Discipline=Freedom

" Discipline equals freedom" Jocko Willink.

Last year I started a course to learn strategies and tools for coping with ADHD tendencies. The previous Christmases had been very unhappy times, and I wanted to break, which I did. I have no ADHD diagnosis, I just find the tools help me deal with imposter syndrome, and seasonal depression. I mapped my highs and lows in detail for 2 months last year. I uncovered symptoms which are, as far I can work out, caused by anxieties. Like the FOMO (Fear of missing out) from my last post https://zaphodikusrealm.blogspot.com/2025/01/gently-curious.html .

Anyway, one of the typical ADHD'er tendencies is a desire to optimise everything, and free up "CPU cycles" and so when someone says discipline equals freedom , everybody's brain just melts. That just sounds like a juxtaposition, not a truth. But my next two weeks are about routine establishment. By having routines, you can take guesswork out of small tasks that waste the cognitive and risk assessing part of the brain. We execute about 10 mini risk assessments every single day without knowing, what if you could roll just some of those into a practised routine? What if we could batch chores up, and do it in a way that ensures we don't forget any of them, in itself , that's a stress source. As someone with very little routine, because I am constantly guarding against my OCD tendency, I think I'm achieving a goal. Yes there will be a blog post about goals, I'm working through some of the course material backwards, Can you tell I'm a rebel?

Gently Curious

  If you are a bit ADHD, you will find yourself often getting into trouble with people. I say often and I mean often but for differing reasons, one of them is when a thing someone does just grinds you because it's just inefficient to do it that way.

Big triggers of grumpiness (anxiety) like lack of sleep, stress, technology that glitches, over-loading or even a food change are more general ones that we have some amount of control of. But some you have no control over. Like when a friend takes 20 minutes to eat lunch and you know it takes you 10-15 minutes and the train will be arriving exactly then. It grinds you, if the train runs early, you want to be on it early too dammit! I have always had FOMO (fear of missing out) which means I love to arrive early to every meeting. My FOMO however had started to drive my wife mad. I needed to teach myself to be less anxious about time itself. Last week I twice managed to actually run a few minutes late getting somewhere and a miracle happened, I did not end up driving faster. And I missed out on nothing at all.

Gently Curious

What grinds me, is not just people who eat slowly. I had to realise that my FOMO and wanting to get to every single meeting 5 minutes early was also stressing other people. This works two ways a lot, much more than I had realised. And just like my totally irrational desire to never miss things was not understood by my family, I often don't understand their quirks too. I very often fail to accommodate others, I mean why can't they just do things my way, the better way? Well, that's because everyone has different goals and different things they get out of the habits they might have. So how do I satisfy my unhappiness with the choices of others to do things wrong?

I used to just tell any person straight out, that that is not the best way! And when you turn it in it's head, and instead ask, what they are doing first, then ask why they do it that way, but without asking the why question, ask the how does this activity meet a need, for example how often do we all do "X" in a day for example? Almost in a reflective way, as if you are asking yourself, and then even though you will then learn why they do it the wrong way, and you will not be able to change them, you will understand the person better. Ever since I started being more gently, I have been building my own list of annoying things that I do, which I now work on, to minimise. It goes two ways.

Where did you run to in Lockdown

so i quit all my normal clubs

For me, the digital world has often inhabited a subliminal space around the real world. That's because it's a construct of what is essentially our physical world but with vastly different constraints. Constraints that are easy to ignore and are often ignored and grotesquely twisted by users of our digital worlds. So when lockdown pretty much jailed everyone who did not open the door into the digital, I could always see the "construct" of the digital space for what it is, a lie. But everyone was online now, to communicate, to share, and to work and to socialise, you have to open that door into the slightly twisted, but the only world that remains.

