furtherandfaster

Eden Project - Wow

Visited the celebrated Eden Project for a few hours at the end of the day. And I was stunned. I intend to go back to spend a lot more time in the place. The way they promote environmental issues is a textbook in how to educate a positive but largely mystified public.  At times it felt like the kind of church I'd like to go to. Inclusive and giving you the motivation to get more involved. There was a lot of we and us talk. I wonder if it works? Do people change their lifestyle radically after they've been?

My favourite was the tropical zone. I hadn't been in humidity like that since I was last in Malaysia as a teenager and it was lovely to be back and to recognise so many of the plants not to mention the butterflies.

Bye bye boat, blink and some ponderings on trust

Sold the dinghy today and the bloke came from Norfolk to pick it up. He insisted on paying with cash which is a bit of a no no on Ebay. I did pretty well selling the boat within the week. With this sort of budget people needed to come and see the boat.  The second person to see it bought it. He came with a trailer - looked a bit furtive when handing over the dosh though I think he was nervous about handing over a large wodge of cash. And part of me was still wondering how it could go wrong - were the notes counterfeits? I had decided this was more secure than a cheque. Was it? What was his address and so on. I furtively took a couple of photos of his license plates - it would have been rude to have done it obviously - he asked me to write him a receipt by hand. Both of us were trying to trust the other while trying to make sure that there was no funny stuff at the same time. Verry interesting how you go about deciding if you can trust people.  A lot of it is providing details about yourself to fill in gaps.

He told me he is planning to store the boat in Salcombe and sail it round Bolt Head - which gave me a bit of a twinge - I'd like to do that! But now he can and I can't. Ah well.

Dirty dancing and morning prayer

Back to research this morning. And the vicar's sermon was all about his sabbatical. Vicars are allowed to go walkabout every 7 years or so.  This one had managed to do a month in New Zealand - the slideshow was last week's sermon. And this week we got the next instalment - he had been studying musical theatre which means he went to watch a lot of shows and got to interview some of the people behind them. I'm not sure I really made the connection between your average morning worship and a west end show. But in principle the idea that you send your staff to watch dirty dancing, high school musical, blood brothers, Billy Elliot et al as well as I'm sorry I haven't a clue - is probably going to have interesting and unforeseen repercussions when you get them back on the shop floor. Full marks to the Church of England for letting him do it.

Better than it needs to be

Just spotted this post on Russell's blog and its so good that I've wrapped it around me and carted it off to snuggle down in it for the rest of the night. Absolutely spot on - but why do we take such pleasure in things that are better than they need to be?