We Was Robbed

So this is the Southenders team that entered the quiz night at Hadleigh Salvation Army. We were the smallest and youngest team there (on average), but we did pretty well! We came fourth out of eight teams which wasn't bad!

Having said that, we were robbed. We came fourth, one and a half points behind the team who came in third. So how were we robbed? Well, one of the questions referred to the British Crown Dependencies. 'Name the two British Crown Dependencies'. The only problem was that I knew there were three Crown Dependencies (Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man). So I got all confused. The answer was the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, but this is technically wrong as, as I understand it, the only thing that connects Jersey and Guernsey is geography. Politically they're completely seperate, so the question was WRONG.

Ok, fair enough. So we lost one point? But NO! On this round, we had played our joker, meaning we got two points for every question. Had the question been right, we would have got two more points and come in third. Third is better than fourth. It's the difference between a podium finish and a non-podium finish (There was no podium unfortunately).

And Glyn only gave our play-doh Leaning Tower of Pisa five points, when it clearly deserved more, being both recognisable and entertaining.

This was a pretty big weekend actually. On Saturday night I did the concert I mentioned a few posts ago, and I was really happy with how it went. I sang Lost, Sway (in English and Icelandic!), Everything by Michael Buble, Breath of Heaven, Bui Doi and finally We Beseech Thee from Godspell. I was pretty nervous, but really satisfied with the final result. Hopefully I'll be able to post a video or two fairly soon.

Afterwards, we went out to celebrate the concert (or was it for Anna's birthday? I forget... ;) ) to a Tapas restaurant. And it was really nice - but mega confusing. This is me working out my order:

The food was great - the only down side being that the meatballs were slightly more garlicky than we had thought. My mum refused to speak to me all day. Anna, me, Josh and Paul managed to stink out the bandroom the next morning and apparently Andy and Tracy's corner of the hall was pretty powerful during the Sunday morning meeting!

Easter and A Little Book

I'm a big fan of Easter and it was a good Easter weekend. But busy of course!

On Good Friday we had the open-air service in the High Street which went well - and the heavens opened as soon as we'd finished, so that was lucky! The band stands at the top of the High St and people from the various churches in the town walk the length of the High St carrying a large wooden cross. We certainly get noticed (you'd have to be pretty stupid to miss a big wooden cross and a big brass band) and let's hope it made some people remember why Good Friday is a public holiday.

And then Easter Sunday came. We had Easter breakfast at the Salvation Army, but being the big kid I am, I'd already eaten two Cadbury's creme eggs and a tube of mini-eggs (and I wasn't feeling the best for it, but every year's the same).

This year for Lent I'd given up fizzy drinks - and I'd found it really difficult actually. I drink nothing else. I reckon a good 75% of my body mass was Diet Coke before Lent started...

Josh very kindly brought a bottle of Diet Coke (two in fact) to the Easter Sunday morning service for me and I got stuck into them pretty much straight away. But the amount of chocolate I'd eaten, the speed at which I drank it and the fact that I hadn't had anything fizzy for seven weeks made my face go like this:

Then we went outside and played in the snow (Fortunately my uniform dried in time for the meeting).

In other news, the little book I wrote a chapter of has been published. So that's pretty exciting:

And look what I found when I went into my favourite bookshop:

106 Not Out: Something Different

So this post marks the end of the 100th post ‘celebrations’. Thanks to all those who guest blogged for me!

Just for something a little different, I thought I’d post a video today to round the week off. My brother has become quite the music techie, so we thought we’d try something new out. So this is the song Lost, originally by Michael Bublé, but sung here by, well, me. I will just point out that this was for fun, we only had five minutes in which to record it, and, as is my way, I have been – unintentionally – slightly creative with the lyrics (You should have heard the words I made up when I had to sing ‘O Holy Night’ at school once – some of them weren’t even words).

So here it is:

The picture incidentally is of Hobart, Australia.

The only thing that remains is for me to wish you all a fantastic Easter. And, as I wrote last year, I hope you all have a great weekend, whatever you're doing. I really love Easter Sunday - there's always such an exciting feel about it. So if you're not doing anything this Sunday, why not check out a local Salvation Army or other church and see what's going on?! You’ll never know if you don’t try! (And you can’t say I don’t try!) :D

PS: I know it took me a while, but I’ve now updated my Project 365, and I must say, a couple of the March photos are pretty good!