It started with the uncanny valley of zoom meetings. People compose books on the shelves behind them on camera and aim the camera just so. People use backgrounds and then the camera portrays the other party up close, really close, just 50 cm away from you. That inside your comfort zone visually, and the mind boggles. So we all try different online meeting solutions and mix up the online meeting screen with backgrounds and so on, to try and make it feel less personal-space invasion-like, less home privacy invasion-like and try get on with it. But apart from the way the camera lens lies and the fact that only 2 people in the meeting can speak at a time, (which is a really dumb problem.) There is the drift into doing everything digitally, which is of course meaningless. You cannot feed someone digitally, or even less check that they really have taken their daily meds. You cannot help them get to the bathroom (there is a famous discussion on how the simple stranger entering a place asking for directions to the bathroom is in fact a bigger introduction to deeper communication, but that's part of the pain.) Yes, lacking physical touch, but for me, digital has always been fake.

Digital will always be fake, it conveys very low trust, and is unable to transport any goods or provide really useful services, and still cannot make tea. And for those who could not work remotely the "imposter" and fake of my cushy life made me trip out on guilt early on. I had a security of my little personal zone, a luxury, which very few had, many were jobless. For someone who abhors luxury, this was very hard to process.

So I ran away.

Why?

Well because it's a complete waste of time and effort. Mental effort which has now been frustrated for some people who don't normally hold it together anyway. There was no point in going to online club meetings; meetings where you cannot give someone a lift back home afterwards; meetings where you cannot have a side conversation and meet for coffee afterwards (some exceptions exist). Meetings devoid of cookies, and meeting with no beer involved. Nobody seemed to care that this was a problem, which for me further eroded trust in the people meeting because everyone else was happy to forego one of the things I really felt was key to me. I have always felt I trusted the smart people I admire who built the communities and ran meetings. Lockdown undermined that trust. All the clever people had no answers. I quit a number of clubs, some clubs I quit frivolously, others more out of general overload. Generally nobody cares about the "person" in a digital club.

Overload

An Olympic athlete pulled out of one of her events this last week, she was not confident she could focus and complete the slightly dangerous techniques. Too much at once, in fact some clubs I abandoned were abandoned just because my bandwidth dried up. Not only do I not pay attention to postal paper mail anymore, I don't pay attention to spammers like YouTube who spam me with totally pointless content, making me feel even more isolated by the "actor" on a soap box with a fake smile that their "algorithm" forces into the foreground. Just let me be quiet, let me go back to basics, and let me do physical things, things that really do matter. This lockdown reset has prompted a lot of us to take up hobbies in cooking, crafting, gardening and more. It has even forced a lot of us to start cycling more, walking more, and make some better life choices. some of these good habits which I hope people decide to keep after this all blows over, and blow over it will. Lockdown has cut down air travel, which might be good for the re-calibration of our waste culture too.

I read this week about a few people recalling vivid dreams they have which are like the Truman Show, being in a fake world where everyone else is really a robot, and you are the only human left alive. A feeling of being continuously observed, but not in a move star kind of way observed. Guinea pig kind of observed. I used to have these thoughts once, and lockdown has triggered them again, but making me feel liked a trapped or jailed mouse. I often wonder if pets feel like they are jailed. I'm a cat lover myself, so sometimes I just wish I was a cat. Okay, forget that cat reincarnation idea, it's not that appealing unless you are a cat in a good home anyway.

Casualty

The casualties are many, and I'm not yet ready to take responsibility for ones I've created, sorry, just, sorry if this is you, find someone who is responsible to blame please.

Blame

As someone who struggles to follow even a basic math formula, I was never going to be the one who solves this blame thing. However my faith in smart people to make good choice dissolved in early 2019. A lack of honesty and even a desire to have prevented this are my foremost reasons for miss-trust of the system and of my betters. I can see how some anti-vaxers use this same line of argument against the establishment of medical professionals. It's however blindingly clear, just how weak willed politicians are, to address the real causes by minimising encroachment on wildlife and minimising climate change which is the leading cause of the encroachment problem. I'm sure that's not the only thing we would do if we could wind back time to November 2019, but now that it seems a lifetime away, it's too late. The fact that clever people give up too easily worries me. That weakness underlies a lot of anti-vax argument, which sadly is illogical.

