Mark Tiddy's Blog & Website – Thoughts of a Christian Youth Worker & Musician

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Day 14: Owl City – Ocean Eyes

A while back a friend on Facebook posted the status ‘If you like Relient K look up a band called Owl City’ and so I headed to Spotify and I have to say I wasn’t impressed. In all fairness I had it on in the background and didn’t pay a lot of attention to it [...]

Whilst lent is meant to be a time or preparation and should be something to bring you closer to God one thing I am trying this year amongst things that achieve the former (I hope!) is avoiding supermarkets.
Local Veg!
I had a conversation with someone at church about farm shops last week and so decided to [...]

A couple of years ago I post some stuff on the lack of lament in our worship using the picture to the left and once again in recent weeks as I’ve pondered worship and varying the music we use to worship (see this post) I’ve been thinking about the way we express our worship.
Dave has [...]

So the Fairtrade Kit Kat has hit the stores and Morrissons in particular have been plugging it with a leaflet at all their checkouts and whilst my initial response wasn’t very positive I thought I’d give Nestle a chance and give their leaflet a read.
The lovely people at Nestle (sarcasm) have decided that when they’re [...]

I’ve just sat for the last hour or so watching the live feed from the Apple ‘Come see our latest creation’ event coverage and whilst I have a few blogs in the pipeline (which will appear over the next couple of days) I thought I’d do a round-up post with some thoughts on the [...]

As the year nears a close and the battle for the Christmas number one ends tomorrow I thought I’d blog my top 6 albums of 2009. I always buy a lot of music and 2009 has been a good year for music so here is my favourites! (in no particular order)

1 – Bowling for Soup [...]

Day 21: Gym

Posted on the 9 Mar 2010 at 17:45 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

Attached to the school I do some youth work at is a gym and since starting I’ve had the best intentions of joining and last week the application form finally moved from my desk into the gym and Saturday (as my twitter followers will know) was my induction session where I was shown around the various instruments of torture (I mean pieces of equipment!) and shown how to use them properly and after an hour and a half I left feeling knackered but enthusiastic!

I went back today to have a fitness programme put together…the gym there is very clever and you get given little USB style devices which go into each machine which tells you your programme, what to do, automatically adjusts the machines as you work through and tracks your progress.

The programme set for me includes a variety of activities aimed at variety and tackling everything from cardio to strengthening muscles and so I’m looking forward (and also dreading) giving it a test run either this evening or in a day or two.

I’m hoping that overall my levels of fitness will increase from unfit to fit and it’ll give me something active to do…we shall see!

The gym also has a decent sized swimming pool which I shall also test swim at some point!

Day 20: Newton Faulkner

Posted on the 8 Mar 2010 at 17:42 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

For Christmas both myself and Jo managed to independently go for gifts ‘you do’ for each other and Jo’s gift to me was tickets to see the genius that is Newton Faulkner and so last night I headed down to Sheffield for the Newton Faulkner gig.

I’ve been going to gigs since I was 17 and it’s the first gig I’ve been to with seats and so even upon entering the venue there was a very different vibe about this gig, City Hall in Sheffield is a lovely venue quite a contrast from the sticky floored O2 Academy in Sheffield I last went to in November to see Bowling for Soup.

The crowd were warmed up by musician Charlie Winston who, whilst being a very talented musician didn’t quite do it for me…not sure why….however this didn’t take any anticipation away from the arrival of Newton.

With some light background music Newton Faulkner casually strolled onto the stage, picked up his guitar and burst into ‘Intro’ and ‘Badman’ from his album ‘Rebuilt by Humans’ before continuing to go through the majority of songs from both his albums with a few quirky sections such as a short cover of ‘you spin me right round’ and concluded the gig with his famous 1 man cover of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘I’m not giving up just yet’.

Throughout the gig there was something very refreshing about the gig, Newton joked, made some comments, explained what he was doing and even tuned his own guitars giving the impression that even though he is really well known he is still a pretty humble man.

For me as a music geek my favourite thing about the gig was the transparency. All but 1 song was played by Newton all on his own combining guitaring, tapping his guitar in a variety of places and using a series of pedals to play strings, synths and a variety of other noises (oh and he used a cassette at one point!). To accompany this one man band was a couple of cameras positioned so you could see him doing everything showing that Newton Faulkner is truly a musical genius!

All in all one of the best gig’s I’ve been to and Newton Faulkner is well worth going to see!

Day 18/19: Oops & talent

Posted on the 7 Mar 2010 at 15:23 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

Yesterday I managed to forget to blog but seeing as Sunday’s in lent don’t technically count today can count as yesterday!

