AboutLife

After flipping his hydrofoil, Jesus quickly leaves the scene before his father finds out.

... is how you pronounce the World Federation of Flying Discs. My first weeks holiday was in Vancouver to watch my brother play for Ireland at the World Ultimate and Guts Championships. Now I may have mentioned ultimate (frisbee) before but you'll be wondering what guts is. Well, basically it's two teams who throw discs as hard as they can and in such a way as to not be caught by the opposition. It's fun too watch but it's hard to take it seriously as a team sport.

I have to admit that I have been away for a while as, simply, I can hardly deny it. However, I do have a pretty good excuse for the past 5 weeks. What I would normally do now is write a long piece that explains my absence quickly followed by another noticeable break in my blogging.

So, this time I'm going to try and write regular short posts that build up a picture of what has been happening. So, today 'Burgurlary: why it keeps you up all night'

I grew up in a very well off family, though sheltered from that reality. We thought that annual skiing trips and pretty large homes were the norm. We would talk of the wealthy as others, people from another, elitest class. My father was the basis for both sides of the story - he earned quite a lot while never baulking at the idea of buying second hand cars and Sainsburys economy.

Since leaving home I have had to come to terms with this. In some ways I have been fortunate to do so in England where I can play the relative pauper with my lowly thoughts and 'country' and accent. But at times I just can't get away from the fact that I'm a bit posh. This is what I had for lunch:

Actually, what the company does. Quite a few people have never heard of Arup - they tend to be non-engineers which isn't overly surprising.

Anyway, the chances are that you will have seen what it does. Here's a quick blast.

Sydney Opera House
The Gherkin
The Millennium Bridge (laugh if you want to but we did also fix it)

That's just a taste as apparently at any given time we're working on more than 10,000 project. Personally I'm on about 5 none of which are famous.

It's been a while since I put finger to keyboard to blog. As a simple excuse I'm going to blame sport with the European Championships, Wimbledon and ultimate taking up much of my free time. It has but I probably could have blogged in that time.

In terms of interest, there hasn't been a great deal happening. 2 weeks ago I went on a stag weekend up in the Peak District. On the Saturday we did loads of mountain biking and then did a touch of skiing in Sheffield on the Sunday. It was a lot of fun and I got the chance to catch up with friends from HTB that I hadn't seen in quite a while.

Hi guys

Sorry for not posting recently but I'm still around, reading your posts from time to time (I never expected Latin to get so much attention). It has been a strange 3 weeks since the death of my uncle. I didn't really know how to react. As my uncle and his family are out in Bangkok my Mum and gran went out but the rest of us stayed at home. I've still to see any of the family and I still think that I'm struggling to believe that it actually happening.

My uncle died today. It's all a bit numbing as he was only 43.

Could you please pray for his wife and two young kids;
my grandparents as losing a child is as hard a thing to take as possible; his brother and two sisters who are having to come to terms with losing the youngest of them.

Thanks

Matthew

Right, this isn't a blurb on all the things that I don't do or don't do enough. This is all about the things that I don't recognise that I do. If you ask me what I did today I'll probably say that I went to work and then homegroup (for the first time in ages). These are the things that I focus on and use to define my day and, if I'm honest, myself.

Yet there are so many other things that I do that I don't 'mean to do', they 'just happen naturally.' Like make someone smile, or open a door, or make way for someone, or to talk to someone etc. I don't really recognise any of this stuff. I don't take it seriously.

...this is what I will here (unless it is on silent)