Return

So, sadly I'll not be coming back soon. I'll come back when I'm allowed to sing and dance indoors without a mask, when I'm allowed to grab cookies from the same jar as everyone else, and without individual wrappers on foods. I'll be back when I can do physical things that make a difference, like buying you a beer, or giving you a lift. I'll be back when the people have dispensed with the bullshit and have stopped playing. Playing is fine, but just not when it's at someone else expense.

I know that nobody will ever read this, but that's fine, it's digital, so it's fake anyway.

Every time I see an advert, a puppy dies

Ads, advert or advertisement? If the contractions introduced over time were not hint enough. Please tell me I'm not the only human who has spent the last 20 years teaching myself to ignore advertisements. It used to be that television adverts were entertaining back in the 80's. Billboards and newspaper advertisements glossy magazines with great artwork were setting the standard gradually higher and higher. Culminating in an entire book worth of advertising of homes, that you can buy every Sunday at the newsagent. Yes, there used to be a time when adverts targeting specific people would actually be all in one specific place.

Mutually Assured Destruction, simply by having a bigger banner Ad.

1. MAD

Digital changed all of that, advertisers can now follow you around and target you. Companies have always had more money that sense when it comes to advertising spend. That's because brand awareness and influencing peoples buying habits, is big big money. Brand loyalty is such big money that companies prostitute themselves to the advert companies, who happily ask for more money in order to promote their client above all the competitors. Creating a MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) cycle which sees ever more bizarre advertisement spending in order to emerge on top. Being seen becomes so important that brand awareness surveys and number of impressions become a metric to chase after, yet another lie to pile onto the ill in that industry. To the consumer, advertisements become a bombardment, which frankly comes across as increasingly desperate, and often insensitive.

The impact of advertisements on customer in many ways however is harder to ignore. An impact that goes beyond a datacenter carbon footprint, a datacenter built just to store gigabytes of data about you to target you. Because targeted adverts are coming under pressure with new privacy controls possibly coming to Apple. Apple are bizarrely not a player in the advertising game, even though their entire raison d'etre is about image, and suddenly Google and their free portable-device OS don't look so stupid anymore. I get that Apple are all about what will make them more money, so pandering to privacy is a song they have sung for a while, and will continue to sing new cover versions of. I can respect that, someone who sticks to their guns and gives me a service, worth the money I fork over to them. If only I did not have other problems with Apple, I would be mucking in down at the Macintosh farm instantly. but I digress, because privacy and the impact AI has on it is key, even if fans of the platforms cannot see that.

2. Privacy

So, lets get back to this anonymous user problem. Apple use a special "advertiser id" generated for each device, that allows you some privacy, because an advertiser gets a unique ID for you, but that ID is not tied to "you"... which is complete bullshit as a concept. But for now I'll let it stand.

The vast majority of us have nothing to loose by being tracked, until... Well let's understand privacy better here. Privacy is about protecting the vulnerable as well as about preventing identity theft. And you will be surprised at how many vulnerable people are online. Activists online who are tracked by state actors are just the very tip of this iceberg. "State level" actors are powerful enough to drop tracker pixels into social networks, and sniff metadata directly off the wire to find and start profiling the contacts of anyone the activist connects with. Apple's clever little "ID" can do nothing to protect these people, because the privacy metadata at risk is your links, to other people. And even if those people are anonymous, someone with enough metadata will quickly map your habits and location using ML. The only defense against being tracked is to change your identity regularly, or to use ML itself to randomly make you appear to behave differently or randomly. Humans are creatures of habit through their timing and their connections (sites they visit). Internet activists are more vulnerable than we think. Advertising has created a huge industry to enable tracking people, often for the wrong reasons. Don't even start me on the very very bad health biases that advertisers willfully create.

