As Fi Bows to Peer Pressure

There is little chance I’ll update again before 2009 so here’s my attempt at a Christmas blog - I’m off to Wales this evening to spend Christmas with the whanau and then back to London to earn my keep and party into the New Year with the LSE posse and a few others. Apologies to those reading this for the second time.

Merry Christmas! It’s been wonderful to hear news from around the world with Christmas letters and emails pouring into my inbox.
 
This year has been an interesting but very fun year for me. I have (in no particular order):

• spent New Years with my lovely sister
• attended the ANZAC Day dawn service at Hyde Park Corner followed by the service at Westminster Cathedral
• organised three national conferences for work and run around the country trying not to look flustered
• been to the Red Bull flugtag in Hyde Park
• held a surprise birthday picnic for a friend, involving me pretending to have been proposed to (she was completely convinced by this)
• been to the Nelson Mandela birthday celebrations in Hyde Park
• spent a day in the Royal Enclosure at Royal Ascot
• travelled around parts of France and Spain for holiday with my LSE friends,
• attended the International Eisteddfod in Llangollen with my mum and her friend Kay (was so wonderful to see them both!)
• spent a weekend with pastorate at the Malshanger Estate, owned by Colman’s Mustard man but part-gifted to church
• helped out on the Worlds End council estate with my church posse - we painted most of one flat in one day. It was madness!
• attended too many of the BBC Proms and made lots of new promming buddies - favourite was probably the Dr Who Prom I think :o)
• been to Ireland with 7 friends from pastorate for the weekend
• been to a Madness concert (80s ska/crazy band from London) followed by a Christmas pantomime the next night
• had loads of lovely Kiwi friends visit and/or stick around

Quite astonishingly, I have now been in London for 2 and a 1/4 years and feel like a proper little Londoner. I’m very lucky to have a wonderful little flat in Zone 1 (near Russell Square for those that know London) with an Aussie girl and a Swedish guy. I am really lucky to have plenty of spare time to pursue other interests.
 
I am really enjoying being more involved with my church, Holy Trinity Brompton, and one of the highlights for my pastorate (a small goup that’s not so small) has been involvement in a homeless shelter over the Winter months. I’m also involved in a start-up charity that will be setting up a halfway house for women coming out of Holloway Prison and looking forward to our first major fundraising event in mid-February. In a moment of total work boredom I also agreed to be a voluntary project manager for a major youth development charity based in Toronto, the wonders of the internet mean I can do this virtually. It’s fabulous to have time to do all these things and in some ways this makes up for the less interesting parts of my full-time job.
 
Next year holds a number of delights - the most exciting of which right now is a trip home for a month in March/April. It’s my first trip home since September 2006 and I am really excited at the thought of seeing friends and family again. If you’re keen for a catch-up, I’d love to see you. Send me an email and we’ll organise a date/time.

For a few photo highlights of 2008, visit my Webshots photo site and head for the “Best of 2008″ album.
 
It would be lovely to catch up with as many as possible while I’m home next Easter.
 
Have a Happy New Year and I hope to see many of you in three months or so.
 
Love and hugs,
Fi x

I need an oven. I need an oven on Sunday. I *desperately* need an oven in my flat on Sunday but because the people at Dixons / Currys are stupid, I will not have my oven by Sunday.

Dixons / Currys promised to deliver an oven tomorrow. They overbooked their deliveries and can’t deliver now. I know it’s human and me being angry isn’t going to help but it kinda screws up my Christmas dinner plans completely and I’m annoyed.

I do not recommend ordering anything from Dixons / Currys if you want it to be delivered quickly.

Grrrrrrrrr . . .

This is the 4th post for the night and more of an explanation of the other three than anything proper.

For some reason I can’t sleep, at all, tonight and it’s now 5:15am and in an hour and a bit I need to get out of bed and head to work. Fun! Instead of clearing up my desk or working out where to move my furniture to next weekend (see the ‘Trying to remember how to say no’ post - it’s not about sex). I am posting random things on my blog and listening to Last.FM. Why not?

Oooh . . . so I’ve discovered the wonders of H&M, not the NZ one, but the kinda that sells good clothes for cheap and has nice ones at the Knightsbridge branch. It makes me so happy, in a silly kind of way.

Other things that make me happy - let me introduce you to The Boy Least Likely To:

I’ve just finished White Teeth by Zadie Smith and while I really enjoyed it, and indeed couldn’t put it down in parts, I am left with the overwhelming sense that I’m missing something. I think this is my fault for reading it in too many chunks and getting a tad confused about where I was up to at times. Bookmarks are a brilliant invention.

Based in London, providing insight into the families of second-generation immigrants, it’s a colourful book full of life and crazy description. It changes direction quite suddenly but as usual the threads all tie up in the end.

However, I enjoyed it enough to try again so in a month or so I’m going to re-read it and see if I can work out what bits I’m missing. It’s like hearing only three parts of a four-part harmony, there’s something not quite there, and in this case it’s not the author, it’s definitely me.

