The gliding club at the university of Warwick had a couple of spare places on one of their week-long courses, and so me and a couple of friends jumped at the opportunity. I have never flown anything before, and only seen gliders a few times before in my life, so I was a complete novice.
We arrived late at night on the Sunday and ate pizza which we had bought along the way. Our accommodation was quite small, but clean and cosy.

We were up early on the Monday morning, and were given a short briefing before going out onto the airfield. We got the gliders out of the hangers, and went though the daily inspection routine. There had been quite a lot of rain, and so the field was very wet, making winch launches hard. The 8mm steel winch cables rub along the ground until the glider is in the air, and they take gauges our of of the field if it is wet. We got a few flights in after we were aero-toed up to around 2000 feet. Initially, the instructor does everything and they encouraged us to follow through on the controls, but once stable and happy, they gave us control and told us what to do.
Like driving for the first time, there is a lot of things to do, lots of things to watch and coordinated movements needed, which of course were not forthcoming in the first few flights. Flight simulators and flying games on the computer might give some help, but when you are up in the air you can’t press ‘esc’ and restart. There is however the big red ‘eject’ lever and the parachute strapped to your back which I’d really rather not use.

The second day we were determined to get more flying in, and got up fairly early to achieve that. We had lots of flights, and most of the winch and landing was done by the instructor, but much of the flying was done by us, which was really exciting. One flight which I had lasted 45 minutes, which for a glider and a novice is quite an achievement. It was mainly due to luck as I kept flying into thermals and had realised by this stage what they felt like, and made the most of them. I didn’t know how to find them, but knew what to do when one found me. Each glider was equipped with an electronic vario which measures your rate of ascent or decent. When you are going up (i.e. have found a thermal) it beaps with a high pitch, and when you are sinking it has a low beep. This help you know when you are in rising or sinking air, although because it has a second or so delay, it is perhaps to trust your feelings when the wind plays with your wings.

By Wednesday we had really gotten the hang of how the airfield ran, and were pretty efficient at getting in the gliders and setting them off. On the airfield everyone mucked in, and was doing whatever needed doing. This included fetching the gliders with the tractor after they had landed, pressing buttons in the bogie box to tell the winch driver to set off, keeping the flying log and running with the gliders until they were going fast enough for the pilot to keep them level.
The pilot relies on the airflow over the wings and onto the ailerons in order to keep the plane level. At low windspeeds, the airflow is not sufficient and so someone has to run along the field with the glider to keep it level for a few seconds until the windspeed is high enough. This is also why you always set off and land into the wind.
We got lots of flying in, but the flights were only around five minutes because we struggled to get much height off the winch. It was however excellent circuit training and allowed us to make quite a few take offs and landings, which by this stage we were doing on our own with some verbal assistance (and the occasional manual intervention when we lost coordination!).

The forecast for Thursday was not great, and so we woke cautiously expecting to look our of the window, see the rain and go back to sleep. however, the sun was shining and despite a bit of headwind it looked like the rain might stay off for a few hours. We got back onto the airfield, got the gliders out and started flying. Around dinner time it started raining a little, so we packed up and had lunch. The rain had eventually come a few hours late then expected, and didn’t show any signs of stopping so after lunch we went bowling.
Malcolm kindly looked on the internet and found us a bowling place in a nearby town, which was exactly that: a bowling place. They were a retailer which sold bowling balls, skittles and other bowling items, but didn’t have an alley. They were however kind enough to point us in the general direction of a bowling alley. We thought that an industrial park was a strange place for a bowling place. The moral of that story is never trust what you read on the internet!
Bowling was good fun, and I managed not to lose every game. We were joined by beastie the sheep, who unfortunately decided to get partially undressed and now needs some attention from a sewing kit. After restocking at Sainsburys on the way home, we ate food and watched Borat. The food was good, and I’ll pass judgement on Borat.

Friday was expected to be too wet and windy to fly, and was exactly that. The windsock was almost blown off its pole, and the anemometer was fluctuating a lot around 30 knots. We went though lots of theory sessions and after lunch decided to go home.
Having done a lot of flying on very little theory, doing the theory lessons made a lot of sense and in many cases made the penny drop. for example, why you really want to hit the ground when you are still going fast, and why the windspeed is really important.