105 Not Out: Guest Blogger 4

Guest Blogger: Tim Jones

Multi-talented Multilingual Men
Recently I had an interesting discussion with a man who has been retired from his career for a number of years, a man who had travelled a lot as part of his job.

He had spent a number of years in Germany, Cyprus and a number of other exciting and exotic places and was bemoaning the fact that nobody spoke English. I could kind of understand his point of view. In the Army bases where he worked (in case you hadn't figured that out), the majority of people would be Anglophones. This though doesn't mean that he shouldn't try. He was very much of the opinion that as English is one of the most widely spoken mother tongues and, arguably, the language of world business, everyone else should make the effort.

Everyone knows, and can probably identify with the British language tactic when abroad. LOUDER and SLOOOOOWWWWWEEEERRR! As painful as it is to admit, some/most/all of us have used it on occasion.

This, however, is John's blog. He is a linguist and has asked me, another linguist to guest write for him. I know that this blog is read by an audience in various locations around the globe.
The census that will be taken in 3 years time will ask participants to provide details about which language they speak. In relation to this, the census information and questions will be provided in one of 24 languages

1. Albanian/Kosovan
2. Arabic
3. Bengali
4. Cantonese
5. Croatian
6. Farsi
7. French
8. German
9. Greek
10. Gujerati
11. Hindi
12. Italian
13. Japanese
14. Polish
15. Portuguese
16. Punjabi
17. Russian
18. Serbian
19. Somali
20. Spanish
21. Swahili
22. Turkish
23. Urdu
24. Vietnamese

Plus Welsh I imagine.

In a survey conducted by Battlebridge Publications, results showed that over 300 languages were spoken by the 850,000 children asked in London.

On a fairly regular basis I am required to use another language than English. Speaking French and German and small amounts of Nordic languages, and in a central London working environment, I am sometimes needed to give directions, answer questions and on the odd occasion, translate for people who have fallen victim to crime.

I really feel that the opportunity to learn another language should be seized. Whether ordering a McDonalds when in Paris to speaking Faroese or Igbo, it demonstrates a real respect for other cultures. It is a respect that is frequently forgotten in our frankly arrogant "I speak English so everyone else should" society.

À plus tard,
Bis später,
Until next time,

Timmy Magic

Tim has his own blog here.

104 Not Out: Guest Blogger 3

Guest Blogger: Katie Allen

World Book Day

I thought this post would be a good opportunity to promote World Book Day. Actually, it's probably a rubbish opportunity to promote World Book Day, as by the time it's published it will have long been and gone. But you can be extra prepared for next year...

On Thursday, 6th March 2008, schools and bookshops all over the country celebrated the wonder of stories by dedicating an entire day to the theme of fairytales and favourite books. And man, did our school celebrate in style... (for those of you who don't know, I'm a primary school teacher). Staff and pupils all dressed up as their favourite book character, we had a parade, wrote book reviews and generally had a great time! I am a big, big fan of the Mr. Men, and think that my enthusiasm has rubbed off on the kids. There were a few children who were dressed up in professionally made Mr. Men outfits, which was nice. But one child in my class really went to town, and made his very own cardboard cut out version of Mr. Strong. I think it's ok to put his photo on here as you can't see his face at all (it wasn't a very practical outfit, manoeuvring through doors and sitting down proved to be a bit of a problem):As for me, I just put on the first thing that I pulled out of the wardrobe that morning...It's quite hard to tell from this photo, but I haven't been very well this week. The day before this was taken I was sent home from work ill (which has never happened before) and the only reason I dragged myself in the next day was because I didn't think the chance to dress up as Alice in Wonderland would come along again for a while.

Unfortunately, having survived the entire day being cheery and pretending that my head didn't pound every time someone shouted 'ARE YOU ALICE IN WONDERLAND?', I got into my car and realised that I'd run out of petrol. Which meant that I had to stop at a petrol station. In rush hour. I didn't take any photos of the incident, but I imagine it looked something like this:Anyway, I tried to act nonchalant and went to pay for my petrol (feeling like I was in a scene from Enchanted).

The following conversation ensued:

Me: Number 7, please.

Shop Assistant: Sorry, I haven't seen it.

Me: What, the amount?

Shop Assistant: The rabbit.

The people behind the counter were still chuckling as I drove off. Next year, I'm coming as The Invisible Man...