I'm not even going to start on how advertising trackers get misused to sell health related items to you, another landfill contributor. If you start visiting baby websites while trying to have a baby, and then your wife has a miscarriage, they keep on bombing you with misery for years without ceasing. I'm not even going to describe the trivial effort to research buying one toilet seat of the correct size, then going to buy a replacement toilet seat in a real store. For the next month I got toilet seat adverts, even though I only have 1 toilet in my house. What a waste. The other day I bought a special kind of bolt online, I never buy any similar finds of things, but just that one experience saw my stream flooded with all manner of metallurgical products. Products I could often not even identify, and less likely even ever buy. The waste is dangerous, but the creepy thing is that this data, me buying a bolt, asking a friend a bolt related question allowed the advertisers to link me with my friends. Soon we all see the same bolt adverts. I kid you not. Imagine if I was researching a sexual health related product, something very private? Suddenly my friends will know.

The thing that pisses me off most about this is that this has a huge impact not, on men.

So you think you are anonymous out there, let me tell you a story about a big games console company. They had a huge problem, their console could not advertise new games to users because not only did the console not really know who the gamers friends really really were. But they had no way of knowing how to push relevant adverts to a gamer and their friends, because the console had no web social network linkup. And we all know that the web and most especially the mobile platform gets the most "conversions", or actual purchases. On our mobiles, a device we carry everywhere and has our attention 24/7, the console game publisher had no way to touch it's users. So the console company went to a cloud company and agreed to combine basic user metadata with whatever data their own website tracking could provide. Suddenly using ML alone, an algorithm if you like, was able to use terabytes of metadata, not about the users, but about their activity alone. And successfully build customer journey patterns that now save the console company millions in advert budget. Watch this landscape. It's about to change.

3. Waste

The ad industry is a huge waster, not just in terms of the MAD stacking and compounding problem, but because a lot of us cannot resist adverts. I've gotten into the habit of hating adverts and on a platform I block advertisers when possible, set preferences and enable trackers as often as I can to prevent adverts that are really more a waste of my time and a waste of money for the person placing them. Advertisers may want to start paying me, there's actually a browser that tries to do that, but that's another topic altogether. Adverts waste my bandwidth, which I pay for, and they just assume is free. Adverts waste my time. By lacking any kind of real targeting adverts force me to wait longer for pages to load and get in the way of me doing the things I love. Basically imagine you are about to kiss a beautiful girl, and a guy wizzes up on a bike and suddenly offers to sell you a condom. You buy one, she runs off anyway at this point, so you toss it into the landfill. 

Image showing the "Golden Girls" Maude not being rude.

Most commonly advertised products are the cheapest products and hence more likely to be impulse purchases, that get binned. Advertisers are often wasting their time because I've not bought a single product off of an advert, ever. I know this because I only buy items off of a researched wishlist which I keep in various ways. It's not hard to prevent landfill.

Bebo Inspired (sic)

 What the heck is Bebo? I mean, like what was it?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55908193

Right now people are closing their Facebook accounts and Whatsapp accounts in droves, this happened about 5 years ago, but this year looks more like a single solid departing wave for many. I am perplexed by this, and so I'm writing now to clear up my thinking and also to poke fun at the fearmongers.

Exodus

My biggest fear with the social media exoduses that things like Parler which got killed off by AWS creates, merely cause new networks like the Bebo re-imagined service will undoubtedly bring the same broken services in the same way the google youtube algorithm would show you content to drag viewers in and thus was automatically showing them more and more extreme content just to see advert revenue. The fact that humans have failed to develop an allergic reaction to digital advertising and it's blatant waste culture distresses me. But even more distressing is the possibility that network fragmentation may split people farther apart. What am I talking about? Stuff nobody wants to talk about to be honest, but primarily the failure to inoculate against advert revenue is behind the Facebook screw-up. Because people don't want to pay for services, and even if we did, providers can make more money off of our data than they would off of a subscription. Even a Youtube ad-free subscription has very little take-up. The service probably costs more to run in that model to be fair. Why? I'm definitely no buying add-free youtube, not unless it comes with a fully add-free experience on the other platforms that touch it. It's a bit pointless. Like swimming in the goldfish bowl that is the internet. My big underlying fear is that the polarization that these social networks drive and thrive on is only now becoming evident and it's too late to stop a freight train that has been running down the track for decades. I have very little faith in the internet repairing itself. I keep seeing people on Twitter who think otherwise, and that old men cannot fix this thing, and that our youth will re-imagine the internet. Clearly the rose tinted spectacle wearers are prepared to wait for as long as their followers keep on promoting their bubble.

