Trip to Studley Royal

At present we are both extremely busy juggling work, wedding preparations and house alterations. It is all a bit manic, but we hope things will soon calm down!

On Saturday we managed to take the day off from said activities and went to Studley Royal, near Fountains Abbey http://www.fountainsabbey.org.uk/, a rather magnificent deer park and wildish forest area which some 18th century chap called John Aislabie decided would make a nice place to put a dam and make a big pond. We found it rather splendid, and did a good old walk.

Below: Ourselves at said location

Rachel experiments with a bridge:

Thomas-Thomas-James-John-Saxybyfarncombe - Peter's volvo. Peter bought this car in the autumn in order to facilitate smoother long distance trips. He is rather a fan of Volvos now and in particular the seats, which are excellent.

Introducing a certain particular young acquaintance of note...

Clearly there is a lot to catch up on. However, it would seem appropriate to start by introducing Rachel, since she has yet to be mentioned on this blog, and, after all, we are about to get married! Peter therefore thorougly embarrasses her with this photograph:

We met at York Evangelical Church, where we are both now members. Rachel has been in York for 6 years or so and works as a Nurse nearby. Peter was cunningly engaged to assist in planting Rachel's runner beans last March and we havent looked back since. We are getting married on 3rd March this year in York. We are looking forward very much to spending the rest of our lives together, God willing. The big day is only 39 days away, but still seems miles off just now!

The next picture tells a story: The enigmatic Bob Nagel is pointing out the very hole (probably still there) on Peter's allotment in which he (Peter) plucked up the courage to bury a ring in October 2006. Matters were arranged such that Rachel would dig it up whilst weeding. And so it was (more or less)...

Again

Having not posted for nearly a year I have decided that it is time to at least attempt a ressurection. Much has changed! Not least from 3rd March the name Shervington will be imposed on my long suffering fiancee Rachel who should consequently attain the status of joint proprietor over this most fortunate blog.

January - March 2006

Well I havent posted for rather a long time. I have discovered that the longer one leaves it the harder it is to restart. Indeed I have little doubt that what readership I could perhaps once have laid claim to has whithered to nil in the interim. Nonetheless there is no point having an old blog and as such I shall endeavour to recommence my ramblings.

Of course it is rather difficult to sum up three months. The trip to Ireland, referred to in the post below, proved most enjoyable. Our time was divided between studying Galatians (an experience which really brought to my attention the need for a thorough approach to bible study and in particular the need to be disciplined in devoting generous amounts of time to it) and reading (I rounded off War and Peace and can say that it is the best novel I have read yet. If you havent read it I would heartily recommend it though best to wait until you have a good chunk of time to commit. Gripping). I also spent quite a lot of time fishing. Unfortunately, as with my attempt in 2004, I failed to catch a single beasty. I got one bite from a mackerel but this jumped off the hook leaving a meagre portion of its mouth so small that one could not cook dinner for a mouse from it. Still I found it a peaceful pursuit on the whole, despite some alarming pranks performed by various seabirds who kept diving within the vicinity of my line.

Further entertainment was found in late night walks across the island. In particular on New Years eve, when we walked the length of the island under an amazing sky and in the face of a howling gale. A quite extraordinary experience. Less extraordinary was the rope on the ferry taking us back to Wales, which tore a chunk out of my exhaust pipe as I drove over it.

Since the New Year I have been very busy with work, partly because the sheer number of cases has increased, and also owing to the fact that I have started doing small claims trials which involve a lot of preparation.

No sign of a pupillage yet

I have been getting pretty involved in York Evangelical Church too, which is fantastic. Saturday mornings once a month are taken up with the excellent 'Bible Basics for Believer's' course, and what with this, busy Sundays and meetings on Wednesday evenings, I am finding myself increasingly rooted in York.

If all goes to plan the allotment is about to take off. We are rearing some broad beans and potatos in the house ready to go out in a couple of weeks, and the rabbit fence is very close to completion.

Andrew has now more or less left the house as he has gone on a placement in Scarborough and after that he plans to move down to London to teach. Rebecca was on placement for a few weeks but is now back.

Well, thats a very rough update on events in the last three months. I hope to get back to including more detail and some photos by writing a bit more regularly!

