2009 was made possible, or made more fun, with help from the following:

And, for the record, some numbers:

• 16,500 miles in the car, fuelled by CoffeeNation and Werthers Originals (for the drivers!)
• 1,100 miles walking Monty the dog (almost all by Martha)
• 110 miles running (Jonathan), helped by Nike+, and music from the iPod
• Jonathan was reading 120 different blogs that averaged 1,500 posts a month between them.
• Jonathan wrote 85 posts on this blog, and a similar number on his work blog with a much larger readership

Happy New Year 2010 (photo credit: ayeb at deviantart)

“Aim at nothing, and you’re sure to hit it.”

With that quote in mind, we’ve been thinking about what we want to be working towards in 2010. We thought we’d write them down to help make us more aware of them. And why not share them here, too?

Martha’s aims are

• read 50 books (not counting books of the Bible!)
• lose 3 stone in weight
• establish Parish Nursing in the Whadoon/Priors/Lynworth parts of Cheltenham
• arrange a Reunion for the nurses she trained with
• become more creative in her Card-Making
• walk 10,000 steps a day
• rejoin the library and stop buying so many novels
• start doing some Running again (perhaps!).

Jonathan’s aims are

• spend more time praying
• be more creative: doing more design work for voluntary organisations, or learning some metalwork
• continue his running, and take part in another race or two
• cycle to work much more
• bring down his cholesterol level, which is way too high, despite exercise
• play the piano a lot more this year, particularly working on jazz
• find at least 10 geocaches
• get back to doing some more preaching in the next academic year
• read all of the New Testament, most of the Old Testament, plus at least 6 secular fiction and 6 non-fiction books (easy to do if I finish all the books I have started in the last few years, ahem)

Together we want to continue seeing more of the family, reorganise our study/office space at home, do some decoration in the house, and continue laughing more.

We’ll post again to see how we did at the end of the year …

Sam’s dedication saw the opportunity for another family gathering in Bristol. Martha, myself and my parents decided to make a weekend of it. We stayed together at 9 Princes Buildings B&B in Clifton, just down from the Avon Gorge Hotel, with similarly great views out over the Avon Gorge.

Our hosts, the Fullers, were charming, as was the house. With lots of thoughtful touches, and a great breakfast, the only possible thing to complain about was that the sherry waiting for us in the rooms was an Amontillado, not Croft Original.

We took their advice and went down to Hotwells and caught the ferry into the city centre, which was fun, and itself had some surprisingly good views:

We’ve had Maggie for 10 weeks now, and yesterday we measured her weight again as we do most weeks. (Thanks, MacDonalds Vets!) She’s now only 24kg, down from 31kg when we first knew her. That’s almost a quarter of her weight in just 10 weeks. Don’t try this at home, folks — or at least not without a vet on the case!

When we first got her (in footstool pose):

10 weeks later (in watchdog pose):

OK, not that dramatic from these pics, but she can now jog a bit, and also jump up to greet you, neither of which she could for the first month.

Maggie’s been with us for a month, and so high time for a decent picture of her:

With lots of help from Martha, she’s now doing 5 miles walkies a day, and so not surprisingly she’s losing some necessary weight. Down from 31kg to 28kg so far, but still quite a way to go. She’s waking up way too early for us, but she’s getting later, as is getting the consistent message from us that she’s not going to get much fuss and attention until 7am. Quite early enough! She’s clear who her pack leader is: she’s goes fairly wild when Martha appears back after absences of more than about 15 minutes. In my mind she still deserves the “velcro dog” nickname …

We were discussing giving E a lift to her end-of-school Ball, and debating who was going to drive. Remember that S is also now learning to drive …

S: I could drive you

E: But you haven’t even got beyond 2nd gear yet

S: You don’t need more than 2nd gear …

Clearly something to remind S of in future …

Emma’s learning to drive, and she’s now good enough to get taken out by her us in the small car. Today we thought we’d get her to drive out a bit further and get some practice on fast roads, and Martha realised we could combine that with a Sunday roast lunch at a pub. She drove well out to Andoversford – about 10 miles. And then for the first time, both Martha and I could have some wine, as we had a chauffeur that could take us back! And she got us back fine, too. She just needs more practice at good ol’ parallel parking. She should be ready to take her test after the exam period.

The pub, by the way, was the King’s Oak. It had quality food – particularly the ‘Belgian Waffle with Chocolate Sauce’ pudding – but wasn’t cheap.

I always expect it at Greenbelt, but I forget it might happen at Spring Harvest too: bumping into old friends or family. Last night I spotted Rob from work — who I didn’t even know is a Christian — coming out of the Tim Vine gig. Today I bumped into Auntie Rosie, and then later managed to have a great couple of hours catching up with her and Dougie. Clearly important things are going on at their church in Lymington under Peter Salisbury, ably assisted by Sarah. We bump into them later on, plus Nicola and Roger (from LiveWires) and Toby (from school).

All of this happened in the ‘Skyline Pavilion’ with its pretensions of being a big tent. (Which Tim Vine had caustically noted in a short interview make this a perfect place not to attempt doing any stand-up comedy. Which made for a surprisingly serious, and rather pointless interview. But I digress.)

All 4 of us went to this concert recently, at Birmingham’s great Symphony Hall. It included such classical ‘pops’ as Grieg Morning and In the Hall of the Mountain King, Strauss Radetzky March, Delibes Prelude and Mazurka from Coppélia, Elgar Nimrod, Tchaikovsky The Sleeping Beauty Waltz.

In the second half it moved to emulate the ‘Last Night of the Proms’ with the likes of The Dam Busters March, Jerusalem, Nessun Dorma, Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory. This was all accompanied by hundreds of flags – mostly Union Jacks, but some English and Welsh ones too. Plus some form of red ensign I couldn’t quite identify. I felt slightly uncomfortable seeing all this. Partly because it’s so rare to see lots of national flags in the UK (except at sports matches I never attend), and partly because the movement was almost enough to make me feel sea-sick! I also feel I ought to know what’s right and wrong with nationalism, but I can’t claim to. All I know is that the US flavour of it – with their flag everywhere — feels crass and slightly xenophobic because you can’t get away from it.

But back to the music. The tenor and baritone soloists weren’t that audible, but appeared to do reasonable justice to Bizet The Pearl Fisher’s Duet, Nessun Dorma, and leading the singing at the end.

The highlight for me was hearing Delius’ On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, which I hadn’t really
appreciated before – a beautiful piece. Oh, and the seats up on level 5A opposite the stage, have headrests.
Worth remembering in future.

For once, I’m feeling quite Christmas-y, which is a surprise. I’m normally a bit humbug-like at Christmas, and don’t enjoy messing with trees and decorations. But maybe because we’ve put the tree downstairs this year, and it looks gorgeous, I’m feeling more in the spirit.