You could not make this up

As if 2020 was not an amazing yet humbling year, we not have 2021, it's over now for captain Tom. It's the movie script you could never write. I'm thinking of chucking out the TV set and youtube today, I keep seeing adverts for Netflix and other pointless entertainment services, sure I watch some non-broadcast TV, but not enough to warrant paying for Amazon Prime, the kids watch it for the most part, but if someone stole my TV, and blocked youtube.com on my internet, I would not cry. Just the captain Tom movie alone would be like the titanic movie that I have never seen and never will see, depressingly kitch.

And all because a spineless Prime minister could not be bothered to lock down the UK, and to actually stop all air travel in February when we all knew what was coming already. Your prevarication mister Johnson Sir, is costing 1000 lives per day, equivalent to about 5 lockerbie bombings every day. Chew on that one.

Why I quit my job

I've been asked this so many times in the last few months. Nobody actually reads this blog, so I am sure I'll be asked a dozen more times, "Why did you quit ?"

Energy and focus. It's not something individuals can provide, the fuel for a team comes from elsewhere most of the time, and when things got wrong and that disappears, it's not going to go well.

 A corporate restructure when I was once working at a large IT firm had the same effect, and people just start leaving when that happens, well, that's a part of the reason. Because when energy and mission are not there, it normally means the product is not profitable and a even bigger restructure is in the wings. Not looking at cost-to-build the thing kinda grinds me at a "is this for real" level and gets worse the bigger the company. Energy doing the wrong things can also be bad, lots of wrong things were done, but for me, I was not getting the energy or optimistic vision I need.





There are 2 other contributing reasons for my leaving outside of morale and feeling driven; focus and competency.

Focus is something a development team have when they are all building the same thing and with the same goal in mind. An easy way to do this is to look at the constraints, what can we not do and what must we always do are product rules to live and die by. Stepping outside of a constraint, really is failure for the project. Typical constraints might be speed, size, market or just simply size of the device. Being focused on constraints sets up a common language around the cost of building things, engineers are really bad at looking at the cost. It also prevents the priority from shifting about randomly aka "Who moved my cheese"

Competency, this is me really. When I find I'm just not learning how to use the tools quickly enough, or getting enough of the job done, I feel unqualified. I think this is easy to do when you are trying to be all things to everyone, and not only be great at just one thing. If you are prone as I am to going down the rabbit hole, then exposing yourself to a really large system makes that rabbit hole problem so much more of a hurdle. If I'm on a learning track that is too high level or too low level and am not making visible progress, it's my prerogative to feel I am failing. Failing to play my part.
Well that's it, really, low motivation in a system where the energy is at a low already and the important thing keeps shifting around. I don't think I am able to learn as quickly as I used to do; that really knocks your confidence and miss-directs you.
Under it all, I am finding myself trying to define my place as an introvert in the workplace, for years I have made a lot of concious behaviour changes to break the introvert mould that forms around you. Ultimately this "concious behaviour" puts a stress on you in small ways you cannot imagine until you find the space to go and look at yourself properly. Next time I post, I'll be talking about a few other things I have gotten wrong over the years and more recently too. However, quitting this job was not a mistake, it was getting in the way of me being happy at all. If this is you, watch and learn from Susan Cains TED talk  : "The power of introverts" .

