A Particularly Good Friday

As far as I know I have only two followers on this blog. One is a devout Christian, the other a militant atheist, or at least that's the way it was last time we spoke.
Good Friday has always seemed to me to be the most difficult and the most necessary day in the Christian calendar. Without the events that we remember on this day, the rest is just froth and wishful thinking.
In my days of studying theology, there was a lot of reference to the idea of 'protest atheism'. How can there be an all powerful, all loving God when there is such excruciating suffering and such massive injustice on this planet? I must refuse to believe in such a God until there is a satisfactory answer to this question.
What I learnt at the time and still believe is that the only possible Christian response is to point to the cross of Christ. The Christian cannot and must not attempt to give a logical, reasoned answer to the question of suffering. Any answer which attempts to give a purpose to suffering becomes blasphemous: if God willed Auschwitz, Hiroshima etc. etc. then God must be a monster.
Good Friday tells us that the God in whom Christians believe, and in whom atheists refuse to believe, reveals himself not as all powerful, almighty, but in the midst of and on the receiving end of the worst evils the world and humans can throw at him.
This is more than just 'Jesus died for my sins', important as that is. This is an event which, if there is any truth in Christianity, tells us that God suffers, and that if God takes upon himself the sting of suffering and evil, then it becomes possible for humans and the earth to be free.
My all time fave singer Bruce Cockburn (google him) has a line that says 'those who know don't have the words to tell, and the ones with the words don't know so well'.
Well I'm running out of words here. Good Friday always makes me feel a little uneasy, serious, reflective........but it's what makes this Christianity stuff real to me.
So if you came to the blog wanting to know more about life in New Zealand, and found me going on about God, suffering and evil, and you haven't tuned out yet......
It's been a bright, sunny fun day! We are house sitting for my mate Andy in the town of Paraparaumu, some 20 odd miles up the coast from Wellington, and the real reason we are here is a daft black ex racing greyhound called Piper. She needed looking after while Andy & family are away in Australia, and I guess we specialise in daft greyhounds. She's been out hurtling along the beach, chasing other dogs large & small and generally getting excited in the Autumn sunshine.
Yep - Easter in the Autumn. Weird, if you're from the Northern Hemisphere. And the supermarkets have all been shut - but not the cafe that sold us the huge ice creams.....
By the way, another thing I learnt along the way is that atheists are much more interesting than agnostics. Anyone fancy a few beers and a debate about God?

March, late summer

OK we are upside down. Have been for a couple of months, in fact. Neglected the blog, as usual. Time for an update though......
we left Heathrow on 8th Jan ( I think), had a couple of beers in the airport with a guy who was just moving home from Thailand to Teesside. Now that's culture shock for you.
Landed in LA after discovering that Air New Zealand serve the best wine & food of any airline I've tried so far, then spent an hour trying to find a rental car desk that didn't exist. Eventually found out we had to catch a bus to it, hired a funky white Chrysler and drove out into the California night.....straight into three lanes of oncoming traffic. Well it's not my fault they drive on the wrong side of the road. Luckily there was time to correct my mistake, and we survived the drive to our downtown Hollywood hotel, well ok it was a fairly downbeat motel, but clean and well run.
So we had a great time with our friends Debbie & Drew, the warm weather doing us both a power of good. Three days later we took off for NZ and a big leap into the unknown.
I have to say we warmed to the place as soon as we arrived, even though it was 5am. The airport staff, customs & immigration were all very friendly & efficient, we bussed into Auckland and discovered the delights of the NZ 'long black' - a tachycardia inducing double espresso that kept us going until we were able to access our hotel room and sleep a bit (I've since become a bit of a 'long black' addict). We met up with friends from the UK, Andy W and Sarah M, thanks guys, you made us welcome and kept us awake when we needed it most!
After a couple of nights in Auckland we flew on to Wellington, met at the airport by my 'new' work colleagues Andy & Alan (I used to work with these two in Gloucester), plus more of the management team from Wellington Free, whom I now work closely with as well: Pete, Rob & Sarah. And the job's good.
Since then we spent two weeks in a downtown serviced apartment, found a place we wanted to rent, the rental agency messed up the dates so we then lived for three weeks on top of Lower Hutt Ambulance Station (we have a work owned apartment there), then eventually we moved into our new place for a six month rental right opposite the Wellington Botanic Gardens. Which incidentally are absolutely gorgeous. Although I did find out today that the major fault line on which Wellington is built runs right down the middle of the street between us & the gardens. So if we disappear into it, it's been great knowing you.
Now before we left home, I had no end of doubts about whether we were doing the right thing. But since we arrived, I've had no regrets at all. Some serious bouts of missing home & family, sure, but they pass over and on we go with life, work and the challenges they bring.
Judi has been brilliant, while I've been working she has got on with making new friends, kitting out the flat, learning her way around and generally looking after me. Today is her birthday and we are celebrating with a weekend at Martinborough, a very chilled out winery town about an hour from Wellington. On Monday she starts work.
So it's March, it's very warm & humid tonight, but it's only wierd if you stop to think about it. And from pneumonia on Christmas Day back home, I have not seen Judi so healthy as she is now for a long long time.
If you are reading this because you are friends or family and want to know what we've been up to, there's lots more - swimming, hiking, buying a Subaru Impreza, getting used to beer that is always served at sub zero temperatures, discovering what a cool, green city Wellington is (most of the time).......
If on the other hand you expect a blog to contain profound or incisive comment on life.....not tonight, sorry. I'm just too chilled.

Happy New Year and away!

