Monday, December 18, 2006

Christmas Shopping

Found some wonderful stuff whilst out shopping for Christmas presents for my two daughters. Here's the slogan from the side of a box containing a doll:


What??? And why would that sell a doll to me? Here's another one...


This is how you teach your two year old to poke people in the eyes. Fantastic.

There is a third picture of a real product taken in a real supermarket (in the hair & beauty section) but I don't know if I should post it. It's a bit naughty. What do you think?

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Pageant Report

Well, we made it. And I enjoyed every minute of it.

And as we had hoped, it was absolutely the best pageant ever. Nothing went wrong, nothing got missed or forgotten! The choir were outstanding, the band were tight, the soloists sang beautifully, the cast were great - they delivered all their lines perfectly and hit all their cues on the nail. They were funny, tender, over-the-top when needed and very moving at just the right moments. The animals behaved and unlike a very memorable previous year, the sheep did not start mating as the Pastor reached the climax of his gospel message.

Thank you again to everyone who made it possible.

The part that made me stop and think was in the first performance. Nick (King Herod) was delivering his lines: "A new King? So, he’s finally here – all of the predictions, all of the prophecies – ha! I will show them. I will show the world – my power is far greater than some prophesy! I will destroy this so-called King of the Jews! There will never be another King in Judea so long as I am alive!" and all the time the little kids crouched down on the carpet in the front rows were booing and hissing just like in a pantomime.

And then Nick said "And who will come to bring him gifts?" and they all shouted "I will!", and again after the next line "Who will come to worship him?" all the kids shouted out "I will!" Wow! It was so moving - totally spontaneous and heartfelt.

Of course, the relief that it is all over and that it went so well is now tempered with the worrying thought "What on earth are we going to do next year?"

Sunday, December 10, 2006

The camels are here

Well, I'm going downstairs to check them out. They've walked about ten miles from near the Sakkara pyramids. From my office window I can just see a camel head weaving around above the bushes outside.

The pageant is going to be great - funny and moving and thoughtful and with really great music. The tent looks AMAZING!

Thursday, December 07, 2006

What is the value of a blog?

You must have heard that old semon illustration where we are told if you break the human body down into it's constituent elements, you know, water, carbon etc, our net worth on the open market is about $4 or something like that.


My blog is worth $3,951.78.
How much is your blog worth?



Well, you might have seen this piece of fun down there at the bottom right of the blog. It's just to make you think, because this blog's purpose is not to make me money, but in the last month or six weeks since I first posted this, the value has gone up from around $500 to nearly $4,000. That's a 700% increase. Interesting.

This is calculated by analysing the amount of links a blog has registered on Technorati, and then cross referencing that against the capital value that AOL put on WeblogsInc when they bought it last year. And because more people are reading this blog and linking to this blog, the notional value has gone up.

Of course this is ridiculous, because no-one is really going to pay me $4,000 for this blog are they?

Anyone?

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

There's no PETA in Egypt!

Just discovered this article on the web about fear of mistreatment of animals in Christmas Pageants. I'm glad they're not sending us nasty letters.

PETA Mistakenly Targets Alaska Church

Anyway, our camels, donkey and sheep are the sole livelihood for the guy we rent them from - there's no way he would allow us to mistreat them. And there's no way that they would get hurt - he's looking after them all the time they are here.

Does anyone else think this article is ridiculous?

Oh yeah, we have a live baby Jesus too. Maybe we should notify the relevant authorities and get a certificate of permission.

Disclaimer: No animals were harmed during the posting of this blog entry.

Christmas Pageant


(Hooray - blogger let me post the picture :-)

On Sunday night we have our annual Christmas Pageant here under the tent. It's going to be amazing! It's a dramatic presentation of the traditional nativity story, with a few twists here and there, but because this is Egypt, we have resources that most other churches don't. For instance, have you ever seen the nativity story performed where the shepherds have real sheep? Or where Mary comes in actually riding on a donkey? Or where the wise men make their entrance on three camels? Down the church aisles?

You need to be there. Especially if you've never been to one before.

6:00pm or 7:30pm Sunday 10th December.

