First week in Birmingham

Well, maybe it's time to report back my adventures in Birmingham after one week of lectures.
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I'll start from Saturday - though that's technically last week. I went to see Gwen and Marcos in the morning, they live about 10 minutes' walk from me. They seemed to be in good form, considering their circumstances. I saw the new baby, Eva, she looked like a baby, which is good I imagine - how else would I recognise her? Marcus' sister was there too, I tried to converse with her in Spanish and she answered in English which suggested that my Spanish was so bad she wished me to speak English, (pribobly luke tha Onglish Polucemin truing to spock Fronch en Allo Allo) and maybe that she wanted to practise her English.

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Gwen starts her programme of chemotherapy this Wednesday (She found out that she has breast cancer on the day she had Eva) so I'm supposed to go and see them again before then. I have a cold at the moment (probably caught it cycling in the rain) so it's probably best if I stay away for a few days. Hopefully, she will react well to chemo. and won't be too ill from it; apparently different people react differently to it. I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you wanted to pray for them.

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I decided to go home on Saturday as I had nothing to do here in Birmingham and I wanted to bring my bike back. (More about the bike later) Imagine my dismay after driving ten yards to find that the car was pulling to the left. Yes, you've guessed it, I had a flat tyre. Not only a flat tyre but a brand new flat tyre. After the disaster last Wednesday, I got a new tyre installed on Thursday morning and that same tyre was flat again within three days! So, now at least I knew where the tools were except that the adaptor for the fourth wheelstud was a different size to the others. Thankfully, a bloke in Halfords, which is about 5 minutes' walk from my place, allowed me to borrow a spanner for that. So, I changed the tyre and went home slowly, feeling sorry for myself on the way, thinking about all the bad luck I've had with cars this year.

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My dad said he thought it's a common problem for alloy wheels to not seal properly. So, he pumped it up again on Sunday morning and put some grease on it to seal it. It seems to have done the job.

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I came back Sunday evening and went to the Angsoc (Anglican Society) meeting, which was nice and was followed by a barn dance at the Cathsoc chaplaincy - Methsoc were there too. The great thing about the Cathsoc chaplaincy building is that it has its own bar. You couldn't make it up could you! Anyway, I had a nice time getting confused with dosie-doe's and promenades and learning some people's names as I trod on their toes. I haven't really seen any of them since then. Hopefully, I'll get to know them a bit as the year goes on.

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My course began on Monday but it seems I've chosen strange modules. For this term I'm doing Greek level 2-3 - they're done together these days - which is mainly an undergraduates' course. There were five of us this morning and I'm the only postgraduate as far as I know. I feel like the stupid kid who was held back a year but I prefer not to get myself into anything too difficult. The other benefit is that this way I can do Greek 4 next year. I couldn't very well do Greek 4 and the Greek 2-3 afterwards. I might still go to Greek 4 classes though, while I have the time.

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My other class is Jesus and the gospels. It's also full of undergraduates, about forty of them! I didn't recognise any MA students there but maybe I will next week. Apparently, I'll just get a different assignment to work on. I was reading through Jim's NT1 notes last night trying to find a topic that might be interesting without being terribly complicated. The lecturer told me we could discuss my title together and it could be related to my dissertation. Call me lazy but I hadn't thought that far ahead.

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Life in the house is fairly uneventful, even though there are six of us in four rooms at the moment. The Chinese girl with her boyfriend downstairs. The first French girl, the second French girl with her mother, and myself upstairs. It seems that each has their own life away from the house except me. I think we're supposed to be going to the cinema together tonight so that might help to cement better relations with them. Otherwise, I'm going to have to work on building up a social network here.

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I bumped into another postgrad. theology student in the guild today and we went for a coffee with someone he knows who's in the second year of his degree, so that was nice. We asked the degree student what the lecturers were like and he said that Mark Goodacre was an 'absolute legend' which is a shame because he's gone to America and it made me feel even more disappointed to have missed him. On a quite different note, apparetly, the CU meets on Thursday evening so I might go along to that but I might find it difficult to cope with, maybe, I don't know.

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Anyway, I think I've bored you all enough with this so I'll go now

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Bye

Just to let you all know, I arrived in Birmingham yesterday; the car made it.

Two of my housemates are here already. The other is coming next Tuesday (with her mother!)

There's a Chinese girl named Eva, in the downstairs room, she's quite friendly and her boyfriend is a nice fella too. Oddly enough, though, it seems he's staying with her in that room for the moment, for a month apparently. The other girl is French and is pleasant enough but seems quite solitary, doesn't appear to want to spend time with others, except her boyfriend who comes around most days it seems - he has a groovy French accent.

To be fair, it's been pretty boring so far. I came out for a walk last night and walked around the Students' Guild which made me feel incredibly old and a little out of place on account of not knowing anyone when everyone else was in groups.

I came again today and got my Student Card which allows me access to the library, where I sit now typing away on my blog.