Katie has her own blog here.

103 Not Out: Detrainment

Is this the only country in Europe that can’t cope with any type of weather varying from the norm? It snows, our schools close. It’s sunny, our roads melt. It’s rainy, our trains stop.
We had a pretty windy and rainy night, and given what I've just told you, I was surprised to see the trains running completely to schedule.

A rainy platform:I’ve now been sitting on a stationary train for over forty minutes. We were going along quite nicely before the train suddenly stopped and the lights went out (somewhere near the M25). It was announced that the wind had brought the power cables down and that ‘we weren’t gonna be going nowhere for a while’. The deadly silence of the morning commute was suddenly interrupted by voices calling the office (‘The train’s just stopped. We were literally running nicely and then the cables came down’ [the train was literally running?]). Some workmen arrived a little while ago. I’m debating whether or not to drink my bottle of water... I don’t want to be stuck needing the toilet in case we’re here for a while... We’ve now been here over an hour. Hmm... It’s kinda cool how the ol’ East End atmosphere comes in after a while. No-one usually speaks on a morning commute, but if this goes on much longer, we’ll all be sitting around the ol’ Johanna doing the Lambeth Walk (Oi!) and eating pork scratchings.

Nothing’s happening. This is the view from my window. I’ve had a long time to examine it. Ok, he’s just announced that a new train is coming with some extra staff to help him (?). Then another train will come and they’re going to ‘transfer us’. Right, this is going to be good.

(Forty minutes later) The girls next to me have started playing the Bluetooth game now. Apparently I’m sitting on the train with a Big Daddy and some Hot Lips.

This is going to be exciting. The driver has just told us that the extra staff have arrived:
Apparently we’ll be transferred soon... He’s asked us to wait a little longer (not a lot of choice there). In a few minutes he’ll explain how the transfer will work (!). Apparently we’re going to be – and I quote – detrained in ten minutes. That’s a first.

Well, I’ve been detrained now. And it turns out that detraining is a technical term for climbing out of the driver’s door one by one (easier said than done), jumping down onto the track, crossing over the track and climbing into the next train. They’re doing it carriage by carriage. We were the first. This is going to take a long time.

Detraining 1.1:

Detraining 1.2 (My finger covered the lens in all the excitement):
Man, I got on this train two and a half hours ago. Still detraining. Just found out that the power lines actually came down on the train – apparently it was quite scary for the people in that carriage. But that was why we were unable to move forwards or backwards to the closest station.

Someone just phoned in to work and I’m sure they asked to speak to Susan McNaughty. Evidently, the guy sitting next to me is trying to get the word ‘disembark’ into his phone conversation as many times as possible.

For future reference, detraining takes well over an hour.

On the move! I left my station three and a half hours ago.

And we arrive in London. A one hour trip has taken over four, I’ve missed my lessons anyway and I’m going to treat myself to a chocolate chip shortbread biscuit. Which, to be honest, wasn’t All That Great.

And that was my train journey.

102 Not Out: Guest Blogger 2

Guest Blogger: Anna Achermann

Journey Through Switzerland


When I was home for the holidays I bought this book for John Turner. It’s called Journey trough Switzerland. Unfortunately it was wrapped when I bought it, so I couldn’t really have a proper look at it. As soon as John unwrapped it I had a look at it... Now, I learned some interesting things just by reading the first 2 pages - I wanna share that with you!

I loved the title by the way: Switzerland - Heaven on Earth.

The people of Switzerland are widely considered to be industrious, reliable and honest, good natured (John might not quite agree after yesterday), peaceful (ooops, well, must be the bad Brazilian influence) and friendly. What they occasionally lack is a healthy dose of political correctness: there are Swiss men, Schweizer, but the female form, which would be Schweizerin, doesn’t exist. (Now that is the biggest whole lot of pure and utter rubbish I ever heard in my life, sadly enough I have to admit that this book was written by Swiss people, but I promise you, the word Schweizerin (Swiss woman) does exist, I cant honestly think of why they say that...must be that they have been living abroad for too long).

