31 January

Beware the Izzy Monster - it has fur and teeth!

30 January

The woods around Charleville Castle are full of brilliant little surprises.

29 January

The Irish Constellation taken from the back of the Manse

Also a bit of messing about with bulb mode to see what it does :-)

28 January

Those pesky Tullamore Camels get everywhere...

27 January

Rain is miserable

Rain is beautiful

26 January

Our CD drawer (and a half) has become an unmanageable monster and so I spent today using Rhona's PC to make MP3's of everything.  We're then going to shove them all in the loft and give some away.  Rhona's desk has been totally hijacked in the process.

25 January

We are having a book clear out at the moment.  Partly prompted by James's bookcase falling apart.  This is "all" he is left with after a few bag loads have gone to Oxfam and his sister's room.

You know your son's a bookworm when...

24 January

This is the first shot posted from my phone instead of the DSLR.  Today in the Bible Study we did the first of two overviews of the Bible. We set out 20 chairs covering the centuries between Abraham and the end of the New Testament 1900BC to 100AD and then over an hour and a bit covered the first half of that time from Abraham to David.  People wrote labels and we set them down at (roughly) the right dates.
Hopefully folks will start to get an idea of the overarching story of scripture rather than just knowing everything in small bits.

23 January

After dinner tonight James and I headed up to the big statues at the entrance to the town where the sky was really dark and had very little interference from the streetlights and had a great time looking at the moon and Jupiter and taking these photos -

22 January

When we arrived at Busy Bees today there was the most wonderful mist around the trees at the back of the car park.

The sun also tried to put in an appearance.  I was a bit nervous photographing the sun with an SLR as it is basically a small telescope but thankfully no retinal damage to speak of.

After Busy Bees I got to do one of my favourite things which is to take stuff apart to see how it works.  The church piano has not been working properly and after discovering all the stuff (envelopes, a DVD, songs sheet, etc. that has been accidentally crammed into it over the last year and a half you can see why.

17 January

The birds out the front of the house have been great over the last while.  The only problem is the light has been so bad that getting a clear shot of any of them has been really difficult.

21 January

Great fun playing with James and Isobel in the kitchen today.  I seem to have lost my warm hat to her.

20 January

Felt quite bad last week saying how creepy Saint Catherine's Church in Tullamore looks when it is really quite beautiful on the inside.  Here's some photos from tonight taken after a brilliant Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Service.

19 January

Sometimes work is hard and sometimes it's like this...

In the Bridge House Hotel, waiting on James at his swimming lesson, reading about the parable of the unjust judge from three very different sources and getting added sermon inspiration from the gabbling of the old guys next to me.

18 January

At a film launch tonight in Birr and stupidly left the camera in the car :-(

I consoled myself with travelling round Birr taking random photos of the really cool buildings, street furniture and exploding lightbulb trees.

16 January

Finally got Rhona's PC working in the wee small hours.  This rebuild has been a bit of a saga but eventually the company who sold us the parts sent us back a working motherboard and processor.

On the plus side the grill plus LED combination in the case produces all sorts of fancy patterns on the wall under the desk!

15 January

The two photos below pretty much sum up the weirdness of Irish weather recently.  On a day when we were  crunching over frozen mud in the carpark beside the church there were also daffodils in flower in the church porch.


"Four seasons in one day

Lying in the depths of your imagination

Worlds above and worlds below

The sun shines on the black clouds hanging over the domain"

14 January

These clear nights have had me gazing in awe at the night sky.  I love how a clear sky like this does two things - it takes you outside of the man-made world, making you aware of how awesome creation is and it also makes you realise how small we all are in relation to the universe.

Moon over Tullamore

13 January

Tiring but hopefully worthwhile day at RTE.  Really disappointed by the turnout (as were the RTE crew) but you can only invite people and hope for the best.  Once it goes online I'll post a link to the service here.

12 January

On the way back from Tesco tonight I was struck by how downright creepy Saint Catherine's Church can look at night.  Someone has got to use this as a set for a scary movie some time.  Just so long as I don't have to watch it!

11 January

James, Shammir and I stopped off after picking them up from Boy's Brigade at a part of the road that had no streetlights and stood and looked at the stars.  This photo really doesn't do them justice at all, it was such an amazingly clear sky.