Except the 6:00pm is already sold out.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Wedding Drums

We had a fantastic wedding yesterday. Wale, my "Africa Live Service" worship leader married Emma who is also on our church staff as an Assistant Cells Director. The wedding was at 10:30am in the church, and then we had a great reception at the local playing fields / ball park. Wale is Nigerian, and came to Egypt as a football player (there are many African football players here in Cairo) so all his teammates sang for them at the reception and welcomed Emma in to the team. Check out this video:

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Highs and lows

In our house, at family meals, in the evenings, we often go around the table and ask each other what our highs and lows have been that day.

Well this has been a week of highs and lows. One of the highs was leading worship at the evening service tonight. We have a new drummer, Joel, and a new guitarist, David who is also in my men's cell group, and they can seriously play. The band sounded great, and the singers sung their hearts out, and even though the service was packed with so many elements it made it hard to create a good flow, the worship was really wonderful, and I felt like we'd been to the throne room.

Let me just point out that this was nothing to do with me. This was all God.

I've had the kind of week I never want to have again. I finished a book back on Sunday where one of the main characters dies by falling from a high tower. He lands in a crumpled heap on the ground, and then the book records the emotions and experiences of the other characters in dealing with this tragedy, where their whole world has been turned upside down. Well, my Pastor, boss, mentor and friend, Dave, died three months ago in similar circumstances, and as I read this story I nearly burst into tears right there in Cafe Greco. I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach and immediately relived the horror of those moments three months ago all over again. I closed the book and walked up road 9 in a bit of a daze.

Anyhow, this week has been the emotional aftermath of this fresh wave of grief, and I've been a wreck. I have felt low and useless and inadequate and lethargic and demoralised. You may not have noticed, because I'm good at hiding it, and I didn't really realise it fully myself until today.

On top of this we have our Christmas pageant in ten days time and it's a big deal and I'm responsible for it and I had to apologise to three people today for not being on the ball with it. On top of this two of my colleagues are getting married on Saturday, and our girls are bridesmaids, and I'm leading the music in the service. That's why church tonight was such a high, I was leading worship, but I was certainly not doing it in my own strength.

God showed up just when I needed Him most.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Worship Leader Magazine

Hey - I got published!

Got this magazine through the post in a brown paper envelope this morning, turned to page 29, and there I was, looking back at me. Very weird.

I really liked the point that the main article writer was making about "blended worship" not being a musical style or blend of styles, but that it is actually a blend of worshippers from different cultures and nations around the world offering up praise simultaneously. Then there were a series of interviews with worship leaders from different countries - Brazil, Singapore, Nigeria etc and Maadi Community Church, Cairo.

Anyway, go and buy it. I'm in it :-)

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Guitar Amp Modelling

Ok, so apart from actual musical instruments, there's some other stuff in the armoury. Electric guitar players use a whole battery of electronics to make the diverse range of offensive noises that we love so much. Here's what I use...

Amp Modellers:

The ingredient that makes playing the electric guitar so much fun is often also it's greatest weakness - yes, I'm talking about volume. Most players will say that they need to turn the amp up loud to get the right tone out of it, and for the most part, that's true. Particularly with tube amplifiers, a decent volume level really lets the vacuum tubes work at their best, and that particularly sweet singing sustain is often only available when the amp is really cranked and the valves are beginning to distort.

This doesn't often go down well in church.

So amp modellers are the church guitarist's best friend. Some engineers have spent far too much time in studios and labs analysing the frequency responses of various classic guitar amps at different settings, have simulated this in software, burned it on a chip and then built a little box to reproduce it when you plug in your guitar. The really good think for us church guitarists is that the manufacturers claim that all of those fantastic tube amp harmonics and that lovely warm tone is available with the volume turned right down, or even with your headphones on. And to a degree they are right; manufacturers such as Line6, Behringer, Boss and SansAmp. They can all be plugged directly into a PA system mixing desk, and routed through the monitors thus eliminating those big, expensive, loud and heavy guitar amps from the platform.

In the real world though, there is always going to be a significant difference between spending thousands of dollars on a Mesa Boogie, and spending $100 on eBay for a little blue box that "faithfully" reproduces the tonal range, not just of the Boogie, but thirty-one other similarly desirable amplifiers too. But you know what? For $100 it sounds amazing. And it's incredibly flexible, and does not break my back when I'm moving it around as it only weighs a kilo or so.

