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1st Sunday of Advent

"It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas" as the song goes. Well, a little bit, anyway.  Today we got up early to go to Church at Our Lady's, where it not only happened to be the first Advent service, but also the Christmas Fair. I love going back there (we don't go often due to the price of the taxi and lack of buses...) because (a) it's a lovely church, (b) Fr. Jim is a lovely, lovely man and tells funny jokes during his sermons, but also because (c) we always bump into so many friends there, who all say how lovely it is to see us. Today of course they were all astounded at how tall and grown up my beautiful daughter is, because she hasn't been with me for a while. My very good friend Stéph was there with her daughter and later I had a cup of tea whilst S had mulled wine and we caught up with a good natter. Neither DD nor I want to ram our faith down anyone else's throat, so I don't usually talk about it on here, but it is pretty central to our lives. All I'll say is, the message is one of love and hope, and that is one that you don't have to believe in God to live by.
So, in other news, we went to the cinema yesterday for the first time in absolutely AAAAGES and saw "Four Christmases" with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon. Not a bad little "RomCom" but why oh why would anyone want to take their 4 year old to see it? The place was crawling with under 10s and they got bored as hell after 5 minutes, so spent the rest of the film rushing around after each other in the aisles. They got a few hushes and shhs, but the parents remained remarkably low profile. I couldn't believe it. Considering it's nearly 9 quid a ticket, surely there are other ways of spending a cold Saturday afternoon with your young family?  After that, we went to Café Rouge in Pinner because DD had been pining for steack frites (note the French spelling there!).  We got there around 7.30pm and there was live jazz from 8, so it was a lovely evening.
I said I'd tell you about the life coaching. Well, I'm doing it with this place, The Smart School of Coaching, and it's brilliant. Unfortunately, I was taken ill half way through the weekend course, so I'm catching up on 7th December. We have done practice coaching already, and I can't wait to get started on more practice clients. Even in short 15 minutes you can really tease out problems that someone is facing and set SMART goals (you know, Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant and Time-bound). If you know anyone who would benefit from coaching, I am looking for 5 clients over the next few months, so just drop me a line in the comments and I'll get back to you. I have to find clients for myself, but because we are not supposed to coach friends and family, we operate a kind of a "swap shop" among the members of the group: if I recommend a friend or family member to one of my team-mates, then they can recommend someone back to me.  So there you have
Well, I'm off to do a bit of reading. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, people!

Yay! The internet is back!

Just a quick update to say I'm baaaaack. I'm off to have a much needed haircut (and a Starbucks) and I'll be back later to tell you all about my Life Coaching course. Byee!

I am still here

This is just a quickie to say I haven't disappeared off the face of the Earth. I'm very busy, haven't got the internet at home and really haven't got much to say! Here is a bullet point list of what's been happening:

• Spent last Sunday at the Country Living Christmas fair and loved it
• Have signed up to a coaching course that starts Saturday
• The OH has started working in Oxfordshire and is staying on-site
• DD has is working at Jessops selling cameras and the like
• Christmas isn't cancelled this year, it'll just be a scaled down version - everyone is cash poor...
• But the run up to Christmas will be a social whirl, I've been invited to so many things!
• Fingers in many pies, work-wise. We will see what the future brings

Hope you are all well!