Last Day

Today is my last day at Citrix.
What shall I say after 7 years, lets compose ourselves, I have a severance package, and some clauses, which pretty much says, "be nice, and we will be nice".
For me , today says, "the wheel turns".
This last year has been more about people and process than about software engineering sadly, although one positive process thing was learning a lot of agile. I tried to learn some Java and Angular this year, but that's another story, and as evidenced today, was pointless.

It's been a good ride though, in the previous 6 years, I learned a new programming language, two actually if you count my rubbish Python, which really is more ropey than snake. I learned about virtualisation, that changing tools can happen many times in a year, and that testing, is not checking!

I learned to drink beer, and that more than a pint of beer does not like me the next day. I know I will meet some ex Citrites in the future, just like I have me many ex Symbianites since those doors closed 8 years ago, so do keep the connection open your end. I am really looking forward to working with software that is a bit closer to real hardware again, and more focused on delivering one thing. I suppose I never really got the hang of working in large companies, Symbian and Citrix for me feel so large and mechanical as places to work, where the daily email barrage is a relentless un-necessary distraction that communicates no true message in the end. I hope, email is a thing we fix in future. Even Slack , fixes nothing in reality. And while in that basket, nor did Skype fix anything. The lesson there, keep your head down, probably my greatest flaw.

Signing out
Z

(Starting a contract position at Displaylink in January, well chuffed.)

Headshot

A quick scaled image with background blur to update my profile pics everywhere with.

Proud of my son

Rather proud of my eldest son today. I had a kind of crappy and tense day . Easter holiday been planned after 3 years. Last day of school for him last day of work for next 2weeks for me.... and he has an accident on the football pitch. Now Rhys and accidents during phys ed seems a recurring thing. So I'm not panicking when I get a call at lunchtime to rush off to the school. He broke his collarbone so I rush over and have to take him to hospital.  Now if it was serious it would be an ambulance so I'm not flipping out. But he is in such pain when I get to the school he is too sore to even say "hi dad". Bundled gingerly into the car and then drive carefully to the hospital every damn pothole the council failed to fill in gets a wince of pain from the passenger seat.

Potholes the council does not fill due to budget cuts. Which has now kept mum and dad out of work for 3 hours each as we run him up to A&E. All the traffic lights go green. The queue when we get there is 5 minutes long and the staff are so professional and efficient. Careful and slow, but efficient and it makes me wonder why the NHS is facing cuts to people who are passionate about what they do and are doing their best. Why?

So the shoulder is now in a sling. It still hurts but he will mend. I'm proud of Rhys. And also proud of Gregory.  I hope my boys do see this one day and hold me to my promise to never let go.

Sponsor please : I'm braving the cold 2 help Syrian Refugees

So here is the backstory first.
I live in a small village in Cambridgeshire, and since many of us felt the refugee crisis touch us we decided to mobilise in a big way. The usual committees formed and some people went off to set up cake sales and other events. We planned a different fundraiser for almost every month of the year, but I pooh pooh'ed the cake and coffee things and aligned with a plan to do something more radical. Something that would show that we cared for Syrians impacted by the war. By sleeping under the stars. Well, I did not realize that by the time we got organised mid-winter would be upon us.

It does not seem to have stopped 12 of us who will sleep out (admittedly under canvas) with no facilities or support for 2 nights on the village green. It's not really sheltered and will probably be noisy. I don't count on getting much sleep nor being able to feel my toes in the morning. Most of us are not real campers, so it's going to be a cold one.

Click on this link to register your donation http://goo.gl/forms/5sHDLx7ak4
I'll be accepting preferrably cash; cheques made out to Cottenham Cares , or Paypal online payments

All moneys go to MSF and Save the Children Syria .
Please fill in this form with as much or little information as you like, which I'll keep secret. But would also make it easier to collect cash and importantly thank you for your sponsorship.