I saw someone sitting in the canteen about an hour ago wearing a top, with 'Christian and Proud of it' emblazened upon it. He was alone so, after weighing up the possible consequences, I sat and talked with him for a few minutes. It turns out he's from Swindon where my friend Dave used to be a teacher, it occurred to me that he might have taught him in secondary school. That made me feel really old.

Back at the house I've left a packet of cards and my minaiture table tennis kit in the living room in the hope of enticing my housemates out of their rooms for social activities. It hasn't been very successful so far. Maybe I'll find them all there playing games when I return, just maybe.

Jallopy Glee

I'm very pleased to be able to say that my new car got me home safely with no hint of a mechanical problem in the 250 miles of road that lies between Belfast and Ludlow. The biggest drama was when I nearly hit one of the 300 kamikaze rabbits that threw itself in front of me between Holyhead and home.
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To celebrate this fact I went for a game of pool with my friend Dave tonight. (He won, an omen perhaps?) On the way home, I got a flat tyre on a dark and narrow country lane in the middle of nowhere. I toyed with the idea of trying to go home slowly and fixing it there. This idea appealed more than usual because I’d still got my luggage in the boot which I would have to remove to get at the spare and I wasn’t even sure whether I’d got a spare. I thought it would probably damage the wheel so, I pulled over (into the hedge) and set about it.
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You wouldn’t usually think of a flat tyre as a major incident but on this occasion it caused more trouble than it deserved to. I fumbled around with nothing more than the intermittent glow from my hazard lights so I called Dave who came with a torch 10 minutes later. By which time, I’d got the spare out and had started to jack up the car. I’d also got what I thought was a spanner for undoing the wheel-nuts – closer inspection, with the aid of Dave’s torch revealed it to be a crooked piece of metal with no apparent purpose. We found the spanner soon after but didn’t have a clue what to do next as my car has alloy wheels and we couldn’t access the wheel-nuts.
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We scratched around looking for other tools but couldn’t find anything that might give us access to the wheel-nuts. So, there was only one thing for it. I had to call the RAC. Yes, for the sake of a flat tyre, I called out the RAC; I’m very embarrassed to admit it. It took some time to explain my location to the RAC person who was in Manchester but we came to an understanding that help would be on its way in 75 minutes.
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I rang McAvoy shortly after because I thought he’d be entertained by my misfortune, he and his friends spoke to Dave for about half an hour (for some reason I thought it might be interesting to introduce them) then speaking to me again, McAvoy described the tool in question as a ‘key’. ‘No’ I said, ‘I don’t have one of those, I’ve looked everywhere’. Five minutes later, an awful thought occurred to me. There was a tool of some sort in the pocket in the driver’s door. Dave and I both hoped it wasn’t the right one.
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I took it out and it looked worryingly well designed for the corresponding socket. After a few minutes of fiddling, we had access to the promised-land of wheel-nuts. Three of the nuts were easily loosened but there was a glimmer of hope – the fourth nut was a completely different shape. ‘Well we don’t have a tool for that!’ I thought to myself triumphantly. We were glad that we hadn’t cancelled the RAC man as we’d have looked really stupid having to call again.
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Then, I remembered the other object in my driver’s door pocket. Sure enough, it was the right one and we got the wheel changed on our own. At some point in the middle of this, the RAC mechanic phoned me from town to confirm our location; thankfully, I was able to say that we didn’t need him anymore without being wrong.
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So, I offer up myself for your ridicule in the hope that there might be some redemption in it.
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I have a theory that someone, somewhere, has a car-shaped voodoo doll with my name on it.

A new leaf?

It's about a year now since I started to reap the consequences of a very bad decision, or rather, a series of bad decisions (conscious or unconscious) which followed the first. Of course, I didn't know how bad a decision it would be at the time - I'm not in the habit of making bad decisions deliberately, though it might be said that I was more optimistic than I had reason to be.
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The consequence being the knowledge that I deeply hurt someone. I really didn't want to hurt that person but my earlier bad decisions left me in a position where I had no alternative. And the person in question wasn't going to let me forget in a hurry. I think I lost quite a lot of self-respect over it and I've been doubting whether I'm the kind of person I thought I was.

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The year since then hasn't been the best. A series of minor disasters mainly involoving cars and various other mishaps, slaving away at unfulfilling jobs and coming to terms with the fact that I no longer belong to the community of which I was a part for three years hasn't helped much.

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But I think the central problem amongst it all has been over my identity. I thought I knew what kind of a person I was. Most reports from others showed a fairly consistent pattern but then, all of a sudden, new evidence came to the fore, from both without and from within.

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According to the external evidence I was on a par with Joseph Stalin, Vlad the Impaler and Alex Ferguson. This seems ridiculous, I knew it was an extreme reaction but I had had this effect on someone. It was over the top, (I hope) but there was a seed of truth in it. The criticism was stinging because I recognised myself in it while at the same time feeling unfairly condemned and paralysed to defend myself. Maybe, if I were more assertive, I could defend myself better or even make myself out to be an innocent victim but I don't think that would be entirely honest or any more virtuous.

