Fishing the River Wye today

Had a fantastic day fishing the Wye today. Only the second time that I’ve ever fished the river and both times I’ve caught great Barbel. This one is my new PB at 8lb 11oz. It was a very lean fish but had beautiful colouring and fought like a tiger!

Back on the Wye on the 12th March just before the season ends… can’t wait!

More photos on Flickr…

Half Marathon Training – Session 2

Out for my second run tonight – about 3 miles nice and easy. Felt a lot easier than the previous run on Sunday but my achilles was sore for the first part of the run – not a new twinge but seemed to ease as I got into it. I really hope that I can stay injury free this year… and lose a bit of weight!

My fitness is good, not having to think about the breathing – just need to make sure that my legs learn to take a pounding again. Following a really helpful running plan (which I actually intend to stick to this year).

Best song on the Ipod (shuffle) – “Peaches” by the Presidents of the United States of America

Next run is Thursday – probably same route again. All feels so easy at the moment… I’m being lulled into a false sense of security.

Too true 2

With a stop light, green means ‘go’ and yellow means ’slow down’. With a banana, however, it is quite the opposite. Yellow means ‘go’, green means ‘whoa, slow down’, and red means ‘where the heck did you get that banana?’

Mitch Hedburg

Too true

Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you’re a consultant.

Scott Adams

Half Marathon Training

Well I’ve paid my entrance fee now so that’s all the motivation I need to get started… May 10th here I come!

First run this morning for ages – only a 30min run but I REALLY felt it on the way back. I’ve got a training schedule to work to which I’m already a week behind… hmm. Just hopefully going to avoid injury which I’ve not managed to do the last 2 years.

I was great to get out again though.

Half Term Holidays

Always good to get away – we’ve just had a lovely few days in Port Isaac, Cornwall with friends. Great time hanging out on beaches, flying a powerkite for the first time, eating LOTS of great food and a cream tea. Held the top score on Bop It Extreme for about 2hrs too…

Didn’t really want to come back to Bristol to be honest, but do have to get an essay or two done ASAP. Unfortunately they don’t write themselves.

Been reading a really interesting book called “The Starfish and the Spider”. Talks about the power of organisations without obvious leadership, citing Alcoholics Anonymous amongst others of examples of these. Makes you really think about how we love control, power and recognition above real success… and also how getting rid of those things can mean that a cause can be realised much more quickly.

We always accomplish more when we don’t care who gets the credit.

Not going well

England losing – Cricket, Football and probably Rugby.

Wolves totally blowing promotion at the moment

Man Utd running away with the Premiership

The next thing will be West Brom staying up

At least I’m going fishing tomorrow…

David Attenborough and “Christian” hate mail

David Attenborough is a living British legend. I can’t think of a single person who might dislike him… until I read that he’s been getting hate mail from so-called “Christians” because he doesn’t constantly glorify God for creating the world.

A lot of people that I know find belief in God difficult… there are lots of difficult questions surrounding science, nature, the existence of God etc. However I passionately believe in a Creator. But alongside that I see a really broken world where sin hasn’t just messed us up but has seismically altered the make up of our planet including some of the other creatures (if not all of them) that inhabit it. This means that alongside the beauty we find pain. Alongside wonder we see trauma. In God’s creation we see a small boy with a worm eating into his eye…

Nevertheless there are three things in the Bible that are absolutely out of bounds for Christians – idolatry, immorality and HATRED. Yep, hatred. We are not to hate anyone. We are to love even our enemies (not that Attenborough is one of those anyway). But to send abusive mail to someone… that is absolutely disgusting. Please help me to understand why you are sending those letters rather than trying to engage with those who wrestle with it…

If you are going to send hate mail, please don’t call yourself a Christian when you do it. It makes it so much harder for those of us trying to represent Jesus elsewhere.

David… you are a legend. And I for one apologise for the hatemail that you’ve got from those calling themselves followers of Christ.

Who is responsible for the credit crunch?

The Times have identified THESE people as the reason we are in an economic downturn. (See link on the Delicious tool bar). Here’s who is really responsible…

Me.

I’m responsible for the economic downturn.

I’m responsible because I’m greedy.

I’m responsible because my lifestyle is about consumption – MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE

I’m responsible.

So are you.

Proper Snow

We’ve had about 4inches here in Bristol.

Brilliant!!!!

Walking into college, I became 6 again – snowballs down my wife’s neck, snow angels, more snowballs…

Still got to sit in lectures looking at the snow outside though. Even more tragically – I don’t think I’ll be able to do any sledging.

Snow

Even in Bristol we’ve got snow (although not enough).

I wish my college would close tomorrow so I can travel to somewhere to sledge… although we are travelling to Cheltenham for a New Wine meeting – two years ago we had a New Wine meeting during a very heavy downfall… that cut off the entire of Gloucesteshire. Lets hope it doesn’t get that bad!! Is it just me or is anyone else finding it quite amusing that our entire country has gone into panic due to a couple of days of snow?

Best thing I’ve seen today is the numpty on BBC news claiming that we live in a “3rd world country” because there is snow that hasn’t melted and the traffic is busy.

Honestly…  If you lived in a 3rd world country you’d be living in the cold with no food, heating, water, transportation. Shall I go on? He didn’t seem concerned about those that are REALLY affected by this cold weather – the elderly, those unable to get to funerals etc… who cares if a school is shut – that would have been the highlight of my year.

Bring on some more…

Paul Birch

News story here

Tragically died from bone cancer aged only 46. Great player for Wolves and Villa.

First goal I ever saw Wolves score at Molineux was by him against Forest in the league cup.

You have to watch this…