I do, however, really love some of the characters. All the younger generation are so intricately tied together. And Hortense, a Jamaican Jehovah’s Witness constantly convinced of a new date for the second coming, is a wonderful side step from everyone else.

It’s been a while since I said yes to so many things that I started to get an overly full diary but I’m back there and loving it!

It’s the reason for the lack of blogging, the reason for the lack of sane responses to emails, and I’m going to blame my insanity on being silly busy for most of my life.

So here’s a list, half to remind myself of what I’m trying to complete, and half for you to see what I’m up to:

1) Pastorate - my church divides itself into large small groups known as pastorates. They’re a necessity in a church of 3,000-4,000 back when there was only five services on a Sunday. There’s now seven. We meet every second Tuesday at church for some prayer, teaching, and food. It’s a solid evening. Anyway my pastorate are a fairly socialable bunch so we have fairly regular nights out together and enjoyed a wonderful weekend in Ireland last month. Apparently I’m something resembling an outreach officer for the pastorate, which brings me nicely to the things that we do on the other Tuesday in every two weeks…

2) St Matthew’s shelter - provides shelter and food for 35 homeless men and women in London on a Tuesday night. It’s part of the West London Churches Homelessness Concern and the shelter rotates around churches in the West London area each night of the week. I pull along 5 pastorate members every other Tuesday to help with setting up, serving food, and building relationships with some of the most amazing people I’ve met in London, who also happen to not have anywhere to sleep.

3) TakingItGlobal - youth activism and involvement in communities worldwide. I’ve been involved forever and a day it feels like *but* I am now a voluntary project editor for them, which works nicely as I can do it virtually and whenever I have time. With over 2,500 projects worldwide registered with TIG, I help in all sorts of ways. It’s a blast!

4) Paid employment - I am currently employed as a policy assistant for the established Church in the pastoral and closed churches division. It pays the bills and allows me to do lots of other stuff in my spare time. I don’t intend to do it forever.

5) Halfway house - I’m helping with a start-up charity that will setup a halfway house for women coming out of Holloway Prison in London. I do website design stuff and pretend to be fairly au fait with all things IT. I also now organise fundraising events because I like organising and event management. It’s fun and I find it oddly relaxing.

6) Swimming - I theoretically swim 3-4 times a week, depends on the week, depends on what I’ve got on, depends on silly things, but I love my new Aquabeat so it keeps me fit and happy.

7) British Labour Party - I am a new member of the British Labour Party and will be helping to ensure that the Tories don’t win like National at the next Brit election. The New Zealand election result made me realise that I am quite definitely a centre-lefty, not a ‘centre-right with a little bit of Act thrown in or good measure’ person. I am looking forward to getting back into campaigning.

Christmas with the London whanau - I have a family here, we’re a strange bunch of misfits jumbled together from all sorts of situations, but I love them all dearly, so I am throwing a Christmas party for my London whanau next Sunday. Cooking for 15-20 people is the fun part :o) Some of us are also heading to “A Celebration of Christmas” at St Paul’s on Thursday.

I think that’s it for now. Those are the things you’ll hear me talking about most often. I am loving being involved with a few NGOs and charities, and having time to do that is really precious. I’m off to Wales for Christmas and will spend New Years with a few of my LSE friends celebrating what I hope to be a very exciting new year.

I, like most of my friends, go through strange musical stages where I feel the need to listen to one artist or album over and over. Songs become my theme tunes for certain periods in my life and when I hear them again, I’m instantly transported back to that time, those events, and the feelings associated. It can be a blessing, but is sometimes a curse. Learning to retune my brain occasionally for the songs with bad memories has been a difficult lesson.

For my sins, my current addictions are Christina Aguilera (…you can stop laughing now) and Tim Hughes.

But seriously . . .

It’s with my love of music and international development that I’m promoting a new album. CompassionArt is, as they say, “a charity which join the dots between art and poverty” and they’ve just produced an *AMAZING* album with 12 Christian songwriters creating a fantastic collection of songs. Best of all, the twelve writers nominated a charity to which 1/24th of CompassionArt royalties will go to. The remaining 50 per cent of the funds raised will be distributed among projects that CompassionArt wants to give extra support – such as the Watoto community in Uganda. There, orphaned children are given food, shelter, education and a loving, caring home as they rebuild their lives. CompassionArt will provide funding for a series of music and arts centres that support the world-famous Watoto Children’s Choir, as well as offering essential training for those wanting to pursue a future in the arts.

By buying this album, you’re helping to change lives. It’s not about 1/2 the profits going to recreate a rainforest (although that’s very noble), it’s 100% of all the money made. Every single $. It’s not often you can say that.

It’s out in WH Smith and via Play.com in the UK, and information on where to get for loads of other places worldwide is on the website. It’s not out in NZ yet as far as I can tell but I’m sure it will be soon - keep your eyes out guys, it’s a gorgeous album and so worthy of support.

You know what - I think these guys explain it much better than I do.