Christmas '08

It’s been a long time – I now I know I know. Sorry. It’s been a tough time but getting better.

We’ve settled in and are enjoying life here. The big challenge has been that both of us have been unemployed for over 3 months now and so we’ve really had to try to live very frugally – not much going out and no frills and extras – a complete difference to life in Dubai!

However the good news is that I got a job! I am going to be senior facilities manager on the Luton Borough Council Building Schools for the Future Project. It is only 10 minutes from home, which is a complete blessing. Unfortunately it doesn’t pay enough for us to live, so Janene’s still going to have to find a job (whether drawing from home or working for somebody). Still though, it’s reasonable.

Christmas is lean – what they’re calling a “credit crunch Christmas” over here. The big stores are reporting either no growth in sales or losses. Believe it or not, Woolworths has actually gone under. They have found no one to buy the company so they’re closing the stores and making the staff redundant. Redundancies are the name of the game here, with my industry shedding thousands of jobs. Thank God for my job with the Borough!

The weather has been cold for the past couple of weeks – around the 0 – 3o mark but it has warmed up the last 2 days to the 12o mark. No white Christmas for us this year but at least crisp and cold. We’re really enjoying that!

We have both my and J’s mothers here at the moment. This has its ups and downs but it’s good that there’s family around for Christmas. Especially for the kids – they love having the grannies around.

Both Greg & Casey have done really well at school. Both have had favourable feedback from their teachers and both were on in the top 3 of the merits list for their respective classes. They have both fitted in, made friends and are enjoying it.

Congratulations to Chris & Carol Mason on the birth of Ethan on the 18th. May he bring you much joy. And learn to play all those guitars. How many is it now?

According to reports from various people in Dubai, the bubble if not yet actually bursting, has developed a puncture with people unable to get mortgages, investors unable to sell investment properties and the government running out of money. Developments have been put on hold and the property and FM companies have begun retrenching. Looks like we escaped in the nick of time.

I have developed a taste for both English beer and mulled wine (a spiced seasonal drink). Yes yes I can hear all you righteous folks tut-tutting and clucking away – y’all’ll just have to live with it. It’s the English way, tha’ knaws!

And talking about righteous, we’re still looking for a good church to settle in. We’ve been going mainly to the Vineyard. It’s a nice church but the teaching is not hugely exciting and the worship is lacking in anointing. The musicians are all excellent though – all professional standard – and the kids seem to like the youth. I’ve got involved in the team leading something at the church called Time Out – a time once a month where people come and sit quietly in God’s presence or paint or write poetry or sing worship or lie down or prophesy or whatever. The idea is to listen to and fellowship with God and anything goes (in good order and subject to leadership, of course – one of the pastors leads it). The fact that we always start off with bacon rolls is also not entirely unwelcome.

This has been probably our most difficult year as a family to date and there’s no telling if the next will be a huge improvement. The hope is that it will be but no matter what happens, we know we can trust in God to be our supply and our strength. We don’t yet know what God intends for us in terms of ministry but we do know that we aren’t just here to get jobs and work until we retire. We believe God has a purpose for us being here – we just need to know what it is!

So, in closing, and following a tradition I started last year, here are some words of wisdom for the season:

1. Sometimes it’s easier to cook a turkey roll than a whole turkey – after all, it’s still turkey, it cooks quicker, fits in the oven and is easier to carve.
2. Don’t buy champagne named after a gay lumberjack (remember the Andre, Carol H!)
3. Don’t tell an English shop assistant (or any English person for that matter) that you need a pair of pants. Over here, pants are underwear and you will get a funny look. Rather ask for trousers. Especially don’t ask for tracksuit pants – the picture this will create in the Englishman’s mind is a pair of underpants made from tracksuit material. It’s perfectly OK to ask for a tracksuit but if you only want the lower half, these are called jogging bottoms (nogal!)
4. If you invite English people around for “tea”, hungry people will descend upon your home expecting what we know as supper or dinner! People should be invited for A CUP OF tea.
5. Never order a toasted chicken mayo sandwich. You will be told by a highly health and safety trained (but otherwise wholly unskilled semi-literate Romanian/Polish/Czech) server that mayonnaise may not be reheated because it contains egg, sir. Instead, you have to order a “chicken toastie” with separate mayo – not the same but as close as you’re going to get in the UK nanny state!
6. If you eat too much on Christmas Day, the following may ensue:

"... I called my friend Andy Sable, gastroenteritis, to make an
appointment for a colonoscopy.

A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a colour diagram of the
colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one
point passing briefly through Minneapolis. Then Andy explained the
colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient
manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he
said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE
17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!' I left Andy's office with some written
instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which
comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss
MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never
allow it to fall into the hands of America 's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.
Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In
accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day;
all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less
flavour. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets
of powder together in a one-litre plastic jug, which you then fill with
lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a litre is
about 32 gallons.) Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes
about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like
a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.
The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great
sense of humour, state that after you drink it, 'a loose watery bowel
movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump
off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here,
but: have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the
MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you
wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much
confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything.
And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink
another litre of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your
bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have
not even eaten yet. After an action-packed evening, I finally got to
sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very
nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been
experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was
thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend
for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood
and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led
me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a
little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those
hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you
put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually
naked. Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left
hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I
was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in
their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this,
but then I wondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to
make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose
Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room,
where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anaesthesiologist. I did not
see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there
somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over
on my left side, and the anaesthesiologist began hooking something up to
the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I
realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy
that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular
procedure, 'Dancing Queen' has to be the least appropriate. 'You want me
to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me. 'Ha-ha,' I said.
And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a
decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to
tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling
'Dancing Queen, Feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I
was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood. Andy was
looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt
even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my
colon had passed with flying colours. I have never been prouder of an
internal organ!


Have fun, take care, drive safe, live, love and laugh.