Market Prayer Vigil

On Wednesday the High Street reopened and people were allowed to walk past the site of last week's fire. We spent about an hour walking around the affected area and through the markets that weren't burned, talking with traders and praying. Kathy met one of the shop-owners who's clothing store was destroyed. She had been praying that God would bring hope, and they ended up talking for a while about his love of Camden and his desire to rebuild.
It's clear that the fire has deeply impacted the traders who lost their shops. We've decided to spend a few minutes each day praying at the site of the fire, and I've e-mailed a few friends to come and hold a short prayer vigil at the site this coming Saturday. If anyone in Camden is interested in joining us, leave a comment and I'll get in touch with the details.

Camden Fire

A large fire broke out earlier this evening, about two blocks from our house. From what we could tell, it looked like one of the six markets in Camden was burned, along with a number of high street shops and the Hawley Arms pub. They've got the whole area blocked off, so we should be able to tell more tomorrow. Here's a shot looking back up the canal towards the fire.

[update] Tim is correct, everything we've heard is that nobody was seriously injured. It's past midnight, and there's still a good bit of smoke, but no more flames visible, and several trucks have started to leave the scene. MSN has the story here, plus a nice little description of the Camden we know and love.

Cyber Wallet

I've made a few improvements with my second wallet, including adding a change section in the middle and using plastic that is a bit more flexible. I've also managed to incorporate the company logo from the bag I used.

Recycled Plastic Wallet

My old wallet bit the dust several months ago, but I've continued to use it out of laziness and cheapness. Well, I'll admit the 'cheapness' hasn't changed, but I have done something about getting a new wallet. I saw on Amazon this cool Duct Tape Wallet. Which gave me the idea to make a wallet out of stuff in my house. I realized that if I ironed old plastic grocery bags at the right temperature, I could get flat, flexible, and strong plastic sheets, that I could then melt together to make a wallet. Here's the first prototype. If anybody wants to help test and refine them, drop me a comment and I'll make you one.

Gingerbread and Beef

This morning we headed down to Shannon Hopkins' flat for some holiday baking. The Jones family was down from Orkney, and they make a gingerbread house every year at Christmas. We made the dough last night and refrigerated it. By the time we arrived, Samuel had the blueprints drawn up and ready to go. The only complication?
The Joneses had brought a MASSIVE rib roast that needed to be cooked as well. So we had to juggle racks of building materials around pots of vegetables in the oven, with one eye always on that roast, patiently waiting its turn. Andrew explained to me that they'd been saving this roast for about seven months, as it was part of the half-cow they purchased from their neighbor in the spring.
In the end, the cookies got baked and the roast had its turn. The gingerbread house went up, along with my addition: an out-house around the back. Then we feasted, first on meat, then on the house. They had a great rule for the kids: if you eat a sweet, you have to eat the gingerbread underneath it too!
We do have a few pictures, I'll see if I can get them up tomorrow.

Random Pics

I've been meaning to take some of the pictures off my camera phone and put them up here, but keep forgetting. Anyway, here they are, some are quite old. One is a fireplace built out of organic vegetables from our weekly delivery. Another is yours truly dressed as Edgar Allen Poe for a recent fancy dress party. Finally, there's a shot from the blues jam that happens every week across the street - some American visitors of our teammates were making a guest appearance with a friend of mine who's a regular at the jams.

Winter Wonderland

Took the girls to the Winter Wonderland today at Hyde Park, to celebrate the last day of school before the holiday break. They saw Father Christmas, and Andi told him she wants a reindeer for Christmas! It was bitter cold so we didn't stay too long. They watched people ice skating for a while, and said they want to try it sometime, so I think we might make that an activity for one of their days off.

Climbing Christmas Dinner

Last night was my last climbing wall session of the year. There was a dinner planned for members of the climbing club, and about 10 of us braved the freezing temperatures for 2 hrs of climbing before heading off to dinner.
Freezing, you ask? At an indoor rock wall? Yes, it was about 32 F last night, thanks to the architects who decided to put netting instead of windows along the top of the three glass walls that surround the climbing surface. It's basically a covered outdoor wall, even though it's almost entirely enclosed.
Anyway, after some good climbing, we headed off to the local Indian restaurant for vegetarian starters and good spicy chicken and rice to warm us up. I connected really well with another climber who has kids, and we talked for a while about being dads. Before we knew it, midnight arrived and the restaurant chucked us out; but a good time was had by all, and I finally feel like after a year of climbing and not really meeting anyone, I'm getting to connect to some of the other guys at the wall.