I had a few things I wanted to blog yesterday so I’ll pan them out over the next few days however last night I went to ‘South Cave’s Got Talent’ which was a fund-raiser for Lucy heading off on mission…there was a good turnout of people both to watch and to perform a variety of talents, I had also been asked to be the sound/video geek for the evening so thoroughly enjoyed playing with P.A’s and actually made my electro-acoustic sound nice through the PA system (perhaps part of that was because I wasn’t playing it!).

It’s always interesting to see people from church doing things you never expected and there always seems to be a sense of humour in people you’d never seen before or a talent you just never expected and church things like this always seem to be good fun.

It also reminded me that I need to get into some open-mike nights and the-like because whilst I didn’t perform last night I keep desiring to have a go sometime and with a lot of my spare time spent mixing a potential album at the moment I think I need to get some music out there!

Day 17: Pummells and Spanish Chicken!

Posted on the 5 Mar 2010 at 20:12 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

Just over a year ago Mike and Yvonne who had hosted me throughout my time in Peterborough moved half-way around the world to New Zealand and after countless meals prepared by them in my time in Peterborough I was able to return the favour tonight for a couple of hours as part of their flying visit to Britain.

As I blogged back on day 5 I love having a house to host people and lent seems to be in part a time of hosting friends…in the last few weeks Joel, Vicki, Caroline, Dave, Mike and Yvonne have all passed through at various times for various lengths of time and it’s been so nice to be able to catch up with people….alongside this the regulars from South Cave have popped in many-a-time.

A really simple recipe that I was given a few weeks back was one for Spanish Chicken, it’s quick to prepare and makes a nice main course for guests so to make this blog useful here’s some instructions!

Ingredients: chicken (1 breast per person), chopped tomatoes (tin…1 tin = 4 people), 2 cloves of garlic, 1 onion, tomato puree and syrup.

Instructions: Assuming you’re cooking for 4 people fry the chicken breasts in some oil for 3 minutes a side, in another pan fry the onion (chopped) and garlic (also chopped), then add the tin of tomatoes, the table spoon of tomato puree and 2 table spoons of syrup and cook for a few minutes.

Then put the chicken in a dish, pour the tomato sauce stuff over it, cover the dish with tin foil and pop into the oven (pre-heated to 180 degrees) for an hour. Simple and tasty!

Day 16: What happened to Nu-Metal?

Posted on the 4 Mar 2010 at 17:05 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

Picture the scene…it’s the 90’s…I was 14/5/6 with dodgy hair and limited to the Sky Channels that were free and along came ‘The Chart Show’ channel and ‘P-Rock’….whilst p-rock was awesome all the time The Chart Show had moments of awesomeness…mainly in the form of their twice daily ‘Nu-Metal’ chart featuring the likes of Sum 41, Bowling for Soup and bands I wasn’t so keen on back then like Disturbed, P.O.D and Limp Bizkit.

So what happened to Nu-Metal?

It’s like the genre was around so the 90’s and then left…now we call it alternative, pop-punk, punk rock ska-punk, rap-metal or whatever ambiguous genre we wish to invent for the band we’re listening to.

I don’t have a desire for the return of the genre Nu-Metal but wish to honour it with a couple of 90’s Nu-Metal videos (which aren’t really Nu-metal!) – Videos may contain some naughty words!

Day 15: Seperation of Church & State

Posted on the 3 Mar 2010 at 17:53 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

I’m sure I’d blogged on this previously but a search of my blog seems to prove me wrong!

I’ve spent much of today planning my second lesson on the Amish for the A level students tomorrow and one part of the Amish belief which I find myself agreeing with more and more is their belief in the separation of church and state.

The thing is in principal there isn’t anything wrong with a nation being ‘Christian’ especially if the laws and morals of society are based upon Christianity (or perhaps that should read ‘based upon the teachings of Christ’) however in Britain our so-called Christian country doesn’t seem to be any more!

Whilst many of our countries morals (such as murder is wrong!) match Christianity and our country is blessed with freedom for Christians to practice without being persecuted the national identity of Christian seems to me to cause some confusion!

For starters the most recent census of South Cave said that 80% of the villagers are Christian (this is around 3,200 Christians!) and whilst I admit that we never really know who is and isn’t a Christian I can’t help but feel that this statistic is incorrect.

Facebook has proved an interesting tool with understanding people’s religions thanks to the ‘religious beliefs’ section of a profile and I’m amazed at how many people I went to school with are Christian/Catholic/Protestant yet actually they’re probably no more Christian than I am a tea-pot (feel free to dispute my position as a tea-pot!). I don’t mean this in a judgmental way but in a way that says ‘is being Christian an identity that comes with being British?’

If this is the case then there are some serious misconceptions out there…misconceptions that perhaps we would not have if the church was not attached to the state.

To finish this blog on a controversial one liner what’s going to happen when Princes Charles becomes king? Are we seriously going to have a non-Christian head of the church?