Confession time. I have a Behringer V-Amp, firmware upgraded to V-Amp2. Bought about five years ago on eBay. Yes yes, I know some of you think Behringer has bad business ethics... but I didn't buy it from them. Anyway, it's great, models 32 different amplifiers and 16 different speaker cabinets, and has a selection of effects available too. It's the anchor for everything else in my rig. I control it with a Rolls midi foot pedal that I once again found on eBay about five years ago for something like $40.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Gear

Forgive me for I have sinned. Six days without posting. That breaks all the blog rules. Still, never mind, I'm here now. This is such a CRAZY season.

I was wondering if you'd like to know a little bit about my guitar stuff. No? Sorry. It is what I do, after all! So all non-musos can go and have a cup of tea and come back in a while ok?

Acoustic guitar:
Tacoma JK28C. It's a big jumbo acoustic with a cutaway, Koa wood back and sides and a beautiful big sound with even tone across the strings. I bought it at Gruhn's in Nashville in August 1998.










Electric Guitars:
Firstly, the one previously mentioned on this blog. Yamaha Super Flighter SF500. Probably late 1970s. Modified with a Kent Armstrong humbucker bought from eBay in the bridge position.










Secondly, I have a Tokai Goldstar Sound, probably 1984. It is on loan from Tim, Chris Norman's brother. I borrowed it in 1990. So that would be about... sixteen years I suppose. Sorry Tim. It's great, and I'm still using it all the time ok?

Technically it is an exact replica of a 1954 Fender Strat. Except that Tokai substituted a five way pickup selector for the original three way item, and the truss rod is adjustable with a metric allen key instead of a screwdriver. The really cool thing about this guitar is that it changed history.

In the late seventies and early eighties, Fender was going through a really low period. Their guitars were being made poorly, and still priced very high. Tokai shocked them out of this by producing this guitar to a much higher standard than Fender's equivalent, and selling it much cheaper. This provoked Fender to start their Japanese manufacturing facility to compete with Tokai, and to make massive quality improvements in the USA plant to be able to justify the high prices on the guitars being produced there.

Okay, I'm going to bed now. I'll add more to this tomorrow.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Baptism Cannonball

We're having a baptism service tomorrow. I'd like to see someone try this in our 18 inch deep kiddy baptism pool!



[ht: Jody]

Stop Press

Chelsie (my assistant) actually used these ice breakers in her cell group last night!

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Top Ten WORST Cell Group Ice Breakers



10. Share the worst sin you’ve ever committed.

9. If you were God, who would you punish first?

8. Which person in this group do you think needs to find Jesus the most?

7. Which people at your church do you wish would find a different church, and why?

6. If you could erase any verse out of the Bible, which one would it be?

5. Share the juiciest piece of gossip you know so we can pray about it.

4. If you could have anything from your neighbor’s house, what would it be?

3. What’s your favorite of The 10 Commandments to break?

2. If you could change anything about your spouse, what would it be?

1. If you could commit any sin and get away with it, what would it be?

[ht: Carter Moss]

Monday, November 13, 2006

Media Shout, Easy Worship or Song Show Plus?

Now we have the Beast projector running in our services, we are desperate to upgrade from PowerPoint to a dedicated church presentation software package. These three are the front runners so far. We are testing Easy Worship at the moment, and will download the trials of the others, one by one.

Any recommendations?

Sunday, November 12, 2006

A story of spilt milk



Every week, my incredible, amazing, beautiful wife, Felicity, goes out to a slum area where there is a very large African refugee community. She and the other three or four in the team distribute clothes and food to some individuals and families, squat down on the rough concrete floors and love them, counsel them, pray for them, share the good news with them and become their friends. Here is what happened last week...

"For two weeks we hadn't got down to the bottom of our milk box supply in the little slum house where we store the food that we give out to the refugee families in our area. The room is in a villagy type street, ground floor, no windows, rough brick; definitely no frills, but it's our team's HQ and we're really fond of it. A flu epidemic, travel and overseas visitors had affected the different members of our small team and none of us had got to the bottom of the pile of milk cartons that normally get shifted out pretty quickly. Others had however.

