which is a bonus.
• U2 - maddeningly inconsistent, usually 2-3 standout tracks on each album, and 2 or 3 they really should have left off. Joshua Tree probably the exception.
• Evanescence - purely for Fallen, packed with epic tracks. Bring Me To Life is spine-tingling.
• Jean Michel Jarre - love his early stuff
• Steve Taylor - razor sharp lyrics, great tunes, bags of energy. 
• Newsboys - see Steve Taylor
• New Order/Electronic - bags of classic tunes, quirky, and a bass line to die for.

TV programmes

• Gigglebiz - kids sketch show with the multi-talented Justin Fletcher
• Have I Got News for You
• Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes. Brilliant ending.
• House of Cards. You might very well think that, I couldn't possibly comment.
• The Goodies - haven't seen it since I was small, but usually ended up comatose with laughter on the carpet
• The Choir: Boys Don't Sing. A masterclass in discipleship, and inspiring others.
• Live Cricket. You'd never realise, but we used to get it on terrestrial TV. Spent hours glued to BBC2 every summer as a kid.
• Election night results shows. Can't beat a good all-nighter with the Swingometer.
• Sherlock. Loved it. Can't wait for the new series.

Films

• Airplane!  - Watched it 5 times at the cinema alone. 'A hospital? why what is it?'
• The Usual Suspects -  The twist to end all twists.
• Shawshank Redemption -  Of course. Brilliant central characters
• Memento -  incredibly clever film, recreating in the viewer what it's like to have amnesia. But I find it really hard to watch as well, there's so little redemption at work.
• Spiderman 3 -  Packed with spiritual themes, and does the standard postmodern hero deconstruction thing without having to go all Batman.
• Up - Brilliant opening 2 minutes, and stays brilliant. 
• The Incredibles -  Love the interplay of family dynamics and superheroes.
• The Outlaw Josey Wales - I find that I dislike everything that Clint movies stand for (revenge, individualism, redemptive violence) but find them compelling anyway.
• Lord of the Rings - can't think of many fantasy books that haven't been ruined by movie adaptations (Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, the Hobbit), but apart from the daft Elf love triangle, LOTR is great. Aragorn rocks. So does Sam.
• The Full Monty/Brassed Off - having grown up in Sheffield, anything that gives the old city a starring role has to be good. Great stories, and some devastating pictures of the vulnerable male psyche. 'Nobody wants to see this dance'.
• Shrek. Inventive and hugely quotable.
• The Matrix. There's a bit of Neo in all of us. Well, blokes anyway.
• Pay It Forward. Great cast, inspiring story.

Actors/Actresses
John Simm, Nicholas Hoult, Kevin Spacey, Emma Thomson, Hattie Morahan, Helena Bonham Carter, Meryl Streep, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Judi Dench, Leslie Nielsen, George Clooney, Ed Harris, Samuel L Jackson, Robert Carlyle, Christopher Ecclestone.

Places

• Top of Dale Head in the Lake district, looking down the Newlands Valley
• The moors around Fox House near Sheffield
• Cologne Cathedral
• St. Johns College Nottingham, especially the quiet room.
• Mill House retreats in Devon
• a cricket pitch, as long as it's not cold or raining
• round the meal table with my family
• the waterfalls walk around Ingleton in the Yorkshire Dales

Books that have helped me most on my journey with God
Richard Foster - Celebration of Discipline
Gordon MacDonald - Ordering Your Private World
Bill Hybels - Courageous Leadership
Nicky Cruz - Run Baby Run (part of my journey to faith)
Francis Schaeffer - The God Who Is There.

Miscellaneous
'God's Grandeur' - poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thai Green Curry, cross country running, real ale, alternative worship, politics, the chocolate cake served in Vennels cafe in Durham, cheesy Doritos, old friends, reading to the kids, discovering an 80's track on Spotify that I used to love at school, Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis, the Ethiopian orthodox chapel in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, people smiling, the moment in a wedding service where I pronounce them husband and wife.

To see the original list that kicked this off, go to JK Rowborys blog. It's a list that took several months to compose, and when you read the intro you'll understand why.

Your turn!

Radio Bristol Slot

If you can bear it, here's 10 minutes of my life story from Radio Bristol/Somerset this morning, starts 43m in (it seems to be easier to get the timings in pop-up player). I sound more gravelly than usual, it's probably the hay fever.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p019yztv

Hope you like the music selection.

Pitching a script for the next series of Rev.