It was brilliant but hectic week, and pushing gliders round is hard work. Being outside for 8 hours a day is brilliant, but it makes you tired and feel windswept. Concentrating on flying whilst being at awe of the surroundings take its toll too! by the end of the week we were all pretty tired, and after a few games of pool and pints in Rootes bar we went our separate ways.

Gliding is a great but expensive hobby, and I would love to have the opportunity to do it again if my wallet and time permits.

It was that time of the year again when you eagerly await the time when you can ring up the phone company that supplies your contract and ask them what they can offer you as an upgrade. Or perhaps not. I’m not a big fan of talking to the phone networks as they tend to have operators which do not have the best command of the English language, and simply want to extract money from you.

I took a different line with them this year. I had two phone contracts: One with T-Mobile for my laptop datacard at £20 per month, and another with Vodafone for my normal phone at around £18 per month, and wanted to combine the two and pay less overall. I knew exactly what I wanted, and even which phone I wanted: a Nokia N95, so when I rang Vodafone, rather than asking ‘what can you do me’ I stated what I wanted, and asked them if they could provide it. They wanted to charge me £40 per month, and £90 for the mobile phone, as well as bind me into an 18 month contract. Having done my research, I knew that T-Mobile offered the deal I wanted for £32.50 per month, although there was also a one-off fee of £75 for the phone. I also knew that Vodafone offered what they were offering me to new customers for only £35 per month. I was annoyed – is that what they call customer service? Charging a customer who has been with them for 6 years more than a new customer? Apparently so. I told the gentleman from Vodafone that I would be leaving them, and requested my transfer code so I could go to T-Mobile. He said ‘Ok, I’ll transfer you to the leaving department’. There I explained again the predicament that I found myself in, and I was serious about leaving. However, he offered me what I wanted, and even put a cherry on top for me. Enough free mins, enough free text messages and data transfer, and even a free N95! All for £27.50 per month. That’ll do!

I’ve had my N95 a few weeks now, and am pleasantly surprised. It is packed with features, including GPS and Wifi, and although some of the things that used to be easy with earlier Nokia’s were tucked away behind strange menus. it is fairly easy to use and I am pleased. However, it is not all a bed of roses, and the major complaint I have is the battery life: I have to charge it at least every two days, and every day if I use it much. The applications, GPS and camera all take a big chunk out of the battery, and should only be turned on when necessary. Otherwise at the end of a night out taking lots of pictures you won’t have any battery to ring for a taxi home, and won’t be able to rely on the Nokia GPS to guide you either.

A few months ago I visited my Grandad, and was looking though his many family photo albums. He has been interested in photography for ages, and is pretty good at it too!

I wanted a copy of many of the older photos, and so set about scanning the hundreds of photos with his scanner. It didn’t take as long as I expected because his scanner is pretty amazing, and now many of our family photos are digitized here on this site.

Sorry to disappoint anyone, but they are all password protected! If you want to access them, you will have to sign up on the photo section of this site and ask me nicely to give you the relevant permissions. Below is a quick taster of what is in there.

My trusty old Konica Minolta Dimage G400 finally bit the dust today. It has taken thousands of photos over the last 3½ years, and now it decides that all the photos I take will have lines across them.

The only way to get rid of the stripes is to zoom in all the way using optical zoom, but still the auto exposure does not work well. Having looked around some forums etc, this seems to be a fairly common problem with this model.

When I bought it in May 2004 it was the fastest camera on the market for start-up to taking a picture. 0.7 seconds was the quoted speed, and this was achievable if you set it on the lowest possible resolution, and turned off the autofocus. Under normal use, it was pretty fast, and certainly much faster than most digital cameras. Incidentally, this is one of my gripes with camera phones – they take ages from you deciding to take a picture to actually capturing the moment.

Well, now it is time for a new camera, but there are too many to chose from! If you have any suggestions please tell me!

This year for a family holiday we stayed in a caravan on a friends farm in the Yorkshire Dales. I had come straight from a mission trip in South Africa, to WEC camps and then to Yorkshire, without visiting home to pick anything up. I was reliant on washing a few things.

It was a brilliant time to relax, as well as get into the great outdoors and go for walks around the dales. It didn’t rain too much, but it certainly was windy. There were some awesome sunsets, and I got some good photos of Ingleton falls.

I managed to crawl behind one of the waterfalls, and took a picture. If you look closely in the photo below you might be able to see me…

After a really hard week B, those organising camp decided I needed a break and so gave me a really pleasant break for week C – “Site Manager”. It was a nice title, but in reality it meant that I had to make sure that the site was kept clean and tidy and upright. This involved emptying lats and bins, tidying up the field, tent and bed maintenance and making sure the tents stayed up in bad weather.

