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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 . . .

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.

Snow fell in London last night for the first time in October since 1934.

October snowfall: London had its first October snowfall since 1934

Snow and sleet also fell in northern Scotland and south-east England as temperatures plunged to -4C in parts of Britain.

Football matches were either postponed or abandoned at Luton, Northampton, Walsall and Wycombe because of the weather conditions.

Sky weather presenter Denise Nurse said: “It’s highly unusual to have snow in October - we haven’t seen October snowfall in London since 1934.

“But today will be cold, bright and frosty. Snow this afternoon will mainly affect Northern Ireland, Wales and the north of England. It’ll also be breezy, feeling almost blizzard-like.

Cheers for that Sky News :o)

I run away when faced with things I don’t want to understand. I literally run away, taking my shoes off and dashing down a street to cry somewhere where people can’t see me. I have done all my life. I am determined, however, that tonight will be the last time I literally run away because it never solves any problems and always causes me more.

I get angry at silly things and when I’m tired and/or stressed my anger gets out of control and I do things that hurt other people. I also do things that hurt myself. Neither of these are good situations and I don’t want to be this person anymore. I was telling Adam last night in an email how much I need to learn patience and I think possibly self-control needs to be added to that too.

I am passionate and intense and while this can be a huge positive in the areas I want to work in, it’s been hugely draining for the other person in many past relationships. I don’t know how to deal with this.

I expect a lot from certain people and am easily upset when they’re not there for me. This makes me a nightmare friend sometimes. For other friends I am scared of letting them in because they have so much else to deal with - it feels like my problems will only weigh them down.

I like to think I’m strong and mature but often I feel the complete opposite.

I try very hard to be perfect and fail miserably all the time and seem to take this failure far too personally. If I was meant to be perfect, I wouldn’t be going through the mess of being human, right God?

I let people take advantage of me because I’d rather do that than compromise friendships and this makes me a bit bitter sometimes. I need to be a little more careful and almost selfish sometimes.

I guess this list could go on but I wanted to write what I was thinking so I’d have marker in the sand for this . . . and maybe one day someone will look at it and realise they’re not the only one who screws up and occasionally feels like they fail at life.

Tomorrow I go to Paris for the beginning of my second summer holiday but these are the thoughts that are clouding my mind. I wish I had all the answers for being happy, and strong, and slow to anger, and everything else, but I guess it’s the learning these things through a slow, and rather painful, process that makes us the people we are.

So a few people seem to be wondering what exactly it is I do for the Church of England - other than conference organising and other stuff. The subject matter I deal with has just come up in The Sunday Telegraph and I thought I’d share it with you so you get an idea of the crazy things (or not-so-crazy things) I do -

Britain will lose up to a fifth of its churches in the space of a generation unless action is taken to halt the decline, according to new research.

I have today off work. I am going to Sir Ed’s remembrance service at Windsor Castle (I have a pretty invitation from Buckingham Palace) to hang out with loads of other Kiwis (they’ve invited like 400 of us I hear) and remember a pretty cool and inspiring guy. I’m pretty stoked at the opportunity.

Off to tidy room now. Grand.

It’s 20 minutes into the 2nd day of 2008 but I shall ignore that fact and do a reflective post anyway. 2007 was one hell of a year and that’s all I can really say to sum it up.  So where am I at now and where do I want to go?

My name is Fiona McKenzie and I’m a 23 year old Kiwi living in London. I graduated with an MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics in December 2007 and am passionate about working to solve the problem of absolute poverty in my lifetime, like so many others. I know this is what God wants me to focus my life on an I know we can make it happen. I am particularly passionate, although many find it a rather weird passion, about the role that States play in improving the welfare of their countries and I am really interested in working in political strategy focused on development in developing countries.

This is a difficult career goal to say the least and I have found it even more difficult to break into the “aid industry” due to my “lack of experience”. I decided to approach it a different way and I am now working for the Church of England, something in between the State and an NGO here in the UK, as a policy assistant in a department that has nothing to do with development and everything to do with old churches. While I lve the job and know the the exerience is what I need, it grinds against me because I know that this is not what I have been called to do. The “policy assistant” title, however, is oddly important on my CV and will hopefully help when it comes to selling myself to future employers in the future. A political strategic consultancy, who I sent my CV off to some months back, have let me know that they are interested but have no current positions and will keep the CV on file. It’s a small hope and another half-way measure but the experience is important and I know God has his hand on everything I am doing.

I have an amazingly supportive family and so many friends that I love and adore. Many friends and family are back in New Zealand and I hate being unable to just see them in the street or do coffee whenever. I am excited at the prospect of close friends moving to this side of the world in 2008. I am really loving having my sister here right now and am thrilled at the thought of spending a bit of Summer with my mum and her best friend. I have realised how important these relationships are to me.

I am equally thankful for the friends I have here in London. For the Passfield postgrads and the entertainment of the lives we all lead and for Neerav. I shall miss having Murray and Verena in London this year but I am glad that both shall be back even just for short bits of time. We’re definitely a family of sorts now and that makes the distance from my real family more bearable.

I love London though, and will happily spend another year of my life here come what may. I will go back to York and enjoy the English-ness of it. I will house-sit in Waresley and enjoy a bit of R & R in North Wales. I will visit Oxford and Cardiff and maybe the south coast somewhere. I will visit Spain and spend more than one afternoon in Paris. I hope to get a chance to visit somewhere in North Africa before the end of the year.

Lastly, but not least, in 2008 I will blog more about the things in life that matter most. What precisely these things are you will have to wait to find out. I suggest popping back here in a couple of days to find out my initial thoughts.

My sister has just helpfully informed me that it is now Christmas in New Zealand. Since it’s only 1am or so, I think I shall leave off texting you all right now and will save that for this evening. I am back where I spent last Christmas, except this time not alone, and my sister is here and currently reading chick lit on the fold-out sofa bed in front of me. I have this week off, except Friday, and sleeping in and reading/doing nothing is really appealing right now. Tomorrow will be chaos as we join the Taines (three children), their cousins (two children) and their Mum’s parents for Christmas. It’s going to be a full house!

I guess there’ll be more to say soon but for now it’s just Merry Christmas!