Day 14: Owl City – Ocean Eyes

Posted on the 2 Mar 2010 at 11:00 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

However as many are aware a few weeks back Owl City hit the UK number 1 spot with ‘Fireflies’ and so this time I headed to Spotify to listen for real…I then purchased Fireflies on iTunes (getting even more excited upon noting that Matt Thiessen of Relient K featured on the track) and consequently purchased their ‘Of June’ EP and ‘Ocean Eyes’ album (on which Fireflies featured).

In the last few weeks since Ocean Eyes arrived I have been listening to it constantly and driving Jo nuts by putting it on the iPod all the time but it is a good album.

Whilst Owl City and Relient K don’t sound alike (other than the occasional appearance of Matt Thiessen) Owl City remind me of HelloGoodbye in many ways. Ocean Eyes is a catchy pop album with a really good feel good factor. The vocals are pretty clean and not over produced and I’ve found myself having uncontrollable urges to listen to individual tracks….my personal favourite ‘Saltwater Room’ has been listened to 28 times on my iTunes alone (and once more again as I type this).

The album is fantastic and I recommend it….it’s clever, funny, catchy and leaves you singing the songs over and over again! (Oh and Adam Young who IS Owl City is a Christian too!)

Day 13: HCYT Speaking

Posted on the 1 Mar 2010 at 23:35 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

Every so often as part of my role as schools worker for the Hunsley Christian Youth Trust I’m asked to speak at a church or event about the youth trust and tonight I was speaking at Welton Churches PCC (I escaped before all the usual PCC stuff began).

Over the last few months I’ve managed to put together quite a nice keynote presentation for the trust which works as a way of reminding me what to say and although I didn’t use it tonight I did print off the presentation as notes for myself.

The thing I like about having to do plugs for HCYT is every time I use the presentation I find that I need to move things off my ‘in the future’ slide onto the ‘what we do slide’ which is really nice….reflecting on tonight’s presentation it’s also nice to be in a position where I actually haven’t filled my hours yet because it means there’s space for new things!

All in all it’s nice visiting places and talking about HCYT

Day 12: Swap Your Cuppa

Posted on the 28 Feb 2010 at 15:29 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

This last week and the week we’re about to enter into are not just any old weeks. if you don’t know we are actually right in the middle of ‘Fairtrade Fortnight’ which is a yearly two weeks aiming to raise awareness of Fairtrade and aimed at encouraging more people to source Fairtrade products as part of their weekly shop.

This year the campaign is titled ‘Swap Your Cuppa’ and it is aiming to encourage people to make a swap in the buying habits they have whether that is to buy Fairtrade tea or switch to Fairtrade bananas!

The website allows people to register their swap (link) and so far almost 3,000 swaps have been registered.

I’m not going to blog anything else on Fairtrade other than to say there’s hundreds of Fairtrade products around now and they’re better than normal products because the farmers get paid properly and the communities benefit!

Buy Fairtrade!

Day 11: Mixing

Posted on the 27 Feb 2010 at 18:42 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

Over the last few years I’ve been gradually recording a series of songs which I’ve written and they’re at the place now where it’s really just a matter of recording the odd vocal track and mixing them.

On a personal note it’s quite interesting to see the journey these tracks have been on, 3 years ago I’d have never dreamed of recording vocals but now I’m quite happy toying with vocals and listening to the stuff I’ve written.

However the mixing stage which I’m in at the moment is probably my least favourite part of writing/recording…whereas with drums and guitars I roughly know how long it’ll take me to record all the different parts mixing is totally different. There’s not a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ mix of a song and so getting a balance I like can take hours. For example in the last 3 hours I’ve managed to mix one track which I’ve exported into iTunes and I’m already noticing a couple of bits I need to change.

The aim is to mix everything and try and release it through bandcamp.com and possibly itunes in April…let’s see what happens!

Day 10: Phones and iPhones

Posted on the 26 Feb 2010 at 23:47 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

A year ago when my phone was upgraded I remember looking at the various options including a variety of shiny touchscreen phones on the market and I just wasn’t sold to them…partly because I wanted something that would sync with my Mac but mostly because there was a lack of buttons and I was used to texting without even looking at my phone.

However as more and more people I know have been upgraded to touchscreen phones or sexy iPhones I’ve found myself being swung away from buttons and today I think my mind became set that I am indeed over buttons!

Jo upgraded her phone today to a shiny new Nokia N97 Mini and whilst it actually has a full qwerty keyboard that slides out it is also fully touchscreen and feels so nice to use…I’ve spent a chunk of today playing with it (oh my love of geeky things!) and I’ve been pretty impressed. It’s got some nice functions, a pretty decent camera and everything seems to flow really nicely.

It’s a shame I have to wait 6 months for my contract to end!

Day 9: Lesson

Posted on the 25 Feb 2010 at 19:58 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

Today’s the first day that I just haven’t known what to blog on, nothing in particular has jumped out at me and it’s been a busy today!