I had never been the site manager before, and so was a little bit nervous about what the role involved and how and when to do some of the jobs. Thankfully Jonny stayed on for a few more days from week B and helped me out which was really useful. Thanks Jonny!

Being site manager was quite different to being a tent leader. You have no direct responsibility for kids, and so don’t need to watch them all the time. The jobs that you do can be done in your own time, and the only fixed things in the day are mealtimes. Emptying the lats forms a fairly major part of the perceived role, but in reality it took around 90 minutes in the morning during the morning meeting and about 60 minutes in the evening during the evening game or the meeting. It was quite strange having so little contact with the campers, as during the games and meetings I was occupied, and the only time I saw the campers was at mealtimes. I had to keep asking them their names, and even then at another mealtime I would come across kids that I had never seen before!

I spent some time loitering and being available for when people needed help with moving stuff around the site and mending beds and tents, and it allowed me to relax somewhat when compared to the previous week.

It was really nice to have my own tent and own personal space, and I would sometimes just sit outside and watch the world go by. My tent was officially the games chief’s and I didn’t take the sign down, so I might even look official sitting there. Last week (B) the site manager’s tent had a name of ‘base camp’ and was the centre of quite a lot of light amusement, including the lilo sandwich. This week my tent had all the games equipment in and so the fun never ended. On changeover day I was let out on terms of my probation with Jon, and bought a bell. After fixing it to my tent, I then had a door bell. It quickly got annoying though (see picture for details), and I unfortunately forgot to take it down at the end of the week and now have no idea where it is.

Because of my unique and amazing singing ability, I was chosen to represent the camp in the morning wake-up call with Ray and Michael. Armed with megaphones and some lyrics that had been hatched up the previous evening, Michael would beam out “For your delight and delectation, a song by Andy Deakin as doh, Ray as ray and me as me” (Geddit? doh,ray,me… Thats about as tuneful as we got!) and then proceed to sing an amusing and custom made adaptation to a musical themed song. Sometimes they would be met by a loud applause, occasionally we would hear heavy snoring even after the tuneful performance.

The weather on week C was quite varied, but it was much damper than the previous week. At one point much of the dining tent was under a small amount of water, and I had the pleasure of collecting hay from a nearby field with the help of Jon, Abby and Barry the barrel. The hay was then deposited on the floor of the dining tent to soak up the moisture, giving it a similar appearance and smell to a stable.

Despite empting the lats and other fairly unpleasant jobs I enjoyed the whole week and was very thankful of the few bits of rest that I got and the friendships I developed over the week. I was given a massive insight into the running of camp, and what goes on in the kitchen and behind the scenes, and think it was a week of my life that I will not quickly forget.

Week B started really well. After getting up early to collect a parcel, its contents were broken. I then tried to burn a DVD on a computer, and after spending three hours burning, the DVD was apparently blank.

I got a lift from Bulstrode in a friends car, who was travelling down at the same time as me. After being on the road for a couple of hours, the engine cut out and the engine wouldn’t restart. After waiting over an hour for a RAC guy, we were told they they were all busy and that a local garage would send a van out. We were eventually recovered to the nearest service station where the car was inspected and the timing belt was found to have gone. In laymans terms that means that the engine is kerput. The car was taken back to where we came from and I had to look after three kids and Bob at the service station.

I knew that there was a minibus scheduled to drive past where we were in a few hours time, and so I tried desperately to contact the driver. After trying many phone numbers I managed to get hold of him (Thanks Lynne for the number!) and arranged for him to pick us up.

The minibus did arrive after a few hours, and after a few more hours travelling (and getting lost a little) we got to the warrior camp field. By this time it was going dark, and my village quiet time was well underway. I chose to stay well away and sat down for a few moments, drank tea and ate food.

I would like to say that it was all uphill from there, but I was village leader and my village was quite a challenging one. I had three nice but pesky boys in my tent, including one French lad (Ben) who tended to have at least one tag-along of his little brother. There was another tent without a leader, and the third tent had Bob as a leader and three troublesome lads in.

