Well, my work continues, though I came in yesterday morning not knowing for certain whether or not I’d actually have any work this week because of the problems due to the system not being properly ready yet.

The weekend was very busy – not only was I moving into my new house, but my sister Becky came to visit. It was great to see her. We went to watch Cats in the New Theatre on Saturday afternoon, which we both really enjoyed. We emerged from that in time to see England’s defeat in the football, and after that rushed back to the new house to watch the penultimate episode of this series of Doctor Who, and it was a real corker, ending on a brilliant cliffhanger leading into War on Earth in next week’s episode Doomsday, which sees Billie Piper’s departure.

Yesterday morning, Becky departed back to Dolgellau, and I collected my marks for my English work this year, which were all in the sixties, and so solid 2:1 marks. 70 is the mark needed for a first, and my average mark for English over the year is 68, so there’s everything to work for next year! I got a First mark on two of my English essays in the first term, but that was helped by being able to write on subjects that I found really interesting and had strong views to argue, namely Pullman’s His Dark Materials in comparison to the Narnia books, and the idea of the “Death of the Author”. I didn’t really find a question on John Donne or Myth & Saga that I could really get passionate about, and that’s reflected in my marks. But I improved my Creative Writing mark this term, which was something very important to me, since I really want to be improving as a writer.

Anyway, I’d better get back to work from my teabreak. Since I’m working at computers 9 to 5,
I don’t exactly rush onto the Internet when I get back home, so my blogging will probably be more frequent when I finish this job.

One of the things that we’ve been discussing recently at Mack (Mackintosh Evangelical Church, my church here in Cardiff) is our outreach – how can we really be sharing the love of God with a needy world? We met on Wednesday to consider what we’re doing at the moment, and to think and pray about where to go from here, and I’m really encouraged that we’re doing this.

There’s plenty I could say on the subject, and I’m sure I’ll come back to it, but I found (via Dan Edelen at Cerulean Sanctum) an interesting series of blog posts entitled Relevance or Faithfulness? on the blog GospelDrivenLife. As I’m sure you realise, it’s a false dichotomy, and Mark Lauterbach has some interesting thoughts on the subject that are relevant to the questions we’re facing as a church.

I think the idea of “relevance” is one that’s much misunderstood. If Christians seek to be relevant by aping the attitudes and lifestyle of those around them, then what have we really got to say to the world that is actually worth saying? If we water down the Gospel then we make ourselves irrelevant. The difference between Christians and non-Christians is frequently superficial, lying in the language we use and our social habits, rather than there being any real difference in the basis on which we operate our lives. We need to have a deep distinctiveness communicated in the cultural language of those around us.

I’m reading Isaiah at the moment, and he, like many of the prophets, was cutting-edge relevant to the times in which he lived – relevant, in the sense of taking society to task on all the ways in which it was going wrong. That’s the kind of relevance we need to have – modelling Christian living as a challenge and alternative to the ways of the world around us. Challenge consumerism with contentment, apathy with passion, and the idolatory of self and pleasure and success with the Kingdom of God!

I’m currently on my morning break from my summer job. I’m part of a team of around thirty people busy transferring Cardiff University’s website from one content management system to another, which I find rather more interesting than working in Somerfield! One advantage is that you don’t get in trouble for shouting at computers, whereas it doesn’t go down too well if you do that to customers.

Unfortunately, the new system is still in the process of being created, and so several important functions aren’t yet working. The whole idea of the new system is that it recognises different types of contact and so can do fancy tricks with it. So rather than just having webpages, you can, for example, create a Contact entry for a particular person with all their details. Each webpage that mentions that person is then linked to this one Contact file, and draws its information from there. When it comes to updating that information, you just do it in that one Contact entry, and every page automatically updates, rather than having to be updated individually. Neat, eh? Except that we can’t actually link in any Contacts or any other elements, because that feature hasn’t been implemented yet. Which makes rebuilding the website to take advantage of all this rather difficult. Oh well, I’m not complaining – I’m being paid by the hour, and pretty well, too, for a temporary summer job!

But since I’m working on computers all day, it makes me less inclined to rush online in my lesuire time, hence my updates to this blog still being fairly occasional. I’m pretty busy – tomorrow I’m leaving Cardiff Central train station at 6:55am in the morning(!) to get to the Contagious training day in Lapworth. It’ll be good to find out about what we’ll be doing at this year’s Contagious, and even better to see various people again, but it’ll be a long day. And it’ll be the third Saturday running where I’ve had to record Doctor Who. What a shock! I’ve still not seen The Satan Pit because my video recording didn’t work, but hopefully I’ll get hold of a recording soon.

Oooh look, I’ve now reached over 20,000 hits. I often find it hard to connect the rising number on my counter with the fact that people out there are actually reading (or at least visiting!)

After a bit of pestering from a couple of people, I’ve now started using MySpace. Whether it’ll actually prove to be of any interest or amusement remains to be seen, but you can visit me here. Why not add me as a friend?

I got some more books out today. I now have 12 out from the university library and 6 out from the public library. The ones from the university aren’t due back until the beginning of October, though, which is just as well since stuff like New Horizons in Hermeneutics and Towards a Christian Literary theory will keep me occupied for a bit.

