Jean-Claude, something has bumped our wall...

Hello children, it was nice to meet you, now go away.

Those of you who know things about my life might be aware that I am currently residing in the land of cows. This would be a place otherwise known as the merrie land of Oxfordshire. More specifically, in Witney. As I have discovered since I knew about the move, the only thing that people know about Witne

y is that it is home to monsieur le Prime Minister, i.e. David Cameron. However, as he is currently hanging out in Downing Street, Londinium, we have not yet had the opportunity to rave together. Once he hears that I am waiting, he will be back like a shot I am certain.

However, in the meantime, I have better things to do than to sit upon this bottom of mine and ponder about co

ws. That is, in fact, because I have such a thing as ein JOB!! It is not a job in the conventional sense of the word, as I do not, in fact, get paid, but it is le grand fun. I spend some of my time learning about the great outdoors and the things one could do in it (and also doing them), some of my time teaching kiddies about all of that guff, and some of my time pretending to fix bikes. Which entails standing close to Jonny while he fixes bikes. And occasionally touching things.

An important part of this pretend job-esque thingum what I has, is the part where I'm not working. And instead am hanging out in the house of cool, i.e. The Crawley House. It is named such because it is in the village of Crawley, not because it--or its inhabitants--move

predominantly on their hands and knees. Highlights of my time in The Crawley House thus far largely seem to involve moving furniture, or wedging myself in fridges/doorways etc.

This may be a little confusing for some (or all) of the people not living in the house with me, so I shall explain a little. Since we have moved in, we have moved the bed in my room and broken the wheels off (which we promptly fixed), we have halved the height of the bed in the spare room, which includes getting it wedged between two walls whilst hunting for an appropriate allen key, AND dropping the mattress over the banister, destroying James' beautiful paintwork. In addition, we have entirely rearranged the living room, dismantled the sofa bed and relocated it to my room, moved the other sofa into Sarah's room, moved in two new sofas which were rather too large for the very narrow hallway and door. In the process

of moving in the two new sofas, we managed to wedge Rob into a corner between walls and a sofa. In addition to all of this, there has been various rearranging of drawer units, desks etc. If the career as an outdoor instructor fails, I can always fall back on my extensive furniture removal skills.

The reference to fridges and doorways is one which most certainly needs to be addressed. In The Crawley House, there is a challenge which has been set by previous Adventure P

lus tenants. This challenge is to navigate your way from the toilet in the upstairs bathroom to the one behind the utility room downstairs, without touching the floor. In other words, to climb from one corner of the house to the other. After a couple of attempts, I am proud to announce that this challenge has been completed by myself and Sarah, with Ruth getting to a very respectable half way on her first attempt. We are very proud of ourselves. The most challenging part was navigating between the fridge and the washing machine which required a very interesting manoeuvre into the door frame, and pushing off there until balanced between toes on the washing machine and shoulders on the doorpost. We welcome suggestions for any further challenges as appropriate.

Possibly worth mentioning before skipping merrily away, is the fact that I am now a qualified fencing and archery instructor, with nationally recognised qualifications (yay!), ap

proved for belaying on climbing sessions, and working towards my canoe and kayak level 1 coaching award. Busy, busy, busy! But it's a fantastic journey and I'm loving every minute (apart from maybe the part where Ruth and Sarah got lost on the way home from Sainsburys and I had no idea where they were for three hours. Fortunately, they were rescued by a very helpful and obliging monsieur le James, who brought them back to me with all of their limbs still attached!)

Those who are familiar with the name of my boss will be very quick to understand why he is now called 'Jean-Claude' in my head. I'm not sure when exactly the change happened in my Brian, but it does seem to be irreversable. Fortunately, so far he has chuckled and has not thrown any large objects when I accidentally call him that instead of his real name. I mention this now, because I have been incredibly blessed in regards to the people with whom I work; I am surrounded by an amazing group of people with a phenomenal energy and passion for serving God, and it's REALLY EXCITING!