Jude Smith

Folks, I'm doing it. My feet are well and truly in the water. As of yesterday I've decided to rent my house out from Christmas: and to come and see what delights London may hold for me! This a biggy! Its quite a big deal to move in after four and a hlaf years! So- anyone want to rent my house? Three beds, nice kitchen, could do furnished or maybe un... has a garage, reasonable size gardens, new heating, wood and slate floors downstairs, carpeted up.. twn minutes wlak from the station, ten mins from j11. £600-650 a month! A BARGAIN!! (or let me know if you know of other peopel who might want to rent it!).. avaialable Jan 1st! You're all lovely JUDE

I'm tired. Its my own fault.. very late night (but did play cello.. weird but true).. But I;ve been noticing myself do strange things all day as a result.. thought I'd be all vulnerable and share: 1- No spacial awareness 2- Dribbling food (was only soup, don't think anyone noticed) 3- Lack of prioritisation (talk to visitor/ talk to colleague/ talk to God... errr) 4- Inability to finish sentence 5- Inability to remember wher you are in a conversation 6- Inability to multitask.. and to cap it all: I just found myself reading the emails that I had already trashed and trying to deal with them! Doh!

If I told you that I listened to a 92 year old sing "Goodbye Ruby Tuesday" tonight would you think it odd? If I said it reduced me to tears would you laugh? If I said I understood more of the character of God as three old old men sang "Jealous Guy" would you think I'm off my rocker? I went and saw this beautiful show in Hammersmith tonight.. go see it.. its by a lovely company of elderly singers: called Young At Heart. AMAZING. OK.. they don't sing that brilliantly- there are little gaps and duff notes. BUT it is just beautiful.. people singing songs with enough experince that you believe the words. People who move around the stage slowly but with such dignity. Heres the link I can't do it justice.. you have to go see!!

We just made a new game: involving this lovely man! Spidy has been resident in the City BR office for a little while now: in various poses! Today, however, the lovely IT people came down and gave us coasters! Coasters FLY! At Spidy in particular! So now we have a new sport- you get ten points for getting his head, eight for getting the spider on his back, four for a hand, and two for anywhere else on his body.. anyone want to play!!!!

I spent all day yesterday wearing a suit.. not just any suit but my very beautiful handmade Italian suit. I wore it to the City of London prayer breakfast- and then kind of dashed through my day with it.. namely- to train Luton interns on identity, to book a resaturant, to see my spiritual director, to see my parents, to the beautician, to ta gig in HMV, to the theatre, to the pub.. to home.. The thing I noticed was that it had quite a strange effect on how I dealt with my day.. I felt like I was morphing into a proper grown up (I hope of the CJ variety.. lets face it we would all want her job! For the uninitiated see picture) I found myself: running through the rain with a newspaper on my head, taking a copy of the Telegraph (not very CJ like I know), walking purposefully, talking very fast into my mobile, seducing bearded journalists, feeling more in control, letting people get out of my way as I walked, making decisions more quickly, making people cry with my incisive comments, g...

Have been pondering this today (pondering in the sense of having very red eyes now!). I usually quip that "success is obedience", but do I really mean it? I sometimes think I probably live like success is being liked, respected, acknowledged.. the bummer with that is that when those things are not immediately forthcoming, what does that leave us with? Failure.. or the perception of that.. What a great invitation from God, to refind my footing on the rock- to really move beyond the quick one liner to a true understanding of success.

Hellooooooo.. just a quick one.. we were just talking in the office about keeping up with people. Now this is one way to do it, but you'll know that its all a bit sporadic. However, faithfully each week I send out an email which lets you all know the real deal.. And I thought I would throw the net a bit wider to see if anyone wants to play. Just shove a comment on the bottom of this and let me know..

I'm home.. and have some deaf sign language programme happening in the living room as I type in the office.. the thing is everytime they say deaf, I hear it as "dead"... very confusing! (they are talking in my head about dead teachers.. so odd!!)

I'm all chuffed cos I've got Firefox which in theory makes it much easier to put links and stuff into my little blog.. Which is good.. because Michael just posted another dry piece of genius! See it here Today has been a funny one.. I'd been to Luton and back by nine this morning.. loads of us have had really rough night's sleep.. bizarre.. spent much of the day writing the 24-7prayer funding strategy (te he).. drew lots of diagrams. Am now listening to Kate Rusby and waiting for my team meeting to start!

I'm amused that during this week I'm staying in a VERY schmoosy flat on St Georges Wharf in Vauxhall.. and taking advantage I thought I would walk into the Boiler Room today.. It was AMAZING! For a start, this is what I woke up to oh... and when I went through to the living room so I start walking: past MI6 (would have been a rubbish spy the views are just TOO good), and along the Albert Embankment. As I left the flats I saw a little sign telling the history of the area- weirdly including some links back to Luton. Just a little way along there's Lambeth palace One of the seats of the church in the world just hiding on the river's edge. Just across the Thames sits one of the oldest seats of democracy in the world too (I say democracy in the loosest sense of the word!) I resisted the temptation to get on the Tube at Westminster, and carried on- past the Old County Hall: past the London Eye (the photo of that didn't come out.. but think big bicycle wheel!).. then o...

... piano? It occurred to me yesterday as i nursed ANOTHER bruise on my arm.. that I have had a piano sat in my hallway for 2 months! It seemed like such a good idea at the time but apparently is not... its stuck there and everytime I walk down my hall I have to squeeze past the darn thing- often not successfully! A number of options lie before me: -chop the thing into several hundred pieces -find lots of people who want to move it.. to where I'm not sure -sell it -give it away -pray it away It goes next weekend.. even if it kills me... which it might.. hummm