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I went back to the Bridge Community church today. They handed me a tablet to sign up my details. I was not 100% sure about that. There was a different band to last week, and I could not see Adrian's nursery nurse, but she was upstairs looking after the children. One of the band was an American woman and there seemed to be a number of Americans in the congregation. There are quite a few Americans in Bury St Edmunds because of the American air bases near by. We had a guest pastor. He was a good speaker. The subject of the sermon was how a church of five members sent two of their number, Barnabas and Saul, out to preach Christianity in the wider world: Judea, Samaria and the wider world, at least Asia Minor and Greece, judging by the slide. I wondered why Galilee was not mentioned specifically with Judea and Samaria. In another part of the sermon, the pastor showed a slide of his wife, another western woman and two Nepalese women in a Nepalese village. The pastor said the western woman was the first person to introduce Christianity to a Nepalese village up a mountain twenty years ago. When she went, her guide turned back because it was too dangerous, but she went on. I was thinking that this church was rather like an American evangelist church. It reminded me of my strangest site visit when I worked as a computer programmer for a company that made broadcast equipment. The customer was a church in Canada that had their own television channel. They had bought some video servers and I had to tweak our software to work with the video servers. I watched a service from the computer room. At one point the pastor picked up a sword and started swinging it around. The pastor in today's service also had a prop. It was a balloon which he blew up until it burst, making a baby cry. At another point in the service, the pastor said there was good news regarding the state of Christianity and bad news. The bad news was that a lot of churches had dwindling, very elderly congregations, and that their ministers and officers were very thinly stretched. That reminded me very much of the United Reformed Church in Bury St Edmunds. The good news was that millions of bibles were bought last year. I bought a bible for toddlers last year. About three years ago I bought a New Version bible, and also a Latin Vulgate bible that included all the apopcryphal (spelling?) books. Unfortunately, when I went to collect Adrian he was lying on the floor. He had not been firing on all cylinders. I thought he was tired, because he had not slept well, but later he developed a nasty sounding cough and a temperature, and my step-father who is a retired G.P. recommended we take him to hospital, where he was treated for croup. At present he is sleeping it off in a hospital ward, but it looks like he is on the mend.

I finished it last night. It was alright, actually. The only thing is that while I was reading the first contact with the ghosts in bed, one of my wardrobe doors was opening by itself. I had to get out of bed to close it. I wouldn't normally read a book like that, because the cover would make me think it was romantic fiction. It is quite a cross genre novel. It is also one of the most Christian fictional books I have read. The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde was pretty Christian. I read Paradise Lost a year or so ago, which was very Christian, but I had difficulty understanding much of that.

paratrooper to eschew obsequiousness

@Madeleine I think so too

How Long - Ace

Moonstone, Laura Purcell I always enjoy Laura Purcell, so I was pleased to read this. I did anticipate most of the plot, as it's aimed at Young Adults, but not all of it, and therefore I knew fairly early on that it was a werewolf story. I was delighted by this, as I didn't expect it, and was keen to find out what happened next. The plot is very good, the characters are believable, and it's a very nice story which comes to a satisfying ending. Recommended

Last Rites, Ozzy Osbourne Sent to me by a friend of mine, I then decided to read it. I'm glad that I did. This isn't a straightforward biography; it's more the reminiscences of a man who had a very long career and a much longer life than even he anticipated. It reads as if he is in the room with you and telling you his life story as it occurs to him. This isn't as off-putting as it sounds. I've always known that Ozzy was highly intelligent, and this shines through the prose. What surprised me is that he actually cared a lot more about what was going on around him than it appeared. I've never been a particular fan of his, but I did read the column he wrote for The Sunday Times, many years ago, and he was very witty with it. Which I believe is why he became something of a national treasure. He wasn't the all-bad, black-as-painted devil worshipper that those in the field of Heavy Metal (it was called Hard Rock when I first met it) are usually portrayed. He was a professional musician, as they all are, and had, frankly, an epic work ethic. Yes, he was debauched, and he admits that, but he worked hard, right up until two weeks before his death, even though he was so ill that he could not stand up, so to a certain extent, he deserved his debauchery. He was also very aware of his own inadequacies, which he wasn't afraid of stating but, as with his addictions, made no excuse for. There is a certain amount of profanity in the book, but I can't imagine why this would not be anticipated. The last chapter reads very much like he knew he was dying and was saying goodbye. I learned a great deal about a man I was already familiar with, and thoroughly enjoyed reading this. Recommended.

my right as a

How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You ~ James Taylor

Daphne du Maurier, Flight of the Falcon

Sweet Child of Mine - Guns n Roses

or not it is

Sweet Dreams - Patsy Cline

whether you like it

Dream Lover ~ Bobby Darin

Lover (When You're Near Me ) - Peggy lee

It wasn't The Owl and the Pussycat. It was The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.

Long haired lover from Liverpool - Jimmy Osmond (possibly one of the worst songs ever made, although by all accounts he's a lovely guy).

Long Haired Country Boy - The Charlie Daniels Band

saying am taking this

without so much as

I Vow To Thee, My Country ~ Charlotte Church

There are Rivers in the sky by Elif Shafak. Turkish novel about Assyrian empire- cuneiform tablets, etc- sprad from Iraq to London to Iraq. Starts excellent but DNF cos it got very teite with twee dialogue. 3/5 max.

belong to other women