As we know, clichés die hard. Not only have we just pigeonholed the Swiss themselves: when Switzerland the country is mentioned - cross your heart now - who doesn’t immediately think of the Matterhorn or St. Moritz? (For those of you who don’t immediately think of the Matterhorn, it’s the mountain which is pictured on Toblerone Chocolate). Of a land of mountains where an alphorn blowing, yodelling race of goatherds lives in peaceful neutrality? Of Emmentaler and Appenzeller cheese and of chocolate which melts in your mouth? Or of those legendary Swiss bank accounts which in the most direct of all democracies are inviolable, even sacrosanct (dude, how many years ago was this written?) In short, who would doubt that it is pretty much heaven on earth? (This is the where you nod and make a jealous face for not having been born Swiss. Well done, now smile and continue reading).

The Swiss have grown up in Switzerland deeply rooted in the belief that it’s something very special (Are you implying that that’s wrong?). They take full credit for the unique beauty of their countryside - the snow capped mountains, the majestic glaciers, the striking lakes and river valleys and the range of rolling hills - and are proud of it (Course!).

Next comes a very political part about military and wars and I have noticed that the English and Swiss mentalities as far as war is concerned don’t quite go together, that’s why I’m gonna leave that out... It’s also terribly boring :-)

The Swiss have their national myth and their "William Tell" from none other than Friedrich Schiller. Once upon a time, the original three cantons (counties) of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden formed a secret alliance, swearing to fight for independence from the Habsburgs (basically the Germans... just to make it well clear that Swiss German and German is NOT the same! Hallo liebe deutsche Freunde von John, nicht persönlich nehmen #grins#). In order to test the loyalty of his peasant underlings (never heard that word before), the local Habsburg governor, Gessler, had a hat placed on a pole on the market place in Altdorf to which all who passed should bow in respect. When William Tell refused to do so, he was arrested and in punishment made to shoot an apple off his son’s head with a bow and arrow. Against all odds, he succeeded. Yet for being in possession of a second arrow Tell had intended for his tormentor, should his son have been injured, the rebellious marksman was to be thrown into the dungeons near Kuessnacht on the other side of Lake Lucerne. On his way there a föhn wind blew upon the lake. Tell, who had been handed the rudder, steered the boat towards the shore and suddenly leapt to safety on a rock, pushing the boat back into the churning waves. The next day he lay in wait for Gessler near Kuessnacht. When his second arrow finally struck its target, it did so with the same Swiss precision as the first (As you can see, we Swiss are all very good with a bow and arrow...If you want I’ll prove it - who wants to be the first one with the apple on his head?).

And now to the most important bit. Food. While I was home my aunt made a Swiss dish (I didn’t eat much, I spent my time taking the pics). The dish is called raclette and it’s the best ever in the whole wide world... even if you don’t like that taste of it, just the preparation in itself is fun.

What it is: You have a small oven you can place in the centre of your table:One oven serves usually to up to 8 people. You get a black little thingy that best could be described as a deformed very big spoon: On that "spoon" you lay a slice of cheese (there is special cheese for raclette, one that melts easily and that is square, so it goes on the spoon... good, innit?) Then you place the spoon thingy in the oven: and wait till the cheese melts (a couple of minutes) and then... enjoy!Usually you eat it with boiled potatoes, gherkins, silver onions and different spices, but really, you can have whatever takes your fancy. I love it because it’s a real family dish, no-one has to prepare for hours and hours in the kitchen, the main task is to boil potatoes and put everything on the table and because you prepare at the table, you can talk to everybody... It’s the real eating together!

Anna has her own blog here.

101 Not Out: Guest Blogger 1

Guest Blogger: Richard Wright

The Blog about Nothing at All


I have to admit a certain amount of trepidation on my part. I am at best a rubbish blogger. However there is a certain kudos and prestige that goes along with bloggers I like. Glyn, Matt White, Katie, Tim Jones and as you can already tell a certain young whippersnapper called John, whose blog I am guest on today. I got John’s e-mail and thought this would be a great way to get something I write onto a more respectable blog then my own. But then I hit a slight, how do I put this, issue or snag. I didn’t really have anything to say. Which is why I am a rubbish blogger.

Sure I could talk about meeting Michael Buerke on the tube. That was fun. Except I didn’t talk to him, just saw him. Ok that’s out. Or how I hate both Italian Neo-realism films and French New Wave cinema because they’re just a bit pretentious. So pretentious I don’t want to talk about them. I could talk about the perilous life of the Salvation Army officers' kid and how when you’re not a kid anymore it still keeps you in its vice-like grip. But none of that to me is very interesting. I find my life fairly boring. I mean why is it I feel terrible every Friday without fail? I don’t know! And I am sure no-one cares.