Spotted in Salisbury today: a couple of vicars searching in vain around the Park and Ride for the car they'd arrived in earlier that day, whilst at the same time wondering why it was so hard to get their bearings. Followed 5 minutes later by the realisation that they'd caught the wrong bus and were at the wrong Park and Ride. Then having to explain all this to the bus driver who'd been watching them with increasing amusement, and again to the driver when they finally took the right bus, since the ticket had already been punched. "I'll believe you" he said "after all, nobody would admit to that if it wasn't true."

Cut to the 2nd Park and Ride 15 minutes later, and both vicars emerging from the car, locking it, waiting for 30 seconds, unlocking it, and getting back in again. Several buttons are pushed in different orders to try to get the electronic starter to work, until they give up and consult the object of ultimate masculine failure, the Instruction Sheet. What kind of car needs an A4 instruction sheet on how to start the engine? What kind of driver needs an A4...... as training ministers for 2 future CofE clergy, it's good to know that the future of Anglicanism is safe in our hands. I mean, their hands.

How to train a flea/Anglican/insert as applicable

Saw this on a recent training day on the excellent Mentoring Matters, run by CPAS's James Lawrence. It made me wonder what my jar looks like, or whether there are several:
 - male
 - middle class
 - Christian
 - vicar
 - middle aged
plus the jar of my head (what I expect of myself) my body (what I'm actually capable of) my community (what others expect of me/will let me do/not get too upset about), my denomination, my habits, etc.

All of which puts me in mind of one of my favourite quotes:
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

What Sun Readers believe about Prayer and Easter

Fascinating survey for the Sun today on what Britons belive about Easter, prayer, wearing crosses at work, school assemblies etc. 31% of those surveyed belive that prayer works, another 24% are 'not sure'. Roughly 20% pray several times a week or more.

At the same time 75% go to church once a year at best. So a model of outreach based on getting people into church has got some serious limitations.

To take your mind off all that, you could listen to my contribution to BBC local radio here in Somerset, starts about 20 minutes in. Yes, I know I talk fast and say 'um' a lot.

Radio Somerset interview

I've foolishly agreed to be interviewed on BBC local radio this Saturday, with Emma Britton from Radio Somerset. I see last week she had a couple of local MPs, one of which I was at university with - small world.

So, if you've nothing better to do, or want to hear me make an idiot of myself..... Alternatively, please pray for me! Feeling increasingly nervous the closer it gets....

We See What We're Looking For

It could have been a pleasant hours drive across rolling Somerset countryside, but it wasn't. By the time I set off from Yeovil, it was already past the scheduled start time for my lunch meeting 2/3 of the way to Bristol. Trying to arrive less than an hour late was frustrated by a series of lorries, dreadful dawdling people going at 58 rather than 60 on the A37, a couple of farm vehicles, and then a pub half a mile from the village it claimed to be in.

Having arrived late, I didn't really want to leave early either, but had to so I could get back to ferry one of our kids to their tennis club. Cue cows on the road, more farm vehicles, a mobile speed camera (oops) etc.

All I saw on the journey was people in my way, things slowing me down, frustrations. And guess what, both journeys were very stressful, and I didn't enjoy either of them. In fact I resented them. And my mental state controlled what I saw - everything became an obstacle.

(Solutions:
 - become a sociopath who doesn't care about being late, missing appointments or letting people down. Then I can drive at my own speed and not get stressed.
 - leave earlier
 - do less stuff)

If I'm not careful, Christmas can get like that. Do I see a series of diary commitments, lots of jobs and tasks. Or do I see a celebration that everyones invited to where I get to play host in various locations (community hall, garden centre, church, school). Shepherd or Herod: is Jesus a joy or a threat? Can you tell it's December by the smile on my face, or by the furrowed brow?

Quit Marketing and Become a Vicar

According to a study in the US, clergy top the list of 10 Happiest Jobs, (ht eChurch blog), just pipping firefighters, teachers and authors. There are quite a lot of marketing and IT - related jobs in the 'most hated' top 10.

