Life of Wiley

So what to write about first…

Well how about what happened over Christmas?

My holiday got off to a great start, not only did I have the prospect of nearly 3 weeks vacation, it was also going to start with an Iron Maiden concert at the NEC in Birmingham. Now some people might think that Maiden are well past their prime, and I suppose they are, but I’ve always enjoyed their music and regretted missing them in Sheffield on their Somewhere In Time tour.

I went with my brother, Eddie (no not Eddie the ‘Ead!), and it was just fantastic. This was the Dance of Death tour and the stage was set up as a castle with giant Eddie backdrops behind. Wasn’t fussed for some of the newer stuff, but Hallowed Be Thy Name was just excellent

What surprised me most was the number of kids, e.g. 12 year olds, who came with their parents!

After that it was back to Watford for a couple of Christmas gigs with Watford Band and my son Euan’s nursery nativity which was just brilliant. Watch out for the video footage appearing on the multimedia section of the main website. Euan was one of the Wise Men and you could see just how proud of himself he was.

The Nativity also marked the end of Euan’s time at his Nursery as he starts his state nursery place next week; can’t quite believe it and he’s not even 4 years old yet!

The Sunday before Christmas I was leading the worship at our church in West Watford, Trinity Methodist Church. This was the 4th Sunday in Advent and was on Mary the mother of Jesus. It was daunting because my mum was there and I’ve never preached in front of my mum before, so I was quite nervous, even though I’ve been preaching over 6 years now!

We spent Christmas up at Louise’s parents in Dudley, West Midlands. Euan was very excited this year but he still didn’t wake up until 8.30am on Christmas morning; Louise and I had been awake since 6.30am! Anyway the site of all the presents under the tree gave a very excited “Wow!” from Euan and he really enjoyed his gifts, particularly the Peter Pan costume. I liked his Junior Scalectrix best!

I had a number of DVDs, Gladiator, 8 Mile, Lord of the Rings (the Fellowship of the Ring), and Matrix Reloaded. For music I had Iron Maiden’s Powerslave, Metallica’s S&M, and Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. I had an excellent book on digital photography from my mum, so there should be loads more photos being uploaded to the main site over the coming year. Louise also got me what others have been calling an “Old Git Shaver”, it’s one of those that you shove up your nose and in your ear! I know I shouldn’t really admit to it, but there comes a time in life when you just have to succumb to these things!

We spent Boxing Day at my brother’s in Lichfield. There were 9 of us in his small house but we managed and Eddie provided an excellent Turkey dinner with all the trimmings. We’d bought our eldest nephews’, Caan and Jacob, a science kit each, Caan’s was a dragster construction kit using CDs as wheels, as Jacob’s was a kind of transparent robot kit. I must say I was very disappointed with both of these; the robot didn’t work out of the box as one of the electrical cables was broken internally and the dragster didn’t last long once built due to the plastic drive wheel teeth being mashed up within 5 minutes. We’ve got the robot sorted out but I think we’ll need to get Caan something else.

We came back to Watford on the Sunday after Christmas because Louise had to go for an ultrasound scan the following day as we’re expecting our second child. The scan showed a perfectly healthy baby for which we’re grateful. We’ve decided that this baby will be delivered by Casaerian Section as Euan’s birth was quite traumatic. The baby will be due in May sometime.

So that brings us up to New Year. We had an open house on New Year’s Eve and a number of people came including my brother and his girlfriend, Estelle. They went off into London whilst we had a fairly quiet evening with friends drinking and chatting into the early hours. I’m not one for resolutions but if I need to enumerate any they would be: loose a bit more weight, exercise more, and maintain this journal and the main website. There’s probably going to be more, but these things are fluid, like career objectives, once you’ve accomplished one, you set yourself another.

Anyway, that’s a very long entry, I don’t expect subsequent entries will be quite so long.

Happy New Year!

I’ve finally got around to installing a weblog system that I like and have determined that this year I will start to maintain a blog. Well I might as well as I spend quite a lot of time at my own computer managing a couple of websites and checking personal e-mail, etc.

I’ve got 3 categories set up, one for personal stuff imaginatively called “personal”, one for brass playing and brass banding (I’m a cornet player), and finally, one for church and preaching related matters (I’m also a local preacher in the Methodist Church).

We’ll see how it goes as I’m not sure what sorts of things to write and who might read it.