Sitting at the breakfast table one day I decided to move a tray of bacon, which was perhaps a bad idea as it was rather warm. I spent the next half hour with my right hand under cold running water, and then found the sympathy of the kitchen team. They applied some much needed burn cream which worked wonders, and also decided that I needed a sling. It was quite amusing, and it certainly got the sympathy vote until people realised that it was a joke.

Each day we played wide games which the kids love, and the leaders like. They are always great fun and pretty much just involve running around madly trying to catch anyone you have some kind of playful vendetta against. Occasionally when there are some team tactics and games are taken seriously there are issues of collecting gold (tent runners) or dynamite (tent runners) or water in cups. During one such game I decided to fall over on a fairly sharp stone and make a deep gash in left hand. It hurt a little.

Throughout the week we had a football tournament, where teams of leaders and campers adopted a country and played football against each other. In my first game I pulled my right thigh muscle quite badly, and so was out of the game. I tried to play again but made it worse, then decided to give it up as a bad job. Later on that day I was limping and playing handball, and sprained my left ankle. I felt like I was going through the ‘Father Abraham had many sons’ song. Right hand (burnt), left hand (gash), right leg (muscle pulled) left leg (sprained ankle). I think the next line in that song is something like ‘Chin up’ so I wondered if I should wear a pre-emptive neck brace but couldn’t find one in the first aid kit!

There were quite a few new leaders there this year, and I tried to make an effort to get to know them all. Many of them were outgoing which made it much easier but I felt I got to know most of the leaders on the camp much better than I have in previous years, and they are all really cool! There are a couple of leaders that are also going to be studying Warwick next year, and that is quite exciting.

The weather was also brilliant most of the week. It was sunny almost all the time and still warm when it was overcast and wet. I don’t think I ever wore my coat all week, although I probably should have. The view from the field was really amazing, as you could see the beach, the surf on the sea and even some more land across the water. Some suggested it was Wales, France, and one boy even thought it was America. I suggest we need to teach kids some basic geography.

Our trip day out was to Woodlands, which was really cool. One of the kids that I went around with from my tent had been there before, and knew the best rides. He was able to give us a whistle-stop tour of all the park while everyone else was busy consulting their maps. After visiting some of the outdoor areas, we ventured into the big blue barn where we stayed for the rest of our time. The big blue barn is amazing! I had so much fun in there, and for almost an hour the leaders played tag which was awesome, but pretty exhausting. Caffeine pills were the answer to exhaustion on this occasion.

We had invasion in the village on one of the days, which both the kids and leaders tend to like. Some of the leaders set off dressed in many amusing costumes, and the campers ventured down into beer to spot the fakes. Armed with the question “How much does a tail of a goat cost?” the campers trailed around the village looking for suspects. We found quite a few, and many of them made us laugh lots.

Throughout the week the leaders had a pool ladder. Through some ’skill’, fluke, mismanagement and careful avoiding of leaders I managed to finish second on the ladder. I did beat the winner (Chris) twice, but he might have beat me three times.

Despite the challenges, I was really encouraged through the week by the strength and patience that God gave me, and was thankful of the other leaders that I know I can depend on and cheered me up when I needed it.

I would like to start by thanking all those that supported me both in prayer and financially while I was out there. From the start it was clear that as a team we were very dependant upon God and it would not have been possible without lots of prayer.

South Africa is a land of extremes: Black and white, rich and poor, hot and cold, occult and Christianity. Where England is very green, South Africa is very brown – at least in winter.

Our time out there was a mix of street evangelism, working with young children in crèches and after-school clubs, running kids camps and practical work on the Rainbows of Hope campsite.

Street evangelism in the shanty towns is very different to in the UK. The people out there are very friendly and would happily chat all day. Despite having very few possessions, they happily invite us westerners into their homes to talk about Christianity and to be prayed for. Even people who have no faith or different beliefs to us seemed to appreciate prayer.

The young children in the crèches were very cute. Some of them were tiny, and they would look at you with their large eyes and curly hair, and despite speaking no English and us speaking no Zulu, they craved love and attention. They were very imaginative in their games, and loved just having time spent with them. For some of these kids we were the only white people they had seen, and so to be able to spend time with and show love to them was an awesome privilege.

In the after school clubs the children were of mixed ages, but when compared to British kids they were much more willing to learn and were certainly not lacking intelligence. They appreciated simple things like balloons and colouring books much more then western kids. We did puppet shows, taught them memory verses and did lots of games and craft activity which they seemed to love.