You see, writing a good blog is as much about being able to stick it out as much as anything. Sure you have to be interesting and you must have a certain amount of the “look at me look at me look at me” attitude of a child. But it’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon. It’s the long haul flight. It’s the…….something else long. And it’s not, Mr Jones, all about being funny... One of my favourite blogs is Kirsty Caffull. I am sure Kirsty will find no offence when I say her posts are usually not a laugh a minute. But they do make me think almost every sentence I read. Which makes my head hurt and I go to Tim Jones to relieve that.

Blogging is not an art form or a science. It’s certainly not a new one. Think of cave paintings and then consider the blogger. Isn’t that some cave dwelling man simply telling all his mates what he hunted that day? As long as there have been stories there has been blogging. I mean come on it’s only really a journal and they’re hardly new. So in conclusion I say this – I might have just wasted your time. But then to a certain degree that’s exactly what I was meant to do.

Richard has his own blog here.

100 Not Out: You’re a Bit Sad, John

So this is it: my one hundredth post on mitchenstein. Because, as you may have noticed, I don’t like to allow such minor achievements to pass by unnoticed, I decided to have a little week of celebration. So this week, there’ll be a new post every day, several of which will be written by guest bloggers (the first time I’ve let others loose on mitchenstein... We’ll see how it goes!). This week I also took my 100th photo on the mitchenstein365 blog. What a week ;)
Often when people look at this blog, I get asked ‘Where do you get the time?’ or people say ‘Aren’t you really a bit sad to take your blog so seriously?’ or, in the case of Matt White, announce to everyone at youth councils that I’ll have to stop blogging as much once I get a ‘proper’ job.

Well, maybe I do take it more seriously than most. But here are my reasons. And these are fourfold:

1. Contrary to popular belief, I am actually quite a busy person, but my blog is the one chance I get at the moment to be a little creative, until things lighten up a little. And I really enjoy writing it. It’s kinda therapeutic, doesn’t take anywhere near as long to write as some seem to think, and I can write it whenever I feel like it.

2. It’s also fantastic as a reminder of what I’ve been up to – just yesterday I was reading through some old posts from 2006, reading about things I’d completely forgotten about. And man, sometimes I’m a funny guy! ;)

3. I want to show people that you can be a Christian, or a Salvationist, or a young, uniformed Salvationist and still be fun, if you know what I mean. If we look at Christians in the soaps for example – Dot Cotton, Harold Bishop, Edna Birch – who are all loveable in their own way, they still don’t do much to alter the common perception of Christians as old, set in their ways, respected to a degree, but ultimately out of touch with the modern world and struggling to find their place in it. In my own little way I want to do something to change that perception. As for being a Salvationist, it doesn’t hurt to show that The Salvation Army isn’t a dated institution, full of old ladies handing out cups of tea. This is my third reason.

4. The fourth reason must have been very important, but I can’t remember what it was...

Edinbruh

So, as a mentioned a few posts ago, I’ve just come back from a conference in Edinburgh. I had a fantastic time, met some great people and some very helpful contacts – and heard a LOT of Danish. Giving a presentation in Danish was a new experience for me, but I was happy with the final result.

So here are a couple of pictures from Edinburgh – unfortunately the weather wasn’t great, but it cleared up for our walking tour of the city. I’d been there once before with the Straight Ahead Gospel Choir (Salvation Army) but we hardly got to see anything on that occasion, and I had to spend most of my time translating for Glyn, who can’t understand Scottish people.

The Scottish Parliament, unfortunately designed by a Catalonian who didn’t like Scotland:
I’m kidding – I actually really liked the building, although it maybe isn’t what you expect for a Parliament. And I don’t quite get the bamboo-Scotland connection, but maybe I’m missing something there.
Not many people know that the landscaped grassy area in front of the Parliament building was actually designed by Ragdoll Productions.*
Getting ready for our meal, I realised that the trousers I’d bought were actually flares:
The back end of a cow (?!):
I loved this sign:
The (very wet) PhD students – apparently sitting in one of the cafes where JK Rowling wrote some of Harry Potter:
It really is a fantastic city to walk around:
Apparently this is a tourist attraction. So I took a photo:
OK – what can we turn it into?

*From the people who brought you the Teletubbies.