billy bragg - i keep faith...

...picking up the theme of faith from that last post...

winter wonderland

this morning, it was beautiful. a flat grey fogged-out sky and every tree and bush and railing iced with rime and hoarfrost. kids were stood under a tree in the school playground, throwing a football up into the branches and dancing about in the cloudy shower of snowgrain that it was bringing down. in the garden there were bits of cobweb hanging on the washing line and fence panels, gently flexing in the breeze like little bendy icicles... and everything was still, the only sound was the crackle and rustle of things thawing.

meantime, i saw this invitation on ian's blog, and loved it - "...explore the possibility that faith is stepping into the stream of what God is already doing. That faith is not primarily about our faith in God, but about God's faith in us.... "

on the desk of late...

recently drawn...

decorating...

we're decorating the dining room. it's a job that's long overdue, and we've been prompted into action by the mess that my office chair has been making of the floorboards in here since i've been working from the dining table (i've outgrown my boxroom/office space, and the extension's not finished yet...)

on the wall in the dining room there's a mirror. it's big, oval and heavy, and at the moment it's sat under the dining table while we paint. there's some gilded detail that's missing in places and some chain on the back for hanging it. when we put it up in here for the first time i spent a while with the pliers and a bradawl removing some links to get the length right. i put a screw into the wall to hang it on because we were worried that picture hooks wouldn't take it's weight. it's a great mirror.

it used to belong to my aunty gwen. she was a fantastic woman, actually my great aunt - my mum's, mum's sister. i have really fond memories of her, i think that she really enjoyed having me and my brother around when we were young. my memories are all of her playing about, being a bit daft, making us laugh.

when i think about me aunty gwen, i think of my nan too. i don't think about them enough. i owe them so much. mum, dad - you too.

that's why it's good to have objects like the mirror - things that keep me in touch with where i'm from.



meanwhile - i have a book that you can go buy here

and i've also finally sorted out a flickr account for meself, so you can now be bored witless by our holiday photos here
enjoy!

i really, really want to see...

...this

[...nose still very much to the grindstone...]

... for some reason i'm getting quite a few of these more complicated 'where's wally'-type images to do at the moment...