Small things, some very small and jumpy, others slightly larger and furry. Rats, mice, cockroaches, fleas jumping a foot high, indescribable mini-beasts that scamper with long long feelers and millions of teeming ants had got in under the milk cartons and eaten their way in. The milk had run out of the holed cartons, congealed, and all these creatures where having a feast. We unsuspectingly lifted up the bottom box of milk cartons, interrupting the party, and caused a blind panic of leaping fleas, snapping, scurrying, furry things and various other unidentifiable bugs to scramble away beneath our feet and up my legs.

The smell was appalling. The whole scene was overwhelmingly disgusting. And then we had to clean it up.

While we cleaned up we found some uneaten cartons that were covered with little bobbily things. So I happily started wiping them off until I realised they were maggots. You know that thing you do when you're a kid and you are forced to eat rice-pudding or whatever is your most-hated food? And the bile rises in your throat and you want to be sick? Well I nearly did that, but forced it down cos I didn't want to lose face in front of my African friends (or add to the mess!!).

Well we gamely sorted out the sheep from the goats, the untouched un-maggoty milk cartons from the bad ones that sank below the line of despair and cleaned up the good ones as best we could, seeing as we had to borrow water in an oil can as we have none in our house. And then one of the guys picked up the rotten, dripping cardboard boxes filled with the cartons of congealed, maggoty super-revolting milk and took them outside to where there was a rubbish heap on the other side of the road. We knew that other rats and roaches; maybe a stray dog or two would enjoy them later on, hopefully much later on...

Fifteen minutes later we noticed a young woman; slim, beautiful, haunted-looking on top of the heap, eagerly collecting up the cartons and stuffing them into a large cracked paint bucket, "No no!" we cried", "Please don't take these, they are bad and dirty. Here, have some good milk, leave those ones - they will make you sick! Look, see, they are not clean..." Laughing she pushed us away, happily gathering up the maggoty milk, oblivious as she waded barefoot, ankle deep through the rubbish. Soon she was joined by an old, old, thin bent-over little lady.

And here's what makes us First-Worlders feel so ashamed of how much we have, and how much we waste; the milk that we had felt wasn't good enough for our poorest-of-the-poor, on-the-bread-line refugee friends, was an amazing find, pure gold in the eyes of these two women."

Thursday, November 09, 2006

My church



So. Maadi Community Church (MCC). A little introduction. We are part of the world wide family of God. We are the body, gathered from all over the world, assembled from more than fifty different nationalities, and with over seventy different denominational affiliations. There are about 1400 of us meeting every weekend spread between four different services. Pastor Dave Petrescue used to say it's a little taste of what heaven might be like, every nation, tribe and tongue worshipping together in unity. A further 1500 of us don't even make it to this campus so we've planted five new church locations this year in their communities around the city. These are mainly displaced people, refugees, asylum seekers, mostly Africans, mostly in great need.

We are a church with cell groups/small groups at our core, people meeting in their homes during the week, learning from each other, studying and worshipping together, praying together, and looking for opportunities to live out their faith in a practical way by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, teaching the uneducated and helping more people to become followers of Christ.

We worship. Three services each weekend are western style worship, energetic, contemporary music blended with hymns and prayer, occasionally formal, sometimes traditional, always real. Our fourth service is African style, and, wow, they absolutely know how to worship. You need to go there.

I have four worship teams that play one weekend each per month. They are great singers and musicians and we're learning together how to lead in such a way so as to not take the attention off God. We must decrease, He must increase. We come from Eritrea, USA, Canada, UK, Egypt, South Africa, Holland, Korea, Uganda, Nigeria, Sudan, Germany, and Congo.

I still can't believe I get to be doing what I do, where I do it, with the people I do it with. God is seriously good.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Kill them all



I've found that pillows are the worlds best weapon against mosquitoes. They have enough momentum and weight to at least stun the mos, if not kill him outright. They forgive inaccurate aim and you don't have to be lightning fast, because they are big enough to kill the mos even after he's seen it coming and has taken off. Surface area is your best friend.

You just have to put up with the bloodstains on your pillow from those who have already taken their last meal. But hey, it's your blood right?

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

I love Cairo



Let me ask you, would this guy be advertising Pepsi anywhere in the West? I think not.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

It's arrived! (part deux)

Our projector has been dying for quite a while now. Not quite sure what the problem is, but there's a yellow patch in the top left hand corner and the brightness has been much lower than it should be for a long time. Oh yes and it eats bulbs. At $500 each. Not good.