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There was internal evidence too, I found myself guilty of things I'd complacently been judgmental of others for in the past. I don't know whether this was because of the specific situation I got myself into or whether it might be a general character flaw. I hope the former, naturally.

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I'm hoping that a year on I can make a new start. I wrote my last envelope for the Civil Service on Friday. On Tuesday I'm off home and then to Birmingham on Wednesday to start my MA. It seems that in life we go through times of buiding up and breaking down, the last year has been one of breaking down. Hopefully, this year will be one of rebuilding.

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I don't want to make it sound like the last year has been nothing but misery, it hasn't. I've certainly enjoyed parts of it - especially where table-tennis and volleyball have been involved, and I've been to the cinema more frequently than ever. I'm thankful for my friends - if you're reading this then you're probably one of them (unless you're P. McAvoy).

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So, anyway, it seems I'm not so great as I thought I was (not that I ever thuoght I was all that 'great') and I still doubt my suitability for my vision/pipe-dream of working with a church in a teaching capacity. Hopefully, all will become clearer in the coming months.

The other fateful event

The other thing that happened, last weekend (that is, the last weekend of August, not technically last weekend) is that I bought a new car.

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I was going to take a picture so that you could see it before anything happens to it. But then I thought, if I did that, it might suggest that after taking the photo it would be alright should anything go wrong. Let me categroically state, it would not be alright if something should go wrong with the car, I've had enough vehicular mishaps this year, I don't need any more! And just to make sure, I'm not going to take a photo, that's my extra insurance.

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For those who are curious it's a 1994 red Vauxhall Cavalier and it cost £150. If it gets me safely to Dublin in two weeks time it will have done it's job. Anything more is a bonus.

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On a complete change of subject now: thinking about Muttley, and his progression to the great flock in the sky. It's not all that surprising that although I was always very fond of him I'm not exactly cut-up about his departure. A little sad yes but not in emotional turmoil.

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The reasons for this seem too obvious to even think about really but it occured to me that Muttley, being essentially canine, was (probably) not aware that he was English and, as such, didn't have any of the British reserve that one might otherwise expect. Our main method of communication with him was via touch, he loved to have his tummy rubbed or just to made a fuss of.

Needless to say, the human members of my family don't do this so much, except for the children, or at least, the children receive this sort of treatment - whether they like it or not. At a certain age we become 'too big' for that sort of thing and contact is reduced to the absolute minimum, in some families. To be fair, in my family, affection is rarely communicated even verbally, we're just meant to know that it's there. And if it were communicated, by certain members, I wouldn't know what to do - I'd be in shock and probably unable to speak. (This is not hyperbole)

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Anyway, what I think I'm trying to say is that there was never any build up of frustration with Muttley and, possibly as a result of that, we were always at peace. By contrast, human relationships can be full of unresolved issues and, if I were to lose a human member of my family without resolving some of these things, I think I'd be distraught. So, it seems obvious what I should do but it's incredibly difficult when you've known someone all your life in a certain way to initiate a change of dynamics in the relationship. Certain members of my family, including myself, are virtually disabled in this respect.

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On the other hand, I think the old fashioned British reserve is a great asset and I'm proud to have it to some degree. There is a recognition (I think/hope) of the depth of feeling when such expressions finally do come out. I'm not sure it's worth the angst though and it's probably not healthy.

Roving in pastures new

I'm quite proud of this picture of Muttley, it seems to capture him well. It was taken at my dad's birthday party about three Saturdays ago. [I've re-inserted the picture and made it a bit bigger; as a mark of respect]
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He's not known for his pleasant aroma, or intelligent conversation or even any basic form of sense.
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All the people who live up our road know him because he chases their cars as they drive past. As we don't have sheep, that's his job, he lets people know that he's there.
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He loves to play football, and he's a right menace when we try to chop wood. He'll stand there barking with his head almost on the block. My dad says he's telling us, 'the bark (on the wood) is too rough'. Usually, the best way to get some peace is to throw a stick for him to chase, that allows just enough time to swing the splitter before he's back again, barking his head off. It takes twice as long to get the wood in with Muttley around.
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He also loves to ride on the tractor with my dad, in fact, when he was younger, he would happily sit on the tractor on his own all day watching the world go by. If he's really lucky he gets to ride in a car, he knows that he's really arrived when that happens and sits almost human on the front seat. The downside is that it usually means he's going to the vets, which he hates.
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Another of his foibles, on a summer's afternoon when we sit in the garden Muttley will disappear down the field and come back half an hour later soaking wet. He likes to swim in the pond, which is one of the reasons why he doesn't smell very nice.
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Most of all, being a pack animal, Muttley likes to be part of the family which he has been since 1992.
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Alas no more, he dreamed of chasing his last rabbit on Sunday and was buried near the pond.
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Muttley (Herbert, Mungo, Rover) Bosworth - August 1992 - August 2005, farewell old friend.