This afternoon I taught my first lesson in South Hunsley…whilst I am not a teacher I’d been hoping for some RE opportunities and today the first of 2 opportunities came to pass.

I had the pleasure of teaching year 13 RS on the Amish Christians…a bit of a bizarre topic for a schools worker but it was funny how it came about. I’d spent a while trying to gain contact with the RS department with no real fruit and then happened to bump into the right person at the right time, met them for lunch and happened to mention that I was reading ‘Amish Grace’ and it turned out that the sixth formers were going to be looking at fundamentalism.

So a couple of months on I’m here at the end of a week have spent the majority of my time planning lesson 1 of 2, trying to make it vaguely engaging and nicking videos off YouTube and all in all the lesson seemed to go well. A nice small group and some good discussion so all in all other than a very dry throat afterwards it was a success!

Day 8: How He loves us

Posted on the 24 Feb 2010 at 10:00 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

Yesterday I posted this on my twitter;

‘checking out the new David Crowder album on Spotify…whilst it’s good the majority of the lyrics seem a little meaningless’

Now whilst this tweet seems negative let me clarify that I do actually quite like David Crowder as a musician however as a worship song writer he is very hit or miss however it was a hit that led me onto Spotify yesterday.

During the retreat day on Monday I got his song ‘How he loves us’ stuck in my head and it continued to stick yesterday so I purchased it on iTunes and whilst I remain unimpressed at the rest of his new ‘Church music’ album this song seems to stand out. Here’s some lyrics;

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

Oh how he loves us

We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
And Heaven meets earth like an unforseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way he loves us

There’s something about these lyrics that stick out…Crowder uses the word jealousy in a positive way and there’s something deeply profound and different about these lyrics which I hope you’ll agree.

Anyway I mainly wanted to post those few thoughts and mainly those lyrics for your enjoyment…if you don’t know the song here’s the audio from YouTube

Note: After writing I have discovered the song is actually a cover by John Mark McMillan (site), the Crowder take is awesome and the lyrics are still profound!

Day 7: Silence

Posted on the 23 Feb 2010 at 13:44 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

As I mentioned yesterday part of the retreat day I was on included some silent time which was a little odd.

I very rarely experience silence even now as I blog/plan a lesson I have music on in the background…the few occasions I turn off the music I hear my boiler in the background, I tap on the desk or I hear the occasional snippet of Alan Partridge yelling ‘Dan!’ as I receive a text.

Silence is a funny old thing…

In counseling the theory is that after you ask a question and the person responds you don’t move onto the next question immediately but you wait and in that time of silent the person being counseled will add something else and so on, usually getting to the root of the problem.

The fact is we don’t like silence.

Humans tend to find silence awkward and in our busy world silence is a rarity.

When conversation stops amongst friends we call it an awkward silence

A friend of mine described an evening out as ‘good but too many gaps‘…referring to times when conversation wasn’t flowing.

I wonder why it is we find being quiet so difficult….I wonder what it is that makes us being alone with our thoughts so odd and unusual.

Here’s a section from 1 Kings 19 in the bible to conclude my thoughts…

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind.

After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake.

After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire.

And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Day 6: Retreat Day

Posted on the 22 Feb 2010 at 21:17 | This was posted by Mark Tiddy

Today I spent the day at Wydale hall on a youth and children’s workers retreat organised by the York Diocese which was really good.

The last retreat I went on was when I was in Peterborough and CROPS organised a day out in the sticks with Paul Wilcox as a retreat and reflection day and I remember finding it a really useful time.

Today was also useful!

It was nice to have a day aside to reflect and think about what’s been going on, reflect upon God both personally and within my context as a youth/schools worker and to spend some time with others who do a similar role to myself. There was also a time of silence which I very rarely have as whenever I’m working itunes is usually on in the background.

Finally on the way out I bumped into Archbishop Sentamu, however sadly I could not have a conversation with him as him and his colleagues were having a silent retreat…maybe next time!

(I have some more retreat thoughts which I’ll blog tomorrow)

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Mark's Website and Blog

Featured Posts

Day 14: Owl City – Ocean Eyes

Day 2: No Supermarkets For Lent!

Worship – Screaming

Fairtrade Kit Kat – Live!

Apple Event – Review – iPad

Top Albums Of 2009

Day 21: Gym

Day 20: Newton Faulkner

Day 18/19: Oops & talent

Day 17: Pummells and Spanish Chicken!

Day 16: What happened to Nu-Metal?

Day 15: Seperation of Church & State

Day 14: Owl City – Ocean Eyes

Day 13: HCYT Speaking

Day 12: Swap Your Cuppa

Day 11: Mixing

Day 10: Phones and iPhones

Day 9: Lesson

Day 8: How He loves us

Day 7: Silence

Day 6: Retreat Day

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