Do I agree? well, here's a few things I love about my job....
1. I'm doing what I enjoy, and getting paid for it.
2. Being involved at many key points in people's lives, beginnings, endings, new relationships, and getting to help people mark, celebrate and make sense of what's going on.
3. Seeing people discover the reality of God and the love of Jesus, sometimes over several years, but having the dog collar is often a way in to some fascinating and potentially life-changing conversations. It's amazing to get the chance to do something of such significance.
4. Flexibility: there's the chance to focus on what I do well, and (I'm blessed in being part of a very good team at a local church) to let others do the things I don't do that well.
5. We're not paid that much, and your house is chosen for you. That takes me out of a whole load of worry about housing choice and costs, and trying to find satisfaction in possessions rather than in quality of life and relationships.
6. Working from home means I get to see my kids whilst they're still awake, and don't have lots of traffic and stress to put up with.
7. Variety: an average day can take in a funeral, a new baby, a mission strategy meeting, and hooking up with people in several different setttings. It's possible to get jaded if you don't look after yourself, but it's impossible to get bored.
8. I get the chance to use most of my gifts in one way or another, and to do stuff that I'm passionate about. There are lots of jobs out there that are pretty hard to do with a passion: they pay the bills, and that's it. I honestly can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.

There are downsides: I've only a finite amount of adrenaline and most weeks it seems to get used up, there are situations every week which cause me massive stress, at times there's a big cost to family life. Happy? yes, but there's more to it than simply happiness: calling, fulfilment, purpose, identity, significance, God, the happiness is just a by-product.

Update: I did actually do a short spell in marketing before ordination, for Clarks shoes, and it was one of the better departments in the company to work in. Some of the experiences from there were quite helpful post-ordination, and some of the marketing folk were fairly decent. Just in case you think I have a total downer on it!

Evasive Action

 “Poetry may make us a little more aware of the deeper unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate, for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.” TS Eliot.

I heard this quoted by Gordon MacDonald a few months ago, reflecting on the fall of King David, and our habit of running away from our past rather than repairing it. It's one of those quotes which has latched on to me and won't let go, so I've a feeling it's not finished with me yet. I do find it easier to be active than reflective, and to fill time with distractions/stuff rather than letting myself settle.

One of the reasons I avoid myself is fear. I was quite nervous getting ready for a 7 day silent retreat back in May, partly it was fear of what God might do to me once He got me alone for 7 days without my Seven Dwarves (Twitter, internet, TV, Wii, Books, background music, comfort snacking) to provide junk consolation. It turned out much better than I expected. But I'm still falling back into the old evasive actions, and still haven't done what I promised I'd do after hearing Macdonalds words. For 6 months I've intended to go back through my life story, asking God to show me where the knots and wounds are, and to help me face up to them. And I'm still avoiding it.

Where is God?

The higlight of my recent sabbatical was a week at St. Beunos, a Christian prayer retreat in North Wales. It's run by the Jesuits, a Catholic order, and featured on The Big Silence, a BBC programme last autumn. As a result of the programme, their retreats are booked out for the whole of this year.

At the heart of the prayer retreat was a 45 minute chat with a spiritual director, who would suggest some prayer exercises for me to do each day. One of these would involve meditating on a Bible passage by imagining my way into it: to identify a character in the story and imagine being in the story from that persons perspective, or simply to imagine being in the story myself. Another would be an imaginitive prayer exercise: on a couple of occasions I was encouraged to 'go for a walk with Jesus'. That meant arranging a time and place to meet Him, and to imagine throughout the walk that Jesus was physically next to me. I ended up opening gates for Him, walking to one side so that there was space for both of us on the road (the roads are narrow in North Wales!), and adjusting my speed when I sensed I was 'losing' Jesus by walking too fast.

I found all of this very fruitful, whilst being aware that I rarely have the leisure in prayer to simply use my imagination. It's much more controllable to pray set prayers, work through a list of things to pray for, and formulate my own prayers, rather than let my (rather more chaotic) imagination run the show.

As an evangelical, I'm trained to base prayers on reason. God is found in the Word, in the left brain, prayer is based on who God is (revealed in words) and what God has said (ditto), and is verbal. Ignatian prayer is more 'right brain', and uses the imagination. Both reason and imagination can be flaky, and I came back from the walks wondering whether I'd been for a walk with Jesus, or just imagined I'd been for a walk with Jesus. Then I wondered whether perhaps both had happened, and it didn't have to be an either/or.

Now when I pray, I'm finding it increasingly helpful to identify where Jesus is in the room (yes, that sounds odd), so that I can talk to him, rather than formulating sentences in my head and hoping they're going in the right direction. And I'm still working all this out. But in my head I can hear the spiritual directors Polish accent saying 'where are you Lord?' and it's now a question I like to ask Jesus regularly. Trying to discern where Jesus is so that I can pray, and where Jesus is in the things of the day, is all pretty new, but it also seems to have some 'life' to it. I went on sabbatical with a key goal of rediscovering my relationship with God, in a way that wasn't bound up with my identity as a vicar, and I think God's answered that prayer.

