Road kill

Sunset in Newcastle, County Down

Something is not quite right when you’re on holiday and you find pavements more interesting than the scenery.

Surreal Seaforde

Post one of several ‘what we did on our summer holidays’. Just indulge me – thanks.

One of my favourite places in Northern Ireland, or perhaps anywhere: the gardens of Seaforde House. I love it because I can’t think of a more surreal place to immerse myself in without paying through the nose to see the Making of Harry Potter (again).

Playing Out

This is worth a read: Town Mouse makes some observations about playing out / playing with the traffic up in Scotland…

Town Mouse

Cycling back from the pub this evening, early enough in the evening that there was still light in the sky (but still late enough in the summer that I had to have the dynamo on for the first time since about April), it was heartening to note that – in the right parts of Bigtown at least (by which I mean the wrong parts of Bigtown more generally speaking) – kids are still perfectly free range. There were kids on bikes, kids on scooters, kids kicking footballs, kids kicking their younger siblings and even kids sitting on the bollards in the middle of the traffic islands (this latter was a bit worrying as some of the bollards further up the road have had to be replaced by the kind that don’t mind being run over).

Why, on the whole, traffic bollards aren’t a brilliant place to sit

Of course, you…

View original post 222 more words

We are all Nazarenes

I’d started to write a post about going to the beach on our holiday here in intermittently sunny Northern Ireland, but my heart wasn’t in it. I could have written about the fantastic aviation display that happened here on our doorstep on Saturday, but it was hard not to see military aircraft without thinking of what’s happening in Gaza, Syria and Iraq. Then one article after another on Facebook – on Iraq especially – has taken residence under my skin.

My seriously subversive week

Mud-free camping this time

Every July we head off to New Wine in Somerset – a several-thousand-strong national gathering of Christians – for a week of camping, teaching, worship and not enough sleep. We always enjoy it, but this year was especially good due to a wonderfully unexpected element of subversiveness.