Much has been happening over the past few weeks and I need to get a few pictures to post on this blog. The 'wall' has been finished and I have now had the astronomical final bill. Still, it is only money. I have been spending a lot of time putting our back garden back in order after the upheaval. We should end up with a more user-friendly garden. Sid's orchestra is rehearsing madly for our Christmas concert on 10th Dec. Sid asked me to do some arrangements for this concert and you can listen to them on the 'my music' link. They are arrangements of Jingle Bells, and O Little Town of Bethlehem - with thanks to J S Bach and Vivaldi. Last Monday Julia and I bused and trained to Salisbury to collect our van which has emerged from its chrysalis as a beautiful yellow camper van - pictures to follow. We are off to Portsmouth this weekend with a very full programme to look forward to. More about this later. Church keeps us very busy still but the boat work for the Harbour Authority is very quiet as we are out of season.

Children in need

Friday night is 'Top of the town club' night, when we run two kids clubs for junior school age kids followed by the older early secondary school youngsters. The younger club runs like clockwork but the older club takes more work! We have a 'God slot' where we tell the kids about the wonderful love of Jesus, and they seem to enjoy this time. This week we had a 'crazy hat' week and donated our weekly subs to the Children in Need appeal. The photos show the hatted masses - spot the older group!

Lydia's last exam and breakdown

No, Lydia didn't have a breakdown, but the car we borrowed to get Lyd to Bristol did! Our most grateful thanks go to our friends Linda and Adrian who have very kindly lent us their car. Well the day had arrived for Lydia's last exam in 2008 and we had decided to make it a family day with a visit to Ikea (hmmm). So we set off at 5.30 am in appalling weather and arrived in Bristol at about 8 am. Then the battery light came on! A quick check in the users manual told us to switch off all electrical equipment and drive to a Ford dealer. As the light went off we drove to the exam centre and called out the breakdown services. Lydia's exam went well and a nice man in a very nice car drove us home to Dartmouth with Adrian's and Linda's car on a trailer. We gave the nice man a cup of tea and a piece of brownie before sending him home again. A day in the life of ....

Light Party

We had our annual 'Light Party' at church tonight. While many kids dress up in Hallowe'en costumes for a bit of 'fun', we wanted to provide a place that our kids club could come to that would promote the light that only God can bring into our lives through His son Jesus. This is a serious matter, and what is now seen as a harmless pursuit is in reality promoting the forces of evil. Satan stands for deceit, darkness and evil. God is love, grace and light.

Dan the climber

Today Dan and I went for a walk looking for bits of rock that Dan could climb. Unfortunately it was high water so many of the small beaches around our coastline were covered making access difficult; or rather, making the chance of Dan getting wet very real as what exposed rock there was, was precipitously growing out of the snarling waves. However, we found a bit here and there for Dan to do his 'spiderman' act on.

Lydia's exams and Dan's visit

Well, after much preparation and hours of grueling study, Lydia has commenced her examinations. Last Friday saw Lyd and I starting the marathon trip by car, train and bus to an examination centre in Bristol to take the first of her RE 'O' level (yes, 'O' level) examinations. We repeated the journey this Monday take take part two and are looking forward to English later this week and next week. The journey started at 9am and we got home about 7.30pm! Why Bristol? You may well ask, but don't!

It was great to have a visit from Dan (son Dan) who will be 24 years old next Sunday - wow! You can see him above teaching Julia the finer points of chess, such as teaching her that rooks (castles) can move across the board as well as up and down. Dan has had a couple of job offers recently, to become a manager for Threshers and as a hospital orderly or something. But next month he will be interviewed for a place at Haven Banks in Exeter, to train to become an outdoor activities instructor. Life is exciting! The wall goes on - more about this soon; and we need to re-model the church kitchen to take the new dishwasher that we have bought. Oh, and Christmas is coming! This means we need to start looking at material for the Christmas family service. We have an interesting 'service' from Spurgeons called 'Sing like an Angel' that we are going to adopt.

Another week

Another week has sailed by with a spell of fine weather bringing out the yachtsmen, making the river work busier; but also giving the builders the chance to get the wall building well under way. It is a long job entailing unloading 30 tons of rock from dumpbags into buckets, then by hand up a few steps into a power barrow before being unloaded by hand into the gabion baskets that the wall is built with. Very heavy labour, but a chance for me to loose a few pounds and help keep the labour costs down a bit. Unfortunately, I have not really been able to take advantage of the weather to sail Jireh. She is now located in her winter berth on a pontoon in Dartmouth, making it very convenient to get out to her on the yacht taxi.