Morocco '78 (2)

Sunrise over what turned out to be a reservoir. We didn't know it at the time when we set up camp, but just around the corner on the damn were armed army personnel!

Morocco '78

Reminiscing about Morocco yesterday called for a review of some of the photographs. Maybe I'll scan more of them, but that's a project for another day.

Here's one from the early part of the journey. I'm guessing it's somewhere in France or Spain.

Standing at the back of the group on the left is Ian Groome. Ian was studying law at UWIST if I remember correctly. He was part of the Navigator group with which I was connected. In the checked shirt at the back of the group is Anne. Little did I know I'd be coming back from that trip with my future wife!

By the table is Chris Webster, another fellow student at UWIST, now a professor of Town Planning I'm told. Behind Chris you can just about see Annabel I think. Looks like she might be talking to Anne. In the red check shirt is Esther. I'm not sure, but the girl next to Esther might have been Esther's friend, but I can't remember.

Standing with her back to the bus might be Gail Dixon who went on to work for Horizons. I can't remember the name of the person standing next to Gail, (and if it's not Gail then it's Fran, a nurse who last I heard was in Australia).

I've be wracking by brain for the name of the guy standing at a distance from the rest of us. He was definitely part of the group.

Not in this picture then are Rowland, who lead the expedition, Robin, who I think had been serving as a missionary in Zaire as it was known then. If it's Gail in the picture then Fran and another nurse Sonia are not in the photograph and of course neither am I. Also missing is Jill (or was it Gill?) who also went to serve in Africa but who sadly died in the 1990's and Tim Morris, another Horizons worker.

Happy Birthday Dear!

Today my wife, Anne, is 50. It's okay, she isn't overly concerned about her age. Although she may be now that I've published it on the internet–perhaps I should have thought about that before I began this post! Anyway, this means both of us are now eligible for Saga holidays (I was 50 last October). Just over three weeks ago we celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary. 

It just doesn't seem possible that we've known each other for over 30 years but we have. We have come a long way since we sat next to each other in the biology lab. at UWIST dissecting earthworms. 

Over our 28 years of being married we've lived in 7 homes in 5 locations. When I went back to college to study theology, Anne continued to work, and when I told her about two struggling churches in Newark that had no money and no vision and wanted some help, she took on the challenge with me. She has always fitted her career in around serving the church as we've moved up and down the country.

Being a "minister's wife" cannot be an easy title to bear. There have been times when the expectations placed on her, simply because she is my wife, have been quite unreasonable. 

But we're still going and we're still committed to serving God together.

So, happy birthday to Anne, now 110010 or 32 in hex.

Larry Norman

I discovered yesterday that Larry Norman passed away earlier this week. Some may know of his music, perhaps many will not. I remember him as the first Christian musician I went to see live. It was in 1977 or '78 in Cardiff. I remember listening to him as he stood alone on the stage and held the attention of the audience as he told his stories and shard his songs.

Today's new experience

Today I've taken my MacBook out on the road. To Twickenham to be precise. Ally is having her first university interview and I've travelled down with her by train. I now find myself sitting in a Caffe Nero using the wireless hotspot just because I can!

It's not a nostalgia thing, but it makes me think about my own university days, about how much I actually miss an academic environment. University is such a significant time in the lives of most undergraduates. For me it was about being away from home, taking responsibility for myself. Learning some lessons about self-discipline and motivation. I was a fairly independently minded teenager, so some of those things were not as big a step for me as for others. In fact the truth is that I looked for a college that was far enough away to make weekend visits home or from home a bit of an expedition. And when the opportunity to stay at college over a holiday period like Christmas or Easter came my way I looked forward to it. Being independent suited me just fine. 

Today, so I am told, more and more students go to university locally and live at home for the duration.  That seems a little sad to me. I get the impression that this is more an economic choice than anything else.

Still, things change and thirty years ago a wireless hotspot was probably something generated by the microwave experiments in the physics department. I remember one experiment in the field of radio and microwave technology that took all day to complete, large parts of which were spent trying to figure out where radio 4 was coming from!

In the 70's computers were big, room-filling machines that were far from under-friendly. My one and only use of a computer at college was to experiment with a computer model for controlling a pest population on a fruit farm (I did a very varied first degree!)

Of course the other thing about university was meeting Anne. It wasn't exactly the most romantic of first meetings. We were, as I recall, dissecting earthworms as part of the biology course unit. Anne was not at her best taking small animals and the like apart, me on the other hand, I rather enjoyed the whole thing. At school a fellow biologist and I were standing in line for lunch one day and noticed that people just in front of us kept leaving the queue for some reason. To this day I don't know why, but I have wondered if it had anything to do with our conversation about the stomach contents of the dog fish we were dissecting that morning (the dog fish, if you didn't know, is a member of the shark family and quite a fascinating fish to dissect on account of this).

Anyway, Caffe Nero is filling up with mums and babies out for morning coffee and I need to turn my attention to next Sunday and my talk on Esther.  

Things I remember

Here's a random list of things I remember from growing. It's in celebration of turning 50 and a vain attempt and seeing what actually sticks in my memory. So in no particular order...

I remember:

Neil Armstrong stepping onto the surface of the moon
England winning the football World Cup in 1966
The day decimal currency was introduced to the UK
The assassination of JKF, his brother Bobby and Martin Luther King
William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and John Pertwee as Doctor Who
Black and White TV
Only having two TV channels to choose from and no day-time programmes at all!
Penny chews
Making ice slides in the school playground
Fred Truman playing cricket
Aztec chocolate bars
My first trip to casualty (the "emergency room" and the first of many I have to say)
My first broken bone (left jaw fractured by my own knee having fallen off a roof.)
The chimney sweep who had a heart attack in our lounge (I don't remember what happened to him)
The first flight of Concorde
My first try in a rugby match for the school (Actually I only scored two tries in my whole school rugby career and both came in the same match!)
The only hat-trick I ever took in cricket (Also for the school. I actually took four wickets in five deliveries that day)
Walking on the cliffs with my father (we didn't do many things together, but we always went for a walk on holiday)
Lucky bags
The first X-men comic (Oh, if only I'd kept the thing in a plastic cover along with all those small cars and Meccano bits)
Fireball XL5; Stingray; Thunderbirds; Joe 90
My first chemistry set (And the first experiment I did, which was to add water to anhydrous copper sulphate and watch it turn blue. Not very exciting, but I soon graduated to trying to blow things up as I recall)
My first school prize ( I was "top boy" for three years and then they changed the prize to "exceptional effort" and a friend of mine won because he made an exceptional effort, whereas I hadn't!)
The first time I opted for the truth over a lie. It wasn't a big thing and I was no angel believe me. I remember it because it was the first time I realised there was a choice to make. I was about 8 at the time.
Sitting the 11+ (I passed and went to Grammar School as a result)
Having dark brown hair

And many more things I'm sure.