12/6/08

Why read a good book?

For those readers easily disgusted I strongly advise that you don’t read on…

I am always trying to stand up against the social norms, blog on things you’d never dream of blogging on, tackle the big subjects that no-one else dares to cover…Well this time I am anyway!

I know several people who like to take a book with them when they go to drop off the kids at the pool… see a man about a log… do a number 2… still no idea what I’m talking about? I’m talking about having a poo…taking a dump or for those more highbrow reading the blog let’s call it releasing your excrement! (If you’re highbrow and still reading at this stage I’d suggest you’re actually not highbrow!)

This whole idea is fascinating to me because to me there are 2 obvious problems with taking a book with you. Firstly you don’t really have a lot of time, if you read whilst you dumped then surely you’d only read 2 pages maximum? Reading that few-a-page at once in a book would lose me, unless it’s one of those books you can only read 2 pages before your brain explodes…but who reads about rocket science on the loo anyway?

Secondly is it the best reading environment? Sure it escapes the bustle of the world, your wife (I say wife because I doubt many women partake in such activity), girlfriend, children, Eastenders, parents etc. but certain odours may begin to spread and if you get particularly into the book the clean-up process may be rather more difficult (without going into details let’s just use the word crust).

So that’s my thoughts on toilet reading, do let me know your experience of it…why you do, why you don’t, what sort of books are best to read there etc.

12/4/08

New Look Blog

After a few hours sat playing with templates and code the new look himynameismark is now online (as you can see). Hopefully it looks less cluttered and a bit easier to navigate.

There are a few new features too…

The menu at the top has drop down features displaying the pages within the category…e.g. hovering over music shows you the song lyrics online and the ‘Have a listen’ page

Featured Article – There is a new ‘Featured’ section at the top, this picks the most recent blog post in the article section…these posts tend to be more in depth thoughts

New Stats – On the blog posts you can see how many people have viewed, also if you scroll to the bottom of the blog you can see the ‘most commented’ posts and the ‘most viewed’ posts.

New Links – When you read an individual blog posts there’s all sorts of links allowing you to post it to facebook, yahoo and stumble…plus others!

Rate Posts – You can also rate blog posts when you view them individually on a star system!

Category Browser – As if there wern’t enough new features the new category browser at the top allows you to choose the most popular blog categories to view!

I hope you like the new features and the new look himynameismark!

12/4/08

Easy Ethical Shopping?

Having spent some time reading all about Tesco the last month or so their bad practices have become something of a conversation point within my youth work. One young person asked ‘Mark, how am I meant to not shop at Tesco, there’s no-where else for miles!’ (I should add that I hadn’t told them all to boycott Tesco, was merely talking about them).

This young person raises an interesting point, in his neighbourhood there is a massive Tesco Extra and also a One-Stop (also owned by Tesco) so he has no choice of where to go on the way to school without taking a massive detour into the city centre and back…which would be ridiculous!

Laura also raises an interesting point on the comments to my ‘Correspondance with Tesco’ post. Laura mentions that for her and her husband shopping at Tesco is the best option, it’s closer, cheaper and the own brand ranges are of better quality than Asda. The issue of time when shopping around at numerous local retailers and transport was also mentioned in her comments.

These points both from the young person and Laura raise an interesting dilema. How is it possible for us to shop ethically in todays society? With all the current financial issues no-one wants to spend more than they have to and at the same time value for money is wanted.

Time is another big factor in ethical shopping particually for hard working couples or those with young families, the last thing they want to do is drag a stroppy toddler (or husband) around 6 different individual stores.

I’m not aiming with this blog to offer a solution but to offer some suggestions and thoughts on the subject.

Feeling

The average person will spend 6 months of their lives in supermarkets…now I don’t know how you feel but with the odd exception of Morrisons who’s fun ‘almost like a market place’ look amuses me supermarkets make me want to leave them almost as soon as I enter. The co-op foodstore is a little more bareable but still doesn’t keep my happiness for long…however my experience of Sheffield’s Indoor Market was positive…I casually wandered around the numerous stalls at my leisure and I wonder how much we take into account our enjoyment of shopping. So perhaps shopping where you’re happy is a big part of shopping!

Cost

The biggest factor for anyone when shopping is cost, you don’t want to pay more than you have to and it is commonly thought that out of the big 4 Tesco and Asda are the cheapest…to an extent this is true.

However statistically Asda is by far the cheapest supermarket, in the latest price matching exercise on mysupermarket the difference in prices between Tesco and Sainsbury only made Tesco cheaptest by about 15 products.

Another thing I noticed from Sheffield’s Indoor Market was price…you’d expect local retailers to be more expensive but you’d be wrong…often local butchers and fruit/veg stalls can be a lot cheaper than the supermarkets, for example a pack of 3 chicken breasts which would set me back £4 at Tesco even from their value range would set me back £2 at the Sheffield Market (although for Laura living in Norwich the travel to Sheffield to buy her chicken would cancel this out…and the rest!).

Quality

Linking in with cost the quality of products is also massive. Laura suggested that Asdas range of products were of poorer quality than Tesco…a lot of this is down to opinion but I think any supermarket’s value range manages to produce ‘polystyrene’ style breakfast cereal!

Time

The final factor is time…no matter how enjoyable it is wandering around a market the fact of life is that ‘you haven’t got all day’. Shopping often needs to be done quickly, often by a quick ‘pop’ into whichever supermarket you pass on the way home.