Shelter Art Show

Thursday night was the opening of the Shelter art exhibition at St Michael’s church. Shelter was conceived as a way to bring together our artist friends from the market and help raise money for the cold weather shelter we’re involved in. Artists submitted pieces on the theme of shelter (some stuck closer to the theme than others). They will donate a portion of each sale to the cold weather shelter.
We had been running around like crazy for the last week picking up art, fixing lights at the appropriate angle, and hanging pieces. It was great fun and hard work, culminating in our opening night.
A good number of people came to the opening, mostly friends and invitees of the artists. Somer and Kathy kept the mulled wine flowing all night, which helped compensate for the cold in the building (it was warmer outside than it was inside, as St. Michael’s can't afford to turn on the heat).
So why did we do something like this? Aside from the obvious answer that it takes money to run the cold weather shelter, and this is one way to raise money, there's a bigger picture. Our vision for bringing people close to God who wouldn't ordinarily set foot in a traditional church means that we look for ways to include them in projects that are close to God's heart. God loves art, he loves artists, and he loves the weak and needy in Camden. This show brings those things together, and does it in a beautiful building that has been used to worship God for over 100 years. We want to help people experience God as they rub shoulders with his people and participate in his mission to shelter the homeless. And we hope that they have helped us better to know the shelter that God provides us as they've expressed the theme in their paintings, photographs, and sculptures.

Candles

Tonight after dinner we finished a project we had started last night. We have been burning lots of candles to brighten up the apartment during the long dark hours, and we had a few that had burned out their wick but left a lot of wax. So, I made candles with the girls. We started last night, using scraps of wool yarn for wicks, but I discovered later that wool does not burn very well. So we started over tonight with cotton wicks, which work quite well. Here are two of the finished products.

Thanksgiving

Yes, I know it's a week late, but our Thanksgiving was so much fun, it's taken us all weekend to recover, and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it. So, our second Thanksgiving in Camden looked like this:
Somer's parents were here for a visit, so they walked the girls to school in the AM. We decided to get them out of school early so they could participate in the rest of the day with us, so at noon we all walked over to the school and got them. Then it was off to lunch at our favorite cheap place: McDonalds. I think six of us ate for about £15, which I'm pretty sure you can't even do in America anymore. Then it was off to:
Regents Park Turkey Bowl I
At 2 o'clock, we kicked off a game of American football with about 10 other guys (half of whom had never played before). It was incredible fun - people were laughing, diving in the mud, catching touchdown passes. It was great to see so many spectators as well. It didn't hurt that my team won by 6 touchdowns.
We capped the evening off with Turkey dinner at our place for 18. Having our friends celebrate with us was really special, and added to the feeling of being thankful, since we are so grateful for their friendship.

Theft of the root vegetables

I never realized how many different kinds of root vegetables there are. Americans generally eat two kinds: potatoes and carrots; and radishes if you're really adventurous. We've been getting an assortment of veggies delivered to our house each week, mostly because it's cheaper than buying them at the store. As it's getting cold, most of them have been roots of various types: potatoes and carrots, of course, but also swede, beetroot, celery root, parsnip. The swede and celery root both looked like old deflated basketballs that had been left buried for a while.

Anyway, this morning we woke to a phone call from the company that delivers the box to say that after they had delivered it, someone stole it - somebody else in our building also gets a box and had called them. Hope they enjoy - maybe they'll know better than us what to do with all those roots.

A night in

Tonight I'm experiencing something I rarely have since moving here. I'm having a night in. Somer's down at 55 with a few other women for the first night of their knitting club, and I've just put the girls to bed. Pretty strange feeling, actually. Not sure what I'll do...maybe a little Family Guy. Or maybe something a bit more productive.

Weekend - Art and the Heath

We went to Hampstead Heath yesterday for a leaf-hunt. The girls collected leaves from different kinds of trees, and we brought them back to do rubbings, which we made into a leaf book. Andi says that I should also write about our lunch: we went to a burger place on the way up there. Below are a few pics. Today I'm meeting with an artist about an art show we're putting on in December. We're trying to gather local artists to sell some of their works to benefit the cold weather shelter in Camden, and this guy is willing to help us.

Conga Police

I was down at the market today, having a jacket potato from the potato guys (true, that's not their real name, but that's what I call them. They're two young guys trying to make a go of it by selling potatoes with anything you could want on top: sausages, chili, mushrooms, tuna, coleslaw, whatever). Anyway, I was chatting to them and

eating my lunch, when this appeared in front of me:

Quite strange, actually. I think it was some sort of publicity appearance for the local news. Something about putting more officers on the streets. I suppose I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I certainly feel safer when I'm walking the girls home from school and there's a pair of officers nearby; but at the same time, I don't see how the council could possibly ever put enough officers around to curb the drug trade and the disorderly weekend behavior. They just end up pushing the dealers to different areas or making them wait until the officers go off duty. Maybe their hope is to simply push undesirable behavior into areas and times when most people who aren't involved in such things wouldn't be around. Which is an interesting way of looking at policing that I'd never thought about. Instead of trying to 'catch the bad guys' - you just hold them at bay long enough for ordinary people to finish their business, then you let them roam free.