Christmas Travails

No pictures this time I am afraid, I seem to have left the crucial bit of wire in York. At present I am at home in Farnborough with the folks. I drove down with David and Tom on Friday. The festive season has been suitably pleasant. The Tokelies were here for Christmas day and provided conversational variety. We also managed to find a Christmas afternoon quiz which was slightly more achievable than the Daily Telegraph version which we normally attempt. Everything fell into place nicely.

Today I commenced my latest literary project, namely War and Peace, which has been languishing on my bookshelf for some time waiting for me to have a chunk of time to read it. An imminent trip to Sherkin Ireland with Tom and Gav provides such time. I am also hoping to do some painting whilst there, as well as furthering our inspired concept of getting Gav to narrate Russian novels to a unique blend of Jazz-Reggae.

As you see, I am rather enjoying my holidays. Prior to driving south I was visited by brother David in York. We went round the York Castle Museum (free for residents, as it turns out) and also went to the Crown Court for a morning where we saw an intriguing case regarding the cultivation of cannabis.

Adieu

Platform 8.5

Apologies for another delay... hmmm. what has been happening. Yestarday I was in Sheffield County Court. I had lunch in a little cafe with a downstairs bit. It was rather cramped and I ended up enjoying my all day breakfast on a table shared with two elderly ladies. I was rather suprised to note that their lunch consisted almost entirely of chips. This frightened me a little, but also amused me. I mean, what do you have to loose from such a diet when you are booked in to expire in the next few years anyway. I thought this whilst reading an article on renewable energy in this week's economist, which interested me greatly. Later on I was threatened by a wayward madman and almost became one when faced with the prosepect of sitting in the court's waiting room for an hour and a half.

Generally things are going well at the moment. I have a fair amount of work. York Evangelical Church is proving an excellent base. We have finally finished watching series 2 of 24.

Not sure why but I keep getting this powerful desire to polish my car. This activity would be entirely pointless as I will be driving it to Grimsby on Thursday and Newcastle on Saturday, both of which will make it dirty. Still I struggle to resist. The picture above was taken in the car-park of B&Q last Saturday. It hardly begins to express the turmoil through which it went going to Bridlington and back last Friday. It is a treacherous route at the best of times and on this occassion this was exacerbated by thick fog and my being stuck behind a cattle lorry from which slurry poured forth everytime a corner was turned.

Intruige

Apologies for another break there.

No luck with pupillages yet, but I have a few more applications to go. Work are shadowing me tommorow to assess my performance, which is rather scary. The less you focus on God the more vulnerable you are to be frightened by worldly trials.

I have nearly finished 'Cancer Ward' by Solzheinitzyn. I reckon it is the best of his books I have read yet. I rather like the following quote, though I am not sure whether or not I agree with it yet:

(dying cancer patient who was a biology lecturer but was hounded into becoming a libararian by soviet purges talks to political exile)

"'Happiness is a mirage' Shulubin was emphatic, straining his strength to the utomost. He had turned quite pale. 'I was happy bringing up my children but they spat on my soul. To preserve this happiness I took books which were full of truth and burnt them in the stove. As for the so-called 'happiness of future generations', its even more of a mirage. Who knows anything about it? Who has spoken with these future generations? Who knows what idols they will worship? Ideas of what happiness is have changed too much through the ages. No one should have the effrontery to try to plan it in advance. When we have enough loaves of white bread to crush them under our heels, when we have enough milk to choke us, we still wont be in the least happy. But if we share things we dont have enough of, we can be happy today! If we care only about "happiness" and about reproducing our speicies we shall merely crowd the earth senselessly and create a terrifying society....You know, I dont feel very well...I'd better go and lie down..."

On a different note I have just come back from a meal with the family of Mark Troughton, who leads York Evangelical church. This was an excellent experience. I had some interesting conversation - its good to be getting to know people a bit. They have thousands of children, all of whom are rather jolly.

See above a photograph of Lewis astride a Transit Van. I was walking back to the Station in Sheffield, having done some cases there, when I saw this white van go past and happened to look in the window. There by chance was Lewis driving. A rather entertaining spectacle. I jumped aboard for a pub lunch and an insight into evolution, about which Lewis has some excellent thoughts.

Sunset Belle Vue 

Commercial Break Now Over

It has been a little while

Infact, I have entirely forgotten where I left off.

But owing to popular demand the Blog is resurrected.