The kids camps that we ran at the Rainbows of Hope campsite were one of the main reasons we went as a group to South Africa, and so a lot of prayer and a small amount of preparation had gone into them. Our team was split into two, one to deal with the younger children and one to deal with the teenagers. I was assigned to the older ones together with John and Ann, Thomas and Isla. Ours was the first camp, and we felt really unprepared. Thankfully God had everything under control, and over the whole weekend we all learned a lot about leaning on God. Even one of the memory verses was “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding”.

The kids were really brilliant, and despite our best efforts at learning Zulu, their English was pretty good and so in the meeting and when interacting with the kids we just used simple English and they seemed to understand.

Dealing with so many children is very tiring, but we knew it was only for one weekend and so we really put our full efforts into making it a memorable weekend for the kids and running around with them and being very active. After the kids left on Sunday we all just sat there on the grass for about an hour, totally exhausted.

The practical work which we did on the campsite was a great encouragement to the missionaries out there, and I am sure we saved them a lot of work. Our main project was renovating the kitchen area, most specifically sanding down, sealing and painting the old steel roof. It was a fairly large roof area, and it took much of the time we were out there to complete it, but it was great to see a shiny red roof as we left the campsite.

Shortly after arriving the missionaries somehow found out that I had done some electrical work in the past, and so they gave me a big long list of jobs to do, including installing new power points and some lights, rewiring a pump and installing a number of light switches including a two way switch which had been wired up incorrectly. I found it really encouraging to see how blessed the missionaries were by what I could routinely do.

Most evenings after eating food together, we would have a short time of devotion and then prepare for the next day’s activities. Many evenings some of us would stay up and play card games or simply talk into the early hours. The team bonded really well, and having unsoundproofed girls and boys bedrooms next to each other provided us with out of hours entertainment and ensured there were no secrets.

In the last few days we had some time to relax, and went on Safari to Pilanesburg. There we saw giraffes, rhinos, hippos, elephants, wilderbeast, warthogs and lots of zebras. As a team we got loads of photos, and some really brilliant ones. It was an amazing experience as I had never been on safari before. Seeing such large and powerful animals grazing in their natural habitat in acres of land was brilliant.

My time in South Africa was one of great encouragement and growth though the situations I was faced with and lessons I learned. Thanks again to all those that made it possible.

Well, it is today that I fly out to South Africa. I am a bit nervous about the flight as I have never spent that long on a plane before, but am more nervous about what I might find at the other end and how it might affect my life.

I am leaving behind a caring family and a warm house for sleeping in below freezing conditions at night and working with children from the slums by day. Why? Because I love God and want to share him with people who need his love!

For the past five days I have been on an orientation course at Bulstrode together with the other ten people that I will be trekking with, and it has got me really excited me about the trip. The guys I am going with seem really cool (and in the unlikely event that one of them reads this, I love you guys!) and as a team we have bonded fairly well.

It has been a hectic schedule, learning about both the physical and spiritual dangers and obstacles that we might face, as well as planning the activities which we will be carrying out with the children when we get out there.

British Airways has kindly allowed us extra baggage to take out educational resources and so we have been collecting together lots of craft and educational materials, and it has been a massive encouragement to me to see how much we have collected.

I do not know how much internet access I will have in South Africa, but I will update my blog when I get the chance. For those that wish to receive more regular updates via email and pray for me please request to be added to my prayer list.

All my housemates have finished their degrees, and have now disappeared for good. It seems that all my friends are dropping off the edge. I still have another year to go, and sitting here in an empty house that for the past two years has been home to some of the special people in my life is a strange feeling. It is the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one.

Each of my housemates have their quirks, such as the inability to stay silent or being unable to shower in less than 4 hours, but the fact remains that I have enjoyed living and sharing my life with them over the past two years, and wish them the best of luck in whatever is round the corner.

In the meantime, I have Bryan Adams to keep me company, with helpful lyrics such as:

I’ve been wandering around the house all night
wondering what the hell to do …
well the phone don’t ring ’cause my friends ain’t home
I’m tired of being all alone
Got the tv on …
days go on and on, and the nights just seem so long
Even food don’t taste that good, drink ain’t doing what it should
things just feel so wrong …
I keep driving up and down these streets
trying to find somewhere to go
Yeah i’m looking for a familiar face, but there’s no one I know
oh, this is torture, this is pain, it feels like I’m gonna go insane
I hope you’re coming back real soon, ’cause i don’t know what to do