Now as I read through all this, I wonder if it would have made sense to the me of 4 months ago, and I don't really know!!

Rev. John Collie 1925-2011

Whilst I was on sabbatical earlier this year I was sad to hear of the death of my first vicar, John Collie. I became a Christian as a teenager in Sheffield, in the mid-80s, and John was vicar of All Saints Ecclesall. My mum had already booked me on the church confirmation course, and inbetween her doing that and the course actually starting, God cornered me on a Sheffield bus (story for another time) and I started following Him in earnest.

My experience of church up to that point hadn't been great - a few dusty seasonal things like harvest festival, regular family services which we went to on scout church parade, which normally featured a wacky visual aid and a sermon from one of the lay readers. I still remember a giant pen-knife and one based on different types of fish. (The fish one I even remember the message, which for a 30-year old sermon is remarkable, well done Margaret Green). After my conversion, I went every week, and particularly loved communion as (in a big church) there was plenty of time to pray whilst everyone else was queuing up. Though I did have to ask what 'propitiation' and 'Hosanna' meant. Not everybody knew!

John co-led the confirmation course along with Vernon Blackmore, the then curate (last I heard he was working for Lion Books). After one of the sessions, about half way through, John kept me behind at the end. He stood right in front of me, eyeball to eyeball (we were about the same height when I was 15) and said something like "David, have you ever considered the ordained ministry". Quite a line for someone who had only been a Christian for a couple of months, but it lit the blue touch paper.

I'll always be grateful for Johns encouragement into ministry and leadership, and his confidence in me. I imagine there are lots of other people who could say the same. I'm sad that I never got to say thankyou properly - I regularly thought about writing to let him know how I was getting on, but never got round to it. I'm rather ashamed of that, if I 'don't have time' to be grateful to the people who've had such a significant impact on my life then there's something deeply twisted going on. Anyway, I wanted to register my gratitude to God for John Collie, I'll always be glad he was my vicar. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

Maybe

After a 3 month sabbatical, I'm seriously pondering whether to resume blogging. I know there isn't the time to do it at the level of the old 'St. Aidan to Abbey Manor' blog, but it was a useful way of sharing ideas and resources. The main problem was that it became compulsive. Hence the removal of anything from the blog which refers to traffic stats!

I've had a fiddle with formatting and appearance, and a new title which is a bit less pretentious and probably more accurate. But if it starts taking more than 15 minutes a day then it's back to Blogger deep freeze.

Part of that may mean less interaction with commenters, and if there are any posts/threads that start me losing sleep at night then they'll be deleted. Yes that's happened. Anyway, one post at a time and we'll see what happens...

Over and out.

According to the stat counter down there in the sidebar, this blog has had approaching 100,000 pageviews in the (nearly) 4 years of its existence. Which is nice. And it's enough.

I've been toying for a while with the idea of quitting permanently. Various events recently have hurried up my thought process on this. Part of me (the opinionated bit) will find it tricky - I can't find something interesting or potentially useful without wanting to go 'hey! anyone seen this?' and will have to start learning the discipline of silence. Or I could just email it to the Church Mouse.

The site will stay up for a while, to give people a chance to harvest anything that might have been useful. Comments will stay on  for a couple of weeks, but then get switched off permanently. Once the only traffic here becomes Google searches for Dave Walker cartoons, (a surprisingly high number), then the whole thing will get deleted. That's for purely selfish reasons: it'll be much easier to avoid the temptation to blog if I don't have a blog!

Thankyou to everyone for coming to visit, comment, argue etc. I hope it's been worth your while. Thanks to Steve Tilley, Ruth Gledhill, Matt Wardman and Maggi Dawn for encouragement and inspiration. It's now time for me to put my energies into other things. If you feel like using the time saved from reading my twaddle to pray for me, that would be great.

Alternatively, for local stuff try the Yeovil Blog, for a valiant attempt to make Thomas Hardy funny (almost impossible) try Lost in Wessex, or another of Gary's projects for a former Beaker Person My Gospel Right or Wrong. For new reading matter, try Charlie Peer's excellent new blog. Me, I'll be here. Staying on Twitter for the moment, but we'll see how that goes. If it becomes too distracting, then it might fall victim to the cuts...

Thanks for your company. God bless. David