With our situation, church in a tent, with open sides and therefore very high ambient light from that very strong Egyptian sunshine, this just will not do. For the past few months we've been reduced to using white text on a black background, and even then you can't really see it from the back of the tent. Or the front. We certainly can't play any media clips or videos.

Someone very very very kindly donated us the money for a new one, and after much discussion, negotiation and then creative shipping arrangements, it has finally arrived, and it's a beast! A Sanyo PLC-XF60. Just look at the size of it! I've taken a photo next to my guitar just to give you some idea of the dimensions.



6500 lumens means that even for our Africa Live service at 1:30 pm when the sun is at it's strongest, it's plenty bright enough and on our Thursday evening service this week, it was so bright that when we showed slides with a white background, the people in the front row were wincing and putting on their shades.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

We're back

Well, we made it.

Another marathon journey;
Up at 5:30 am
To the bus station to catch the 7am bus.
Five hours on a bus from Jerusalem to Eilat
Taxi to the border
Security check
Duty Free :-)
Leave Israel
Enter Egypt
Passport control
Taxi to the hotel where we left the car
Drive five hours back to Cairo.
Arrive at 6:30pm

Here's some snapshots along the way...



Thursday, October 26, 2006

Holly lost her tooth


Just like Jesus must have done, although it is mysteriously not recorded in the gospels, Holly (number one daughter, aged eight and a half) lost one of her teeth here in Israel. Hooray!

Walking through the Old City

Today's adventure was a great big walk.



We started at the Mount of Olives, looking back over the Old City with the Temple Mount smack bang in the foreground. We walked down the hill, past the tombs of the prophets to the Dominus Flevit Chapel. This is a beautiful, peaceful chapel built on the spot where medieval pilgrims reckon that Jesus wept over Jerusalem (see Matt 23:37-39 & Luke 19:41-44). What a wonderful place to just sit and pray, with the view of the Temple Mount framed in the window. A very gruff Franciscan monk gave the girls a postcard each.

We wandered further down past the Church of St Mary Magdalene (Russian Orthodox, closed!) to the Garden of Gethsemene and the Church of All Nations. Again this was beautiful and peaceful, guarded by a monk, and with a small garden of ancient Olive trees just like it might have been when Jesus kept his prayer vigil, the night before his arrest.

Next stop was the Tomb of the Virgin - an underground tomb accessed via a magnificent flight of steps down into a very shrine-like cave with the stone shelf where the disciples are supposed to have laid Mary's body. A very mystical atmosphere with three or four old ladies dressed in black worshipping at the shrines with weeping and chanting, surrounded by icons and other paraphernalia.

Next, we walked up the hill and entered the Old City through the Lion Gate and walked into the Arab quarter along the Via Dolorosa. We then wound our way through the souks and markets, very similar to the Khan El Kahlili in Cairo, and eventually popped out at the top of town by the Jaffa Gate. We bought beads for the girls and poked around in various funny little shops, and became very skilled at parrying the various trader's sales pitches, again, just like the Khan.

Tonight we're taking the family out for a meal somewhere nice. Really looking forward to it!

Jerusalem


Well, we made it. A thirteen hour trip to get from Cairo to Jerusalem. No problems except where to park the car in Taba - none of the big hotels were particularly helpful, something about issues with car bombs in the past...

Anyway, it's been wonderful catching up with Felicity's cousin and his family here, getting to know their kids and revisiting old haunts in the old city.

Something new though was to visit Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum. The building is incredible - a triangular shaped concrete corridor which you cross and recross as you make your way through the series of rooms to the sides. The guide book says you need two to three hours to go through, but I think we took about four. It is harrowing and horrifying in the extreme. Close to tears most of the way round, I found myself not being able to cope with the experience from time to time, particularly when looking at the Auschwitz reconstructions.

There was an Auschwitz survivor taking a group around, and to hear his stories first hand and to see the tattoo on his forearm made the exhibits much more than just a museum. Here was a guy who lost his whole family and yet survived himself to educate the next generation on this terrible episode of European history.

