Pies and Prejudice

Hi there, its Millay this time - haven't posted in a while since Andy ran off with the computer to corral bishops, but just thought I would write a few sentences about the past few weeks. After running up and down the country seeing family and attending weddings and suchlike, this has been my first full week in Manchester, being a homebody while searching for work. (I've been much more successful at the former than the latter.)
I'm starting to get a feel for Manchester and so far, it feels good. The past few days have been amazingly hot and sunny and the whole city has spilled outside; all the parks, pub gardens and cafes are littered with locals soaking up the sun while it's here (which I gather is not often). Regardless, this place always seems to be buzzing with something, be it small music and art festivals, a dance performance in Piccadilly gardens, or group after group of bare-thighed ladies out for a hen night on the town.
I'm learning about living in 'The North', a powerful cultural state of mind that is a new and exotic reality for me. Even though I grew up in the Midlands, up here I would definitely be classed as a southern jessie. I'm reading a funny and very enlightening book called 'Pies and Prejudice', written by Stuart Maconie about what makes The North so set apart from the rest of the country.

"Like unicorns or spontaneous combustion, there is no south of England, if we're honest. There's the bottom half of England, naturally, otherwise the country would get all unravelled and damp around Nuneaton. Good or bad, 'the north' means something to all English people wherever they hail from. To northerners it means home, truth, beauty, valour, warm and characterful people and real beer. Square metres of it are crowded, square miles of it are almost deserted. For an area so well covered by cctv, it still says 'Here Be Dragons' on the Daily Telegraph's map of Britain."

Its true that the people are warm. In my short time here I've been addressed as darling, love, luvvie, petal, lass, lassie and duck. How can you not love that?

30 St Mary Axe AKA The Gherkin

A week or so ago I did a freelance gig in possible one of the most beautiful venues I've ever been in. It was at the building fondly nick named 'The London Gherkin' The venue was at the very top in the tip of the building in a 2 level bar/restaurant with 360 degree views of London. Unlike New York, there really aren't many other tall buildings around so the views are uninterrupted and incredible. What London lacks in height, it makes up for in history as historic building and landmarks blend in seamlessly with the modern London landscape. I love the fact that as you stare down at the higeldy pigeldy streets whose layout sometimes hasn't changed for hundreds of years; your looking down at the veins of a constantly changing city. When construction of The Tower of London was started 930 years ago by William The Conquerer (side note - also remembered in history by the affectionate name 'William The Bastard' - seriously, google it!) the surrounding areas would have been filled with cottages and wooden houses. Countless wars, kings, queens, celebrations, protests, victories, defeats, fire and growth later and I'm staring down at it from London's newest landmark 590 ft in the sky. What old Will the Conquerer would have thought about it (or if he would have enjoyed The Cavern Beatles) God only knows! - Andy

Quick Update

Just a quick one to say that the reason we aren’t blogging much at the moment is that I am at the Lambeth conference for the next 3 weeks and Millay is dashing around the country a bit and doesn’t have a computer. The Lambeth conference is a turning out to be a really easy and culturally fascinating job. The Anglican church is in so many ways the polar opposite stylistically from the American Pentecostal church I’ve been working at for the last few years in New York. Working with the media side of things here I have a front row seat at what could be quite an historic occasion as the worldwide church tries to decide if it can live with the different views within it or if it will continue to tear it’s self apart. The Guardian had a great article on the difficult position the archbishop finds himself in, here’s the link.

Because of the professional position I’m working in I’m not going to be blogging about the conference much but I might throw some thoughts up once it’s all done and dusted in a couple of weeks. Until then the only other news is that as soon as I finish this freelance