One thing I think that you cannot argue against is Laura’s point that shopping at individual stores does take a lot more time and so to make the committment to abandon your supermarket and go local is one that only a true hippy could manage.

So taking into account these factors I offer some ideas for ethical shopping!

Do At Least Something Local!

Perhaps you’re not quite hippy enough to abandon your supermarket however the main point of shopping in smaller retailers is about supporting your local economy…supermarkets bring very little into local economy often wiping out more jobs than they create…and any profit goes into the big shareholders pockets and not back into your neighbourhood

So if you’re lucky enough to have a local butcher perhaps start buying you’re meat there instead of one of the big 4, you’ll find that after a while you know the butcher, he’ll know what your usual is, he’ll remember that you don’t like the fatty bits on your bacon but you like your beef to drip blood like a sponge and importantly you’ll find it more enjoyable than your weekly grown down the aisles of Tesco before arriving at a checkout to find that a melon with no bar-code causes an extra 10 minute wait whilst you try and make idle conversation with the checkout assistant who has just hit puberty and can only just work out how to operate the convey-a-belt and till at once!

Ethical Shopping In Your Supermarket

No matter what websites say all supermarkets aim to put money into their shareholders which benefits rich businessment (other than Waitrose and The Co-op who are owned by their customers and staff) but there’s ways to shop ethically within your supermarket.

Buying Fairtrade bananas, coffee and tea is just as cheap at the regular so they’re a good place to start, if you have extra cash look out for other fairtrade products, avoid Nestle renound for their baby-harming practices and Maxwell House (owners of a tobacco company) and try and look out for local produce which hasn’t travelled for miles damaging the environment.

Time Saving…mail order!

My final suggestion will save you time in the aisles…many companies offer local, organic produce delivered to your door…the disadvantage is that often these are drastically overpriced (particually meat)…however look out for local farm shops and use them, often their produce is cheap and fresh!

Closing the post…

I guess this post has proven that there is elements of truth in Laura’s comments, that actually to shop ethically you need to have a little bit of extra time, although perhaps not extra cash! Abandoning the supermarkets for good is perhaps impossible but filling in forms requesting more local produce and more fairtrade items is something you can be doing.

Perhaps you can improve your weekly shop by looking out for the same check-out assistant…one of the biggest things we’ve lost by the increase of supermarkets and decrease of local shops is the ability to ‘get to know your butcher, baker, candlestick maker etc.’ so perhaps looking out for familar faces is a way to gain part of that lost community spirit back.

Most importantly though being aware of companies practices is worth doing, it’s worth thinking about the long term consequences and allows those with tight budgets to perhaps one day be able to shop more ethically.

Sorry for the ridiculously long post but hope it was worth the read!

12/2/08

Worship Leading – Enjoyment

It’s been almost a week since the last blog…it’s been a pretty busy week and this week is even busier, I finished Christmas shopping today and I think I’ve finished the talk for the all age service on Sunday…whether it still makes sense in the morning is anyone’s guess. I’ve also been pondering changing the blog template so we’ll see what happens with that in the next week or so!

I’ve been continuing to think about worship leading recently, it’s interesting to see differences between worship bands at events like ‘The Point’ (where I’m leading in December), housegroup and various churches…and there seem to be two common features….

1 – Often Youth Worship bands are made up of musicians who are good but are still gaining confidence and so often the band will sound a little bit more ‘raw’ than others…although this rawness is often quite unnoticeable.

2 – Youth Worship Bands…or rather those in them tend to smile more and look like they’re enjoying themselves.

From these thoughts I’ve been wondering if there’s a trend…it’s easy for a worship band to become hooked up in their skills, concentrating hard on making sure every note played or sung is pitch perfect and there is nothing wrong with wanting things to be perfect…well in theory there isn’t.

The fact is although we want things to be perfect much like we strive for perfect relationships with God and to be people living perfect Christian lifestyles we more often than not fail to obtain that perfection.

I don’t mean that negatively but realistically

The purpose of being in a worship band (or leading worship) is not to play everything perfectly otherwise we’d title it a ‘perfection band’, the purpose is infact to lead people in worship (often sung worship).

We should be musicians not aiming at perfection but musicians aiming to give our all to God, I blogged a year ago on making sure we remember to worship God and not perform (link) and to take that thought furthur I think we need to remember whether leading the worship band or playing within the band that we are worshipping God.

I learnt to drum in a worship band when I wasn’t that good but I was given the opportunity to develop that gift…the same goes for singing and the same should go for churches today.

The worship band is a great place for people to develop their musical gifts, whatever skill level they may be at and if we aim to be a perfect band then we lose that opportunity to nurture gifts that God is giving to people.

I’m not convinced God cares how good our sung worship sounds but the positions of our hearts during that sung worship and that should be our attitude...if it sounds good bonus but if we’re doing our very best, with hearts focused on God then that is what’s good and pleasing to God…as the story of Cain and Abel reminds us.

Sometimes worship bands can get too caught up in being performers and perfecting everything and forget that they’re worshipping God…and forget how to actually enjoy praising God with the gift he has given them…sometimes it only takes a smiling worship band to encourage the congregation in worship, it doesn’t matter how good or bad a band sounds, if a congregation can see that there is joy in the hearts of those worship leading then I believe it will be contageous!