Tikhtak

The Church Mouse "eeks" about Down to Earth Project.

Thank you to The Church Mouse for advertising Down to Earth on its blog. DTE is an educational drama project raising awareness about Climate Change, which I have been taking around Cathedrals and Schools since January 2010. I set up Scene Change Theatre Company with my Colleague Mike North after being made redundant by CMS in October 09. While bookings have come in and the project has been really well received, in this time of recession I am continuing to work hard to get bookings for the Autumn term. Down to Earth is run in partnership with CMS and A Rocha UK and will continue to visit Schools, Cathedrals, Churches and Youth and Community Centres throughout 2010. You can follow the tour so far by clicking on the DTE blog

Who should I cheer for? - World Cup 2010

The World Development Movement have brought out a great website for the World Cup in South Africa called "Who should I cheer For?"  You can pitch countries against one another to see things like who spends the most on weapons or who gives the highest percentage of their GDP to poorer countries. I thought I would have a look at England v USA as that is our opening fixture. I was a little surprised by a few facts. For example people in the US are a lot happier than we are in England (not sure how they measure that one!) and the percentage of people chronically hungry in England is almost the same as in the US. To see who wins the overall game click on this link 

The Vicar of Baghdad at Holy Trinity Clapham

Last weekend we welcomed Canon Andrew White, aka "The Vicar of Baghdad" to both our morning and evening service. He is an unconventional person but is working in an unconventional place. He talked about how God had provided for their financial needs every month. But in October last year the money did not come in and all seemed lost! That was until the Church was blown up by a bomb. Since that time more money has come in than ever before and rebuilt the Church. He recommended it as a good way to get people giving more in the church and could arrange for it to happen through some of his contacts if we wanted!! Andrew serves in a church where the men are few because of the conflict but Angels are all around!! Its well worth a listen! You can see both his talks on the Holy Trinity Website.

Wenlock and Mandeville - The 2012 Mascots & My home town!

The names for the Olympic 2012 mascots have been revealed. The BBC website gives a pithy explanation of why they were chosen:

"The characters are named after the village of Much Wenlock in Shropshire - which hosted a precursor to the modern Olympic Games in the 19th Century - and the birthplace of the Paralympic Games, Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire". (BBC Website)

Much Wenlock is actually my home town and I grew up as a member of the Wenlock Olympian society and took part in a number of Wenlock games. Whenever I talked about where I was from I would always talk about Wenlock's connection to the Olympics, which was often met with suspicion. Not any more!

Check out the Wenlock Olympian society website and the 2012 mascot website find out more about Wenlock and Mandeville.

Down to Earth @ Liverpool Cathedral

Yesterday our Down to Earth environmental schools project went to Liverpool cathedral. I actually had a bit of time to kill so went down to Albert Docks before catching the train back to London. One of our scenes takes an  environmentally ungrateful gang to China to see how we are implicated in the pollution that is caused by industry there. As I was strolling around the docks I discovered a very interesting piece of history. It turns out the Liverpool has the oldest chinese community in Britain, which came into being through its trading as a port. In fact the Cathedral itself is right plumb in the middle of this area and a massive Chinese Arch has been built a stones throw away to mark this fact. Check out our write up from the day on our Down to Earth Blog and here are some pics of the day.

Today we voted for a change!

The question is will it be more of the same but in a different guise?I have to admit that I have become pretty cynical about the whole process but felt that I still should cast my vote. Each party should have been given the challenge to show us how they would have made the necessary cuts to deal with the debt we are in. Wouldn't that have been a "Fairer" guage for us the voters to then make a reasoned decision. Instead each party has only indicated to us a fraction of what they intend to cut and so we are left trying to read between the lines to make a decision as to who is best qualified to deal with it. That's better I have got that off my chest! Now lets see who will be hung!!