Kal, at TraumaQueen, is always a good read and his latest post is no different. It's a short but powerful commentary on gang culture in Edinburgh. Go and read it!

Or in other words, lots of links to people who are better at writing well informed articles than me!

Allie, a lambeth steward, has photos of a blindfolded Archbishop of Canterbury and dispels some rumours about fences, lanyards, and the Bishop of New Hampshire.

Meanwhile Ruth Gledhill doubtless creates some more...

Bishop David Chillingworth has a bedroom furniture situation, but has still found time to meet with the motley crew from the Provincial Youth Network and write about his encounters with fellow Bishops.

On the Church Times blog, Pat Ashworth has a powerful report of the words of the wife of the Archbishop of Sudan, Daburah Abuk Atem Mading, and Linda Andrea Apaya Amidi, wife of the Bishop of Lainya.

Bishop Mark Strange (Moray, Ross and Caithness) has been spotted by Penny at Lambeth Letters.

Bishop Gene Robinson (New Hampshire) has a few words for those who have called for his resignation: "Does ANYONE think that if I resigned, this issue would go away?! I could be hit by a big, British, doubledecker bus today, and it would not change the fact that there are faithful, able and gifted gay and lesbian priests of this Episcopal Church who are known and loved for what they bring to ordained ministry, who will before long be recognized with a nomination for the episcopate...and one of them will be elected. Not because they are gay or lesbian, but because the people who elect them recognize their gifts for ministry in that particular diocese."

The first draft of my essay is all done, I finished it on Sunday. I'm now going back through it to add in all my references, polish it up and put in a few more examples. I can do that in 6 days I think!

Pub on Friday night was good, lots of banter with the drinking society. No Rob though, he's off sunning himself somewhere exciting. I'm very jealous. Friday night was followed by a Saturday meeting for Glenalmond leaders, followed by the PYN meeting which, thankfully I escaped. Had a nice afternoon in Beanscene with Tom and Emma then off home to finish off the essay of woe (now woo, since it's pretty much done).

Last week I also booked tickets to London for the end of March for a super-amazing cheap price (under £35). Sweet. Think that is all for now, back to the essay.

Well I would just like to say that I haven't been ignoring this because I have nothing to say. I have a whole lot to write about Christmas/New Year etc. In fact I was really busy. The problem is, I'm still really busy so I haven't had time to write it all down.

Briefly, Christmas was fun, the whole family were at our house for Christmas day. This lead to the usual fight for somewhere to sleep although this year not everybody stayed so I ended up on a bed (!), in - wait for it - a room with a door! A vast improvement on last year.

I came back through to Edinburgh on the 28th and Nic arrived that evening. We went to see Mum and Dad, went to the beach (twice, but different beaches), went to the Night Afore event on George Street with Jamie and a couple of his friends, went to Jamie's flat for Hogmanay (great fun), nearly got blown away on Regent Road on the way to Jamie's flat, helped out at the service at St. John's on New Years Day, went ice skating in the gardens and then drove down to London on the 3rd.

London was great fun. I got to indulge my not-so-inner geek at the Science Museum, explore Dulwich park (and take lots of photos of geese...) and meet lots of people, including Nic's choir. On the train journey back up to Edinburgh on the 7th I even managed to get lots of reading done for my essay, which is thereason I'm still so busy. I have a 5000 word Review Essay due in at the end of the month and there is a lot of information to go into it. It's quite hard filtering out the things I can afford to avoid while not missing out anything glaringly obvious and making myself look like a right idiot!

The title, in case anyone is remotely interested, is The Role Of Chromosomal Factors In Antibiotic Resistance.
It is really interesting but I really need to start writing it today so what I'm doing writing here instead I'm not sure.

Oh and I really did take loads of pictures of geese. An example is below, along with a picture of one of the crazy flying machines from the Night Afore event and a photo of Watson and Crick's original model of DNA! I was really excited by that...yes, I know...

I'm off to Iona for a few days, can't wait! Haven't packed yet though, 2 hours and counting...

I'm back, and have gone straight into my two jobs. One at the Royal College (still!) and one at St. John's for the Festival of Spirituality and Peace. This means I am quite tired but at least I enjoy the evening job. 

Camp was fun, lots of late nights and early mornings, which some of us deal with better than others I think!

A brief summary of things I should have said to people last week but didn't.

Happy (belated) birthday noir_guitarist, congratulations on your baptism Andy, congratulations on your confirmations Andy, scottishcabbage and markadm, have fun at camp Gareth and David.

I think that is everything.

I'm off to the SEC youth camp this afternoon. I never thought I would be ready in time, after the big drama that happened last night! In a nutshell, for a series of complicated reasons, yours truly was on a bus and left keys, purse, phone and pen drive behind. Yes, I know, what a stupid thing to do. However, in the traditions of storytelling, they all lived happily ever after, as everything was handed in, intact! Not before I had overzealously cancelled my bank card, however, for the account with practically all my wages in it. It's a good job I am going away actually, otherwise I would probably have starved.

Anyway, I'll be back in a week. Missing you already!

P.S. Don't forget about this.

Yes and not before time. A list of the bands wot I seen. And stuff.

Saturday

1. El Presidente - Really good. Didn't know much of their music but really enjoyed it.
2. Wolfmother - Loud and amazing!
3. Maximo Park - Alright. Claire loves them though.
4. Placebo - Brilliant, always wanted to see them. Didn't realise how small he is. They didn't play Pure Morning though, my favourite song.
5. Kaiser Chiefs - I was surprised how good they were, they put on a good show. I have always been a bit ambivalent towards them but I enjoyed myself.
6. Goldfrapp - Sadly only played half an hour since Alison had a throat infection, but they were great. Stunning dancers as well.
7. Red Hot Chili Peppers - The best show I have seen them do (out of 4). A good mix of old and new songs and I knew the words to every one. Sad isn't it...

Sunday

1. The Upper Room - Nothing special, but quite entertaining.
2. Fightstar - I really like Fightstar so I enjoyed this a lot. Claire didn't. Mwahahaha! Gets her back for Maximo Park.
3. The Proclaimers - Genius.
4. Paulo Nutini - Short (10 minutes) but sweet wee acoustic set.
5. The Magic Numbers - Perfect gentle mid-afternoon music.
6. We Are Scientists - Love the name, enjoyed the music.
7. Dirty Pretty Things - Another surprise, much better than the Libertines who I think were massively overrated. I saw them two years ago at T and left half way through the set because I was bored.
8. Feeder - Pretty entertaining, although I got sunburnt.
9. The Automatic - The tent was packed. A classic case of a band getting much bigger between getting booked and playing the festival. Though actually seeing them  might get Monster out of my head, I was sadly mistaken. They were  good though.
10. The Who - Legends
    

In other news, I dragged Claire round EVERY charity tent, met Billy Boyd and bought a duck. Not a real one. I called him What. Nobody got the joke. Never mind...

Pirates of the Carribean is amazing - thank you Ian!

T in the Park this weekend!

Have I packed?...hmmmm, no.

Am I at work? Yes

Oops.

Also going to miss the World Cup final. So annoying.