Today I was in Durham. In fact my case wasn't until 12.30 so I need not have driven up last night but I didn't remember this crucial fact until this morning. Nonetheless it has been a little while since I last cast my presence over the white house and as such I have no regrets. The kitchen was remarkably clean. Gosh. Unfortunately I was rather fatigued and not a little under the weather when I woke up this morning so my efforts in the legal department smacked somewhat of going through the motions. In the light of this I am not too disappointed that this week appears to be shaping up as the quietest for a couple of months. Time to catch up on blogging, work out how on earth income tax thresholds operate and hang around waiting for a call to tell me if I have pupillage or not.

Got down to the final four at one set of barristers' chambers. Rather odd really: They had something like 400 applicants. In the first round of interviews they had 8. I did a really bad first round interview, so much so that I had entirely forgotten about the dreadful experience by the time I was telephoned and asked to go back for another round, at which they had whittled it down to 4. This interview went a lot better. However, I have done too many pupillage interviews to read much into initial reaction. We shall wait and see...

In other news: Since my last post I have had nearly two months with a full complement of housemates. This has been a wholly positive experience. It has come to my attention that each of my housemates has their own quizzical and unique default activity which they revert to in the absence of other plans.

I have become a little bit of church itinerant. That is to say: for the last few weeks I have been supplementing St Mikes with York Evangelical Church which is growing on me. It is altogether quite small and jolly, and its sermons have a consistently epic quality to them.

This week though, Tim Bartlett was visiting. This was excellent as he is a jolly busy chap and to distract him for a weekend is quite a feat. We all trooped off to watch "Wallace and Gromit" at City Screen (an outrageously expensive cinema which gets away with it only because of its location). This film (which is thoroughly entertaining if not especially deep) was preceded in the case of Bartlett and I by a somewhat quizzical mutual bag-shopping experience in Fenwicks during which I became somewhat baffled by the large crowd of shoppers and inadvertently stood on the feet of a fellow shopper for a significant number of seconds before realizing that I was doing so. The said fellow shopper failed to react at all to this trespass - only compounding the sense of mystery. I bought a briefcase.

We played cards with the Scopes (or, as I feel they should be known in plural "Skypes") until 1am on Sunday Morning. I have never extracted so much entertainment from bits of tree (the cards that is, not the players). Owing to the presence of Bartletto we went to the Minster for a service in the morning. Impressive building, shame I forgot my glasses. The Service was pleasant in the sort of "is this a concert or a service?" way, and, having got used to 40 minute sermons the 10 minute number seemed a little brief. On the other hand I think Liturgy has something going for it.

Dissappearing Transport Planners

Dear Reader

I have just been to St Michael le Belfry where I found that it was so full I couldnt get a seat and therefore had to return. This is most frustrating, as I was looking forward to Roger Simpson's sermon. The moral of the tale is that if it takes 15 minutes to get to church, one needs to leave 20 and not 10 to fufill said task.

This is not the only dissappointment today. Peter Tod was supposed to come over for a visit before he goes down to Cambridge next week. Unfortunately he was true to his spectacularly inefficient though roundly affable form and found that his project work overran so he couldnt come. I had rather thought this might happen so my dissappointment was fettered, but present nonetheless.

As a result of these two calamities I have had a rather solitary day which has comprised of reading the papers, having lunch, cleaning my car (a note on this: various fellow residents of my street have commented on the regularity with which my car is cleaned. I am starting to worry that it is an obsession of mine, so am determined to clean it less and learn to appreciate the quality of dirt one one's vehicle). I spent the afternoon reading 'August 1914' by Solzheinitzyn in the cemetery and checking through my cases for tommorow. Three people passed me in the two and a half hours I spent there. An old fellow limped past growling a little at a younger man who bore a rather ferocious looking strimmer. Another man in his thirties passed and asked me if he had seen his wife. He gave a rather unrealistically optimisitic description of her. I said that I had seen only two other people neither of whom matched the description given. I have little doubt that said wife is still prowling the undergrowth in the vast, sprawling cemetery - the gates having been locked at four-thirty.

Yestarday I was in Scarborough for Midgley's rather excellent birthday meal. This was an interesting experience as I knew no-one else there. However forwarned is forarmed as they say, and I was certainly aware that this would be the case some time before departure. In the event I met some very interesting people and consumed some gratifying grub. Marvellous.

On Friday I had some cases in Durham which was rather good because I was able to commandeer the White House for a day and reside in the meadow tapping away at my laptop, occassionally popping down to the court to pay my respects to the Judge. There are some advantages to a mobile office it seems.

So its back to the legal jungle tommorow. I am rather looking forward to getting some housemates..