I got a call today to say that a certain famous person had done a Google search on himself to see what was being written about him and that he’d stumbled across my blog!! I had mentioned him in passing. Now I’m really embarrassed!!

…This is the title of my latest piece, in today :-S As usual I am procrastinating ever so slightly and avoiding the inevitable ‘finishing of sketchbooks’ that awaits me in the couple of hours that I now have before Uni. I don’t like presentation days, as you have to present your module to the whole group which is really scary :-S

Pressure!

I have basically spent the whole term working my socks off with little time for much else. Still, the end is in sight and in about two weeks we break up for Christmas… Bliss! Only we break up conveniently half-way through a module, so this means muchos holidayous work as well as attempting to earn a bit of cash on the side *sigh*.

JT has a whopping 5 days left at Toyota which is VERY exciting, which means that also it is only a week and a day until Louise’s wedding!! WOOHOOOOO! So the run up to Christmas is looking really exciting all in all, apart from the dilemma of what to do actually at Christmas family-wise, which is a really difficult one for us.

I’m loving Steve Clarke’s amusing picture of Tesco muddling up Christmas and Easter and I hereby launch a contest between now and Christmas for “Confused Christmas”… Amusing photos of Christmas that you see out and about. keep your eyes peeled and your mobile phone camera at the ready!! The photos attached are of my family Christmas where Grandma ‘Street’ (white hair) and Granny ‘stealth’ are sporting an attractive XXXX baseball cap in contest with each other for the coolest snap. Grandma ‘street’ because of her Ali G phrases that she mixes with the ‘sweet little old lady’ image and Granny ‘stealth’ because she plays an act of being all bewildered but is very canny and knows exactly what is going on in popular culture. Enjoy the Grannies… Sorry about the bad English in this post, I am feeling ratehr tired.

Check this out… Amazon’s finest: A toothpaste squeezer!!! I hereby launch my latest competition… Who can find the silliest Christmas gift for the person who has everything?

The first tribute is to George Hogg’s hilarious dummy picture (used without permission – sorry!!) The second tribute is to a few familiar faces from the Kemble crew… Love you guys!

This picture is of Anthea Turner – escaped mannequin from Bath Road investigating “mischief Central” AKA The Kemble Brewery – scene of many funny evenings out, real ale and Rayfield-isms…

Why does it always happen when you have LOADS of work to do and are hugely behind due to being ill for a week? It has not been a good day so far… Firstly, we are overdrawn. Then I get a phone bill for £75!!!!! This is mostly from spending three hours on the phone to utilities companies and apparently STILL not resolving the fact that we have not paid any utilities bills since we moved in here in May. We are awaiting a bill for around £400. Then, I find that my student ID card is missing which means that with deadlines, I cannot borrow any books, do any photocopying etc etc. It costs £10 to get a new card and takes a few weeks.

Anyway, I was at home waiting for the gas man to arrive and when he did, I learned that the monkeys employed at the letting agency (whom the Lord loves very much and in my quest to be like Jesus I try to feed them peanuts as a token of goodwill), had merrily given him the keys to our flat!! I was gobsmacked. Now, I am not hugely versed in the ins and outs of tenants rights, but would anyone else have been tempted to ask what on earth they were playing at? Imagine if I had been in the shower?! What was more they had specifically asked me to stay in (delaying my work further) to wait for this guy. He was just some random man from British gas!

Anyway, it wasn’t “Nigel”‘s fault, but I nearly hit the roof when he mentioned ‘off the cuff’ that the letting agency might pop round to do an inspection today, having given us no notice whatsoever (which they are meant to do). So now instead of working I have to clean. I mean, it isn’t horrendous, but it is fairly obvious that one of the curtain rails has snapped (there’s no way I can hang the new one up!) and that our cooker is not very clean.

I have a fair bit of paid work which is either waiting to be paid for or waiting to be completed, so I must get on with that at some point as well – as soon as Thursday’s deadline of doom is over!! (After that I have to write an essay :-S) I think I may go and buy some kitten food to calm down (yuk more overdraft!) It is not often that I have a stress, but today was not very funny. What should I do about the gas man? I feel a bit un-knowledgable! (New word of the day).

I am sitting at home waiting for the gas service check man, who is coming to do a service check (oddly enough!) on our boiler any time between 8 and 1 *yAwN!* It is at times such as these, when I have looming deadlines that are far from completion (a big project in for Thursday) and have specifically set a day aside to complete them, that I begin to procrastinate. It all starts in the mind when you wake up and the little electrodes that send signals to the “must do work” part of your brain see the horrendous volume of the said obstacle and shout “RUN AWAY!!” and veer off in a completely different direction.

It is in these beautiful places that you discover contemplations, those really exciting things that you have put on a shelf in your brain for later because you didn’t have time etc. It is upon days like these that I turn to my blog, remembering something that could be said, if anyone would care to read it… And here lies today’s contemplation:

The Lord has been challenging me (particularly after Keith’s sermon on revival last night) about sharing my faith. I spent a couple of hours in the 24-7 prayer room the other week and I had a picture of a large tower block of flats. In each window was a different kind of person or family. It was quite specific, such as “single Mum with three year-old and five year-old”, “mechanic and girlfriend” etc. There were satellite dishes on the side and mobile phone masts on the top of the flats simply labelled “potential”. Somewhere off-centre to the block of flats was a window labelled “You”. The phrase that came with it was “infiltrate your neighbourhood”, then a picture of people doing that, and filling the Odeon – our new church.

