Bywater Round-up 2014

You know you’re cruising towards the end of an indulgent festive season when you’re using chocolates as indigestion medication, right? So here I sit, on the second day of January, feeling a little queasy from too much good food, and I am self-medicating with some rather excellent chocolates I was given by one of our Christmas Day guests. So let the annual task of trying to remember what we did last year commence!

(Oooooh that 1was a mighty fine raspberry one!)

For those of you who follow this missive avidly, and who have had little better to do all year than to retain the finer details of what I told you last New Year, let me put you out of your suspense-filled misery and tell you that buying a flat-screen TV did not, in fact, signal the dramatic life-changes it did last time. We still live in the same house, with the same people, and the same TV. It has served us well, and was joined, at Easter, by an Apple Box (which is not a box of apples), which now enables us to do what the young folk do … namely sit around finding funny/cute/inspiring Youtube videos and playing them out through the TV. Well, I’d hate you to think our lives had become meaningful or anything 🙂

Anyway, back to the news …

Phil’s winter consisted of some skiing holidays, while mine was much focused around helping to arrange/contribute to the renovation of the new shop which our Canterbury Boiler Room prayer community acquired at the end of 2013. We finally opened the shop in April, and it has been a highlight of my year to spend time there, meeting people, doing all manner of creative things, and contributing good things to the life of our city … things like a welcoming place where you don’t have to spend money; things like a place where people can be heard and valued for who they are; things like friendship, hospitality, kindness, and of course prayer. The shop is called cityspace and it truly is proving to be a space in the city for the things in life which matter most.

In March, I turned the grand old age of 40. It took me a while to work out how I wanted to celebrate this milestone, but in the end I decided that bucking the trend of my intensely introvert personality was the way to go, so I had one of those huge parties which I always dread going to 🙂 (I therefore tender much respect and gratitude to everyone who came … it must’ve been terrible!!!). For me, however, it was wonderful. I have had the privilege of doing life alongside some truly amazing people over the years. My home life, my church life, my work life and my school life have brought me into contact with such a beautiful and crazy range of people, and it is a rare thing to put those people in the same room together. In fact, we haven’t really done that since our wedding. At the start of April, however, about 60 such beautiful and crazy people converged on our rather large house, and joined me in birthday celebrations.

After even more deliberation, I decided that the birthday present I most wanted was the chance to go to Disneyland Paris with Phil and our housemate David … so we did! I love my life, but the chance for 4 days of unadulterated fun is rare even for me, so it was a total joy to have nothing more pressing to do or decide on than which ride to visit next. For the connoisseurs amongst you, the Rockin’ Rollercoaster still remains one of the finest specimens of its species, but the Finding Nemo coaster is a strong addition to the repertoire.

Work-wise, I have found myself back at Salvation Army National Headquarters in London on a remarkably regular basis this year. Having sensed a nudge from God, earlier in 2014, to offer some of my time to developing a few of the more innovative aspects of prayer in the UK Salvation Army, I found myself helping to coordinate the making of the first part of a 3-season prayer training course on DVD. None of us on the team had ever done such a thing before, so it was a steep learning curve indeed, but we will be more prepared as we go into making the second one.

The DVD project saw me teaching and working on a number of film-shoots, one of which was at the Detling Summer Conference in August. It was a rare opportunity to be working in the same place as phil, since he helps Detling with their finances. So we took the Mother-in-law too 🙂

Phil continues to work for Chapel St, helping them to stay on a financially even keel. It has been a busy year, judging by how many nights he’s been wrestling with recalcitrant government websites till 3am. Yet it did recently put him in the way of doing a course which allows him to guide school groups on skiing trips. The course, unsurprisingly, had to be done in a ski resort, with real skiing and everything, so he managed to escape the pre-Christmas rush and hit the slopes.

In addition to our little Disney jaunt, Phil and I also managed a week or so in Spain in October. It is often said of us that our holidays consist of little more than eating cake. People say it like it’s an odd or bad thing … whereas I can’t really think of a better way to spend any week! Hence, truue to our familiar form, we spent the week wandering round eating cake 🙂

I’ve got bored of the big things now, so I’m going to bring this round-up to a close with a list of 10 variously-sized things that have hapened to us and those we love during this year …
1. Phil built a summer house.
2. I drove a car … just a Disney one, but a car nonetheless.
3. Our cat Clint left home for a few months, but then returned … not to eat but just to visit and receive affection.
4. We watched the first 3 seasons of Game of Thrones.
5. Our housemate got engaged. This means we will soon need a new housemate, as James will be moving out to his new pad.
6. Croft got his own Twitter account.
7. My grandmother turned 90.
8. My mum graduated with an Honorary Doctorate from Roehampton University.
9. My brother and family got a dog.
10. We got given an inflatable Jesus for Christmas.

Such is the stuff of the Bywater year, my friends. We trust that yours has been just as exciting and quirky 🙂

This coming year looks like being more of the same. I am hopeful that I will manage more book-writing than I did in 2014, and that we will find just the right person to occupy that large hole which our departing housemate will leave … although I’m hopeful he wont leave a literal hole in the house!

We wish you all a joyful, hope-filled and fun New Year, and look forward to seeing many of you as the months unfurl.

Lots of love from us both,

Lyndall and Phil

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