But who knows? I just live here, and probably the police are doing a whole lot more than I realize. In any case, I certainly appreciate having them around; they've got a tough job, no matter how many of them there are.

Turn Left, or Fly

We live smack in the middle of two supermarkets. OK, that didn't sound right - we don't actually live inside the supermarkets; let's try that again: Our flat is equidistant from the two local supermarkets. One is a four minute walk to the left. The other is a four minute walk to the right. For some reason, we always go to the one to the right. Probably because the store is a little bit nicer, more spacious, a little better quality meats, etc.

Why am I rambling thus? Because our regular supermarket has closed down for the week while they renovate it. So what was my initial reaction? It wasn't "Oh well, I guess we'll shop at the other store". It was "Oh no, what are we going to do? Maybe we should go on vacation until they finish the work".

As it happens, the week coincides with half-term, so the girls are out of school, and we could in theory go away. But that's not the point. Sometimes we are able to look at a problem and see the easiest and most obvious solution (in this case Turn Left!); while other times we tend to fixate on a particular solution that may be complicated, costly, and a bit irrational (I actually started to look for cheap flights to Prague...but we couldn't find any).

Jesus is Risen

This time last year, our 'team' in Camden consisted of Somer, Me, and the girls. We were sitting on the floor, eating meals off our suitcases, and feeling very much alone.

Tonight, one year on, eight of us gathered in our home to worship God. Two more couples - one English, one American - and a young Englishman joined us. We have been in the middle of planning the course of our ministry here in Camden, and making time to worship Jesus was a natural extension of that. We were asked to prepare for the meetings by reading through the book of Acts, and I noticed just how many times the message of the early church focussed on the resurrection of Jesus. "Jesus is Risen" is the main cry of his people - one that still shapes all of life for us.

Love's Object

Saw a really great film given to me by one of my friends who lives in Romania. I don't even know what it's called - it was a documentary of Jacques Derrida. This American film crew basically followed Derrida around for a bit, filming lectures, a visit to Mandela's prison cell, and a surprisingly large number of meals (Derrida eats toast with butter and jam, microwaved eggplant, prawn crisps with champaign, and some other random things).
Anyway, the great bit was when the director asks him to talk about love. First he rants about how that's not a question, he can't possibly say anything about love, and that they should think of a question to ask him. But then he says this (I'm paraphrasing):
The question, when you love someone, is 'Do you love them as a person, or do you love something about them?' Because if you love them as a person, as a singular entity, then that love is permanent, whereas when you love them for something - this is much more temporary. The question is, do you love someone or something? And then he says that the reason most people stop loving someone is because they have loved something about that person, and that thing has changed.
I shared these thoughts today with some guys at a breakfast down in Waterloo, and then told the story of Hosea from the Bible. God asks Hosea to marry a prostitute, and after she runs off, God tells Hosea to buy her back again. Then God says "This is how I love my people".

Surprise Party

Somer's birthday was yesterday. Last year, we spent her birthday moving to London from the States, so I wanted to give her a better day this year. We did the usual family stuff - girls and I made breakfast, we opened presents in the afternoon after the girls got home from school (oh yeah, it was also the first day of school yesterday), and we went to dinner at a BBQ restaurant. But what Somer didn't know was that I had also arranged to have our friends waiting in our flat when we got home! The good old surprise party.
It went really well - I only had to lie to her once all day (I got a phone call from the bakery that made her gourmet cupcakes, asking when I was coming to pick them up). The last person left at quarter past midnight - quite a party for someone who doesn't like to stay up late.

Fleet Street

Last Thursday one of my journalist friends invited me on a guided tour of the pubs of Fleet Street. Her boss, the editor of a popular weekly magazine, was taking a group from pub to pub, telling stories of journalistic feats from days gone by. Fleet Street, if you don't know, was home to many British newspapers until very recently.
We stopped at one pub in the shadow of St. Bride's church, the location of the first printing press in Britain back in 1500. It's known as the journalists' church, and interestingly enough, is also the church where the parents of America's first European-born child were wed, in 1587.
Some of our discussion centered around the fact that Fleet Street grew up where it did (just outside the western gates of the old city of London) because of the concentration of religious establishments in that location. When mass printing first came to England, the main users of the printing press were monks, printing material for priests and other religious scholars. Over the years, newspapers sprang up around the same location, making use of the monks' technology and the proximity of the king's revenue service, which had to stamp each piece of printed material.