Hello everyone! I’ve now finished my exams – hooray! does happy dance As such, normal blogging service should now be resumed. Thanks to those who’ve pestered me about it – it’s nice to know that some people enjoy reading my blog enough to complain when I don’t update it!

I’ve been enjoying relaxing after all the hard grind of revision. I’ve borrowed a big pile of books from the library, including a couple of The Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman, The Stealers of Dreams by Steve Lyons (a Doctor Who book that almost shares the title with the Doctor Who script proposal I sent to Big Finish Productions a couple of years ago entitled The Stealer of Dreams, funnily enough), and Going Postal by Terry Pratchett.

I also bought a few Christian books in the Christian bookshop in Wyndham Arcade, including The Irresistable Revolution by Shane someone, which caught my attention because of the similarity to the buzz-phrase I like about the kingdom of God, “the revolution that cannot be halted”. I’m about half-way through and it’s pretty good, though between that and the discussion session we had in Navigators last Tuesday, it’s given new fire to my discontent with my Christian life and with the way we do Christianity in the West generally, which strikes me as not living up to the high calling of the radical teachings of Jesus. That’s a subject that should give me fuel for plenty more blog posts…

Oh, and the berliner edition of gair rhydd is now out, so pick up a copy! It looks pretty snazzy, and has an article by yours truly in it on the subject of the Monarchy.

More updates to the blog will hopefully follow soon…

BBC Wales are advertising for a script editor, responsibilities to include Doctor Who. Unfortunately “With at least two years’ experience as a production script editor, you’ll be well aware of production issues and the way they can impact on script development and deadlines. You should also be used to working in a complex and demanding production environment.” doesn’t describe me, at least not yet.

But give it time – I’ve not yet finished my degree, so I’ve got plenty of time in which to try and get along in the world of media and writing.

As Russell T Davies said to me at the press launch after he mentioned doing some postgraduate studies at Cardiff, “So you never know, you can study at Cardiff and end up writing Doctor Who!” Not that I mean to namedrop or anything…!

Oh, and my article on the Doctor Who press launch will be in next week’s issue of Quench, so keep an eye out for that. I’ll get a scan of the article on my blog as soon as I can.

On Thursday I pre-enrolled for next year, and so have signed up for the modules I plan on doing in my third and final year of university. How scary is that? It’s traditional to say “I can’t believe how quickly time is going!” but I haven’t felt that. It seems ages since the beginning of the year, let alone that time back in the dim and distant past of last September when I arrived back for my second year. I’m really enjoying university, so I’m not at all inclined to wish it away.

Anyway, it may or may not interest you to know what I’ll be up to next year. If not – well, this is my blog, and you don’t have to read it, so I’ll continue blithering on anyway! I’ve probably now scared any readers away from this blog now, except for my mum. Hi Mum!

One third of my final year will be Creative Writing. One third! This is why I chose Cardiff, honestly. I’m doing a full-time degree, and so that means next year I ought to be spending almost two working days of my time per week – ought to be doing what I love doing and want to do with my life. How wonderful!

But writing takes real work, believe me: the words don’t flow off onto the page in some surge of inspiration. It takes effort and thought and sheer nail-your-bum-to-your-seat-and-don’t-let-yourself-get-distracted hard graft, as I found when finishing off my Creative Writing portfolio. But it’s also a joy and a pleasure and a satisfaction in it, and if I can get to a stage when the service of my life to God can be through writing and I can earn my living through that, then I’ll be a happy man.

I’m planning on doing my Dissertation in English Literature, which will be one-sixth of the year. Together, my Creative Writing modules and my Dissertation make up the English half of my final year. I’m hoping to do my Dissertation on Christianity and Literary theory. The message of the Gospel is the message of the Kingdom of God, which starts in our hearts but should work out into every area of life. I want to work out what the lordship of Christ means in the area of literary theory, so much of which is thoroughly secularised and atheistic. I found a book on the subject, Towards a Christian Literary Theory, which I’ve just begun reading, and it’s encouraging to find more existing material on the subject – I won’t be starting from scratch, which is reassuring!

This year in History I studied “Medieval Heresy & Dissent” and “Wales, Ireland and the Viking world”. Next year I’ll be going to be studying modules very different from medieval history – firstly, the history of the Chinese Communist Revolution, and secondly, Chinese language for historians! My housemate Ben says I must be mad; I admit it was a rather impulsive decision, but I hope I’ll enjoy it. In particular, I hope to be able to put the Chinese that I learn to good use, at the very least to talk with international students from China who come to Cardiff.

So that’s the shape of next year. I have, of course, got to finish the second year first. My English essays are almost done – hooray! They’re due in on Tuesday, and I’m taking a break from them so I can go back over them with fresh eyes on Monday for the final spit and polish on them.

But the end of my essays does not mean the end of my work. To liven up my revision, I’ve decided to try and summarise my history courses for you here on my blog. I’ve certainly found my studies interesting (for the most part) so hopefully these summaries will be interesting to you, too, as well as a helpful exercise in preparing for my exams. Stay tuned for the first one on “What was medieval heresy?” very soon.