Well waddayaknow !

The phone rings. Roger and Anne have just left. The lads have not yet surfaced. Do I answer it ?

"Hallo. I'm afraid Roger isn't here but I can take a message." Thomas appears at the door ready to rescue me but :

"Is that Alan Davey ? This is Andrew Page."

Andrew is the author of The Mark Experiment and has worked with students and in pastoral work in Austria for many years. He's also met Aurelien in Dublin so we have lots of links. He now works with Above Bar church in Southampton. I know of him through the Mark Experiment though we had never met.

We chatted and regretted a little that we would not meet this time. Then about 20 minutes later the phone rang again and Thomas answered it, but it was Andrew again inviting me up to the Bentley-Taylors for coffee and a face to face encounter.

We shared anecdotes and experiences and had a wonderfully helpful time together.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit about music exams in UK and France

They're really different. I think I have already mentioned that while in the UK people generally find a private teacher for their instrument, or do it through a school scheme, here there are municipal music school, conservatoires and so on. The situation is a little more complex than I had first understood, because the schools vary in the rigidity of their organisation: the most, the conservatoires, next the municipals, then the associations. Our music school is an association, but it tends to apply the standards of the municipal schools with its programme of cycles, etc. Britain - grade 1 to 8, grade 8 being roughly equivalent to A-level, pre university/conservatoire. France - 3 cycles, each taking about 4 years, with 3ème cycle being roughly equivalent to grade 8. Theory of music - UK to take grade 8 you need theory grade 5. In France you study theory alongside your instrumental studies, very slowly. Catrin's flute music is MUCH more difficult than the stuff she does in theor
Read more

A brief sortie to North Wales

 Following the Great Keswick Debacle, when our volunteering at the Keswick café was sabotaged by our assorted indispositions, we had airline tickets to use up. Yes, we had not taken travel insurance, so we paid even more money to change our tickets to fly for a short visit to North Wales. This time we were able to go. We passed extremely slowly through a very crowded Bordeaux airport but in good time to get our plane. All seats in the terminal were taken so we leaned against whatever we could find while waiting to board. Hey, bags need seats, too! though sometimes pointing out to Pat, "No, that's a bag seat", makes the bag find a new refuge on the lap of the person sitting next to it... Once on the plane we quickly found our allocated seats - right at the back on the left hand side - stowed our bags and the flight was smooth and uneventful.  We had 30 minutes in Manchester to disembark, get through immigration , hustle off to the station and board our train for Shotton. I
Read more