I thought of the people in these flats and linked them to people you see around Cheltenham who are so weary of life because everything they try does not satisfy or deliver what they are looking for. I think of the Polish people at JT’s work who all have three jobs each and simply spend their time moving from one to the next, working seven days a week. I was talking to JT the other day about it and couldn’t help but wonder ‘what on earth are they living for??’ Poland must be pretty awful if that is a viable alternative. One poor lad works seven days a week because he is saving up for a heart operation for his Dad.

Here I am harbouring the most amazing gift of all – Jesus. Why am I afraid to tell people about Him? I wonder who would truly turn down an offer of * Free unconditional love * Eternal life *Someone who is always there for you no matter what you have done * Hope * Freedom ? How could you turn that down when it is offered on a plate for free?? All you have to do is say “yes”.

Now I am no street preacher, but I thought of my own little street where there are just five blocks of flats (and then five more on the other side). I only know the names of the people who live in our building and even then I only stop and chat for a minute with them. Say there was an average of two people per flat, that makes 50 people in our half of the street! That is a lot of people on my doorstep who don’t know the Lord, who don’t have anything to live for and who are probably weary of life. I would be weary of life if I was paying £515 a month in rent for a one bedroom flat and working every spare minute to keep it (which we do) but without any hope or reason to carry on.

How long would it take to help someone? To chat to someone? To bake someone a cake when they may have had a difficult week? To give people the time of day? I don’t really know what to do because this culture doesn’t love it’s neighbours but I am determined to learn. With the increase in technology and the decline of parishes, communities and face-toface interaction I think that we are losing the ability to love. All our ‘community’ is done online or at a distance via mobile phone. yet people are still on our doorstep and as I sit here contained within my “box” (flat) I am aware that Phil is probably sleeping upstairs after working his night shift in his second job and that Sean is probably sitting upstairs in his “box” on his own, waiting to go to work. Aline (who is a Christian) is possibly sitting in her “box” looking for a job. Who is showing God’s love to them? Who does it boil down to? The person who knows God’s love – me.

I want to learn how to do this, the only thing I have ever wanted to do religiously is love.

On Wednesday a massive 53 people looked at my blog! How strange. Perhaps it was the addition of those wonderful key phrases “matlab and simulink”…? It is a refreshing change from a range of 5-11 hits though. I only told four or five people about the blog, hoping that it might infiltrate society gradually. Well, really because I didn’t think anyone would be that bothered but hey!!

So how are we all doing? I am feeling a bit sick because the cat has the squits… (Twinkle). She has just ‘performed’ and then apparently she sat in it, because she then proceeded to run in a wild panic through the flat, sliding her bottom across the floor. I hastily threw her outside and spent a joyous period scrubbing the floor. Not happy. The flat stinks of poo, I have a towel on my head as I was trying to enjoy a late shower and little Monty is a bit bewildered! I attach a photo of him playing the piano which is rather cute. I may even attach a few more.

Monty has a new habit of climbing up my leg when he wants a cuddle, but his claws are getting quite sharp nowadays so it actually really hurts! Other than that the Turners are well. I am snowed under with work and JT is working out his notice period. YES! For anyone who didn’t know, the Brooklyn discipline is almost over and
JT returns to work at Trinity half way through next month! CELEBRATE!! It is a huge weight off our shoulders and it will be perfect for him. Praiseth the Lordeth for provisioneth of workus, squitticus catticus and that alle is welle.

This one from the very creative George Hogg, my hat is on the floor – great entry!

I have just received a parcel from DHL. The man saw me through the window and motioned to me to open the door (this is a regular slightly annoying occurence because we live on the ground floor!) He said “er yeah…er I have a parcel for a Naomi Turner? but there’s no flat number”. I said: “oooh I’m a Naomi Turner!” and signed for the parcel. How exciting!! I love getting parcels.

I walked back inside, slightly puzzled. It was from Blackwell’s University bookshop, but I had not placed an order(?!) Perhaps a member of my family had been very organised with my Christmas present and had it sent ahead early…?

Imagine my surprise when out comes a piece of software entitled “MATLAB AND SIMULINK”. Eh? It wasn’t pink, certainly not fluffy and didn’t even make a jingly noise when you shook it, so it definitely wasn’t something that I could immediately interpret! The blonde braincells were ticking. Was it a gift from the Lord for the Trinity Growth Project?! Hmmm…

It includes:

MATLAB® Featured Products

* SimBiology™
* Link for Cadence®
Incisive®
* Link for ModelSim®
* Distributed Computing Toolbox
* Data Acquisition Toolbox

Simulink® Featured Products

* SimHydraulics™
* SimEvents™
* SystemTest
* Video and Image Processing Blockset

As you can see, I totally wouldn’t get it! I called Blackwell’s in a most CHRISTIAN manner, trying to explain their mistake, but they insisted that they didn’t even have my details registered and kept exclaiming “Isn’t that strange??” “YES!! YOU ARE very strange!!” I had to keep myself from replying. He then said “…and it’s of no use to you whatsoever?” Do I sound like I would make use of SimHydraulics?! “Er…no”.

“Well you could send it back to us but then you’d have to pay the postage and we’d have to refund it… Maybe you’d better just keep hold of it”. Keep hold of it? Yeah right, it’s going on eBay unless anyone CAN make use of it?! Shame he just wasted some £50 software because he couldn’t be bothered to pay postage though. How very peculiar and lightly amusing in an ironic sort of fashion…

I feel like a bit of an idiot. I completed a nice flyer for Glenfall Fellowship yesterday to advertise their Christmas carol service. Poor Owen then spent AGES helping me convert it to a two-page .pdf (especially as I sat uploading 40MB onto his web server! ooops). I then geot a very polite answerphone message today from Jonathan Stott suggesting that they had probably better not serve MICE PIES after the service! How embarrassing. Here comes my second photo competition… What is a ‘mice pie’?