More Events

Cottenham Cares have a host of other events planned, a golf tournament, a Ceilidh (which is apparently a dance) and quizz nite are already in planning. During the summer, we plan to support other initiatives, to find out more please visit and like our Facebook page :
https://www.facebook.com/CottenhamCares/

Fundraiser progress update

I only started raising on Wednesday and I'm standing at £175 thanks to pakshivaandytomcaroline . I'm targeting £400

ISIS are not terrorists

Think about it for a second. ISIS, IS, Taliban, Daesh are not your traditional terrorist organization. I'm against the bombing of Syria for this reason. I'll explain in a second, my rationale, so let me throw some background.

A terrorist is someone who uses fear, guerilla tactics and bombs directly to accomplish a goal in a situation that often includes civil war. Activities are normally limited to one country or a region, since the terrorist accomplishes little by travelling far from home. And there is the key, the ISIS goals are not to resolve civil war, but rather - to create it. Starting with the Arab spring as the source of civil unrest, the IS militants just drop in to further destabilize. A bit like mercenaries, who pop up wherever regular forces are not making progress at the time. It's a low cost operation with lots of bang for your buck (literally) and that's the other key - funding.

IS funding is a completely separate blog post I think, I'll continue instead. So when we rush in and bomb IS in order to stop them killing off more groups like the Yazidis, we just give them a platform. They are a lot more organised than we think and although we stop them from killing innocents through a bombing campaign, we don't really fix the problem. It's laudable to stop the killing of innicents, do not get me wrong. But terrorists are normally not lawfull. Two rights do not make a wrong in their books.

Bombings cut supply lines, sure, but they also cause people, civilians to leave the area. We call them refugees, IS cell members are able to secretly mingle with these refugees and travel more freely than normally as a result. Where do they go? Oh, I'm sure they know, and David Cameron knows where they want to go, or does he? Well there you have it, bombing just pisses people off, it might save lives, but it plays into their hands... something we keep on doing it seems.

Christmas time reminder note

In case I forget, here is a handy note . Dates to calendar.

Schedule information about services and events that are taking place in the run up to Christmas at CBC, please put these dates in your diary and take opportunities to invite friends and family to join us as we look to celebrate together.

Christmas Service

Sunday 29th November -  Advent Creative Service (A good opportunity to invite friends and family to join us for stories, songs, craft, quizzes and a time of reflection)  If you are able to bring cakes or  biscuits to share over coffee after the service please do.

Sunday 6th December -  Family Service Led by GenR8 (Another great opportunity to invite friends and family as GenR8 lead this Christmas Service for us)  We will also be decorating our church for  Christmas after this service.

Sunday 13th December -  Morning Service to include a wedding blessing for Miranda and John Bonner, please join us as we celebrate with them

Evening Carol Service (Where an offering will be taken for Cottenham Cares to help refugees in Syrian camps)  Starting at5.30pm with soup and a roll.  Please bring along  mince pies if you can, so that we have plenty to share with people, along with mulled wine, after the service

Sunday 20th December - Christmas Communion Service

Friday 25th December - Christmas Day Family Service with Music from Music Mash

Sunday 27th December - Breakfast Service. (A relaxed service with a light breakfast for those who are able to gather after Christmas)

This year at Church we are also providing a Christmas Card board where people can place a Christmas Card for everyone in the Church.  This saves on writing lots of cards and also allows us to send Christmas greeting to everyone in our church family, with one card.  The board will be up in the church from Sunday 6th December.

Missing in the list is Supernovas Party 11th (Friday) December, sometime in the afternoon, 4:30 pm. I'm helping so I'll be there from about 2:30 anyway.

Helping strangers unaware

Yesterday I was out cycling with my youngest when we spotted a lost gentlemen. Or rather he spotted us. He was looking for a street just one block away so I fired up my smartphone and spoke the words to get the maps app to do it all for me. I rotated the map and showed how where to go. Epic fail.

I was only a block away. I did not walk him home, but then why should I? I mean he was only a block away? I am not responsible for the world and all of it's lost old men am I, well it was not good enough. My wife helped a lady with her shopping at the same time in the city. Carried her groceries all the way down to the river to her houseboat. Then had to find her way back to the bus stop. My meager effort was null in comparison.