Our NZ visas arrived around 4pm on New Year's Eve. Cue warm glow, followed by celebration, followed by a sudden doubling in size of our 'to do' list and a shrinking of the time to do it: we leave on Thursday! Cue also moments of sheer panic as I realise that we are leaving everything we know and love. The more time we've had waiting for the visas has meant the more time we've spent with friends, family and dogs, realised what a great bunch they all are - and now we are off.
I guess leaving shows everything in a different and sometimes fresh light: I don't appreciate what I have until I leave it behind. Though in the age of the web and regular international travel I like to think we haven't left it all for good. In fact at the moment we both think that we will be back in two or three years - although several people we have spoken to reckon we will change our minds about that.
Anyway we'll be back next summer for stepson's wedding, empty suitcases in hand to take more stuff to NZ.
A Happy New Year to both my readers!

PS Didn't Forest Green Rovers do well?

God and dogs

So I believe in God, and I believe in prayer, but I've never quite figured out how it all works, and greater men than I have failed too and simply called it a mystery. Now if I were God I would want to prioritise prayers about war and starvation and dealing with all the bad stuff in the world. I certainly wouldn't be too impressed with anyone who thought praying for a suitable home for a couple of dogs was a good thing to do. But I must have prayed at some point - well there's no harm in asking - and it may be just coincidence that the young lady who approached me outside Tesco recognised the mutts and me from walking on the common, it may be pure chance that we were both there at the same time, it may be sheer luck that she is able to take Percy & Bonnie into her home, and that they appear to be very happy there......well lets just say we are very grateful for these random occurences and it feels very much like 'someone' is interested in helping us out here.
I'm sure there's a whole swathe of theology about God's relationship with non-humans, but I'm not going to get into that here, I'm just glad that our biggest problem prior to moving to NZ appears to have been solved.
Now maybe I can write about something other than dogs - although a few more cute photos might not go amiss.
The plan is, we will ship at least one dog to NZ in six months' time when we return for stepson's wedding.....we do suspect that one dog may no longer be with us. Though he still seems determined to prove us wrong.
By the way, wife is slowly getting better, but it's going to be a bit of a slow process. Apologies to anyone who was expecting us to be out boozing in Stroud this Saturday, it ain't gonna happen yet. Anyway we haven't got our sweaty palms on the visas yet.

PS I'm a bit bothered by this posting. It reads a bit like those 'God gave me a parking space on a busy Saturday' sermons that used to crop up from time to time in church meetings I attended many years ago. The thrust of these talks was usually that 'if your life feels like crap, you don't have enough faith'. Not the kind of preaching you'd want to hear in a refugee camp, for example.

Christmas Day

A very Merry Christmas to all - or should that say 'both' - of my readers. And full marks to the NHS today - after much coughing and upping and downing of body temperature, we took Judi to the out of hours doc who promptly agreed with her self diagnosis: she has left lower lobar pneumonia. This is the third Christmas in a row that she has been ill and you can see why she'd rather be in New Zealand sunshine.
Anyway I just realised that in the last entry I referred to the dogs' new foster home without writing about it: a very lovely lady who lives about half a mile away and is mad about lurchers is to have them for six months. There's lots more to tell about this tale but she & her two children are due to join us for dinner any minute now, and I've been summoned to examine the turkey. So you'll have to await the next entry with baisted breath......(groan)

Better late than never

On the morning of my 49th birthday, Friday 12th December, a short but rather friendly email from immigration NZ informed us that our residence application had been accepted 'in principle ' and that visas would take around another three weeks. Unfortunately due to a typically English winter bug (bad chest, coughing all night) I didn't feel like leaping around the room celebrating. But it looks like we really will be going 'upside down' soon.
Meanwhile the dogs have spent more nights at their intended 'foster home', although Bonnie did make a 2-3 mile dash for home this weekend whilst being walked on a local common. However she was promptly returned to her weekend retreat and is none the worse for it.
I've a long way to go before this blogging lark becomes a daily event....e.g. tonight a fine South African cabernet sauvignion is making me far to mellow to blog angrily about: immigration bureacracy, NHS targets, greedy investment bankers and the self destructive nature of monetarism, sloppy defending at the Ricoh Arena, latent racism in the UK fuelled by scaremongering journalism, NHS bureacracy, litter, Tesco shopping trolleys in the river, canine incontinence, poor educational standards, cultural ignorance, the effects of alcohol abuse on society.....wow these are just a few of the things I'm normally cross about, and you all thought I was so chilled.

Stuff & Negligence

My mate Jules says I should do it every day, then I'd get into the habit. Blogging, that is. Jules is 50% of my current following, along with Paul who is the other 50%. Chatting to Jules (http://gravelfarm.blogspot.com ) & Paul (http://tastingtasting.blogspot.com ) inspired me to get started, along with Tom Reynolds 'Random Acts of Reality' (http://randomreality.blogware.com ). Thanks guys.

It's funny, both wife and mother-in-law reckon I spend too much time at the laptop, and yet I'd generally rather be playing my guitar, walking the dogs or in the pub watching football.

A word about mother-in-law: she is an inspiration. 87 years of age, we are living with her rent free until NZ decide to let us in, and she is saving up for a ticket to visit us. She spends much of her time looking after friends from the church who are younger & less able than she is. And she is currently tolerating a lot of dog hairs in her house...

So anyway, no matter how much time at the laptop doing the usual round of emails, ebay and elation (had to find another e-word, didn't I?) on the odd occasion that Coventry City score a goal, I still manage to neglect the blog. Maybe it's like a house plant, needing some watering and sunlight in the right measure.

Ok, I'll try to look after it more. Feed it and see if it grows. But right now I keep getting this message that says 'could not contact blogger.com: saving and publishing may fail'.

So you may never get to read this....