After the concentration camp exhibits, the corridor starts to slope uphill and the triangle widens out until it almost feels like the building expells you from the museum and you find yourself on this cantilevered parapet overlooking Jerusalem, at the mouth of the triangle. What a sense of hope and yet responsibility to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Going to Jerusalem


Tomorrow we're setting off on a big adventure. Five hours by car across the Sinai to Taba, who knows how long to cross the border in to Israel, and then a five hour bus trip up to Jerusalem. We're going to visit Felicity's cousin and his wife and four kids who have lived there for five years now. We're really excited because none of us have met the kids before, and we don't know Bonni very well either as we only met her the day before their wedding, and then we waved them off as they sailed off on their honeymoon adventure to Jerusalem, with an amazing firework display as a backdrop, and then they never came back!

We've been to Jerusalem before, ten years ago when we were back-packing around Israel, Sinai and Jordan, and we loved the place so much. Despite the military, ethnic and religious tensions in the city we felt such peace there, and the strangest and strongest feeling (for a country boy from Worcestershire) of coming home. We'll be back in a week, hopefully.

Friday, October 20, 2006

True International Worship

Just finished our third weekend service, and Africa Live is about to start in about 20 mins. The worship was fantastic this week - we really felt that God was with us in a powerful way. In our team we had people from England, Wales, Holland, USA, Germany, South Korea, Eritrea/Ethiopia, Nigeria, Congo and Egypt! How amazing is that? And by the way, we rocked! It's great to have my guitar back - God is so good.

Larry preached about having a healthy self image, seeing ourselves the way God sees us, and not succumbing to the unhealthy images that the world imposes on us of how we should look. God loves us just the way we are, and wants to free us up to be the way he intended us to be.

Now if I could just lose those extra 10 kilos...

Wow

That's amazing!! Click on the little map, bottom right of this page under "Where do you come from". How incredible that you guys are spread so evenly around the world. There's a big hole though - got to make some friends in Russia and China!

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

It's arrived!

This is the first guitar I ever bought. A Yamaha Super Flighter 500, and now it's here with me in Cairo. I bought it from Music City in Worcester (that's the original Worcester in England) when I was eighteen and I have played so many gigs and worship services with this guitar. It's been with my mate Chris in Liverpool for the last three years and now I've finally managed to get it out here. Can you tell I'm excited? I'm going to wheel it out for church this weekend.

These are pretty rare guitars - I can't find any real information on them. There are a couple of reviews in Harmony Central, but that's it. I didn't buy it because it's rare though, I was only eighteen, and not that bright(!). I bought it because it sounds great, plays great and looks cool. I love the funky steel scratchplate.

It's solid mahogany with a solid mahogany bolt-on neck and twin humbuckers. The neck one is original, but I bought the guitar with a really bad EMG Select humbucker in the bridge which I swapped out about five years ago with a Kent Armstrong that I found on ebay. The guitar sounds really nice - full and rich and with great tone, but as you can imagine with all that mahogany I need physiotherapy on my shoulder after each service.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Ramadan traffic is nuts

My office window overlooks a busy street here in Maadi. It's Ramadan at the moment which means that from about 1pm the traffic hots up. Everyone is trying to get home early in time to prepare and eat the evening meal (Iftar) to break the day's fasting. No-one has eaten or drunk anything since dawn. Most of those who smoke have also abstained from nicotine since dawn. As you can imagine, people get a little tense and impatient. This state of mind does not help their driving, to put it mildly.

A lady has just overtaken a long queue of traffic on the wrong side of the road, with her hand on the horn the whole way past. Who knows if anyone else was coming the other way? How does she know they would back down before her in today's game of chicken?

Me, I like to wait for the Iftar call to prayer at about 5:30pm and cycle home on the deserted streets when all you can hear is the chink of cutlery on crockery.

First time blogger

I've been thinking about this for nearly five months. To blog or not to blog. A tricky one. I'm still not sure if this is the right answer but how can you tell without jumping in? Hopefully with both feet.

So I will start as all good blogs start, with the caveat that this is an experiment. I may not stay the course, I may spout nonsense or just pure trivia. If I do post anything that I consider profound, you may well consider it puerile. I may not know you now, but this could be the start of a long and meaningful relationship, or possibly not. We'll see eh?