The Chapmans

Well, Alison is now 11 days overdue and baby Chapman mk2 shows no signs of arriving of its own accord. This unfortunately means 2 things!
1. Alison is about to be induced either tomorrow or on Sunday
2. Our child will be an Essex baby instead of a London one as the London hospital wanted to induce Alison earlier than the Essex hospital. We held on desparately to try and avoid this but to no avail!

We’ll keep you up to date with developments…

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One night a man had a dream.

He dreamed that he was walking along a sandy path with the Lord.

Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand.

He asked the Lord, “Why do I see two sets of footprints?”

The Lord replied: “Those are your carbon footprints - twice the global average.”

When the last scene in his life had flashed before him, the man looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that this seemed to happen at times when things had gone wrong for him. This bothered him and he asked the Lord about it.

The Lord replied: “My son, my precious child, those were the time when I arranged for your car to break down or for your passport to be stolen.”

The man looked aggrieved, so the Lord continued:

“Well I had to do something. This sandy waste was supposed to be a fertile valley!”

J.J. Bimson - Trinity College (with apologies to Mary Stevenson)

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My brother’s band - Members of the Public - have released their first commercial song available to download straight from the record label:

http://www.shiftydisco.co.uk/
Why not check them out and have a download?

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Since I last wrote - which was a long time ago I’ll admit - lots has changed.

I was just finishing my training as a Baptist Minister when I decided to transfer into the Church of England as a vicar - the first person to do so at this stage in the training process since it began in the 1500s.

I’ve been placed in a church in Soundwell, Bristol called St Stephen’s and things there are going well. Lots of opportunities for outreach into the community and a steep learning curve in Anglican practice and tradition.

All we’ve got to decide now is where to serve my curacy for the next 3-4 years…

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Now that we’ve got used to suburban living we’ve all found that we’re enjoying it! Amalie likes having stairs to learn to fall down and a garden to get dirty in, Alison has relished the chance to put all of my clutter in the loft and I’ve particularly enjoyed having a garage to do man things in. It’s true to say I haven’t done anything particularly manly in there except organise and then reorganise it all a few times but it gives me a greater feeling of solidarity with the rest of my gender to have it there waiting.

On a real positive side we’ve also had the chance to get to know some of our neighbours - something that’s always harder to do when everyone is living transient lives in rented flats. I’ve realised that I was always a bit scornful of suburban estates but have now come to appreciate them more. You can always park your car, you get to recognise people as you walk around and there’s a much greater sense of community. I think Jesus would have made the most of these opportunities to get to know the people around him. While we don’t know for certain how long we’ll be living here we’re trying to do the same. Who knows what effect living round the corner from the Chapmans will have on somebody…

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On December 13th we left the squalid conditions of our fetid basement flat in Clifton and moved out of town to suburbia.  With the highest proportion of people aged over 65 and the highest proportion aged under 5 in Bristol living within 2 square miles of our house you can be assured of some pretty kicking night life.  It’s a real party place!  On the plus side, we now have a much bigger house with gardens and, most excitingly, bags of storage space.

To maintain the general image of suburbia we also changed our car.  You probably know that I’ve wanted a Volvo estate for ages so imagine my joy to find a 1996 maroon version in the garage at the end of our road.  One doesn’t normally trade in their car for an older model with more miles on the clock but we thought we’d take the chance!

At just over 16ft long with a vicious looking tow bar on the back and heated seats to keep the bum warm, ‘Capability’ - as we’ve affectionately named him - is very much in keeping with the area.  I am now one of those annoying drivers who drives along with his flat cap and pipe at 28 mph with a queue of cars behind me.  Perhaps the most amusing thing about Capability is watching Alison try to park him!

I’ll post a photo of him soon…

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If you think you’ve had a bad day check out some of the pictures and videos on the link below…

http://oopslist.com/ 

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“A philosopher,” said the theologian, “is like a blind man in a darkened room looking for a black cat that isn’t there.”

“That’s right,” the philosopher replied, “and if he were a theologian, he’d find it.”

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Flying Rocks!

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Why is buying a car such a hassle?

In the last 6 months I’ve been offered a free second hand Volvo estate - only to find out that it won’t ever be a car that’s capable of being on the road again as the engine has died and quite literally it has been gored by a bull which escaped from a field.

Then I was offered a very nice deal on a Saab 9-5 which was being sold by a friend at college.  This time it turned out that the nice deal was going to become a very expensive deal because Saab wanted to charge £790 +vat for a pre-purchase service!

Today I was visiting a friend and saw the car I would really like - an old model Volvo V70 Estate.  It was parked outside my friend’s house and belonged to his neighbour.  Thinking this was too good an opportunity to lose I knocked on the neighbour’s door and asked if he was thinking of selling his car?  The answer - yes he is.  He’s going to call me later in the week with a price and to arrange a test drive.

So will this work out or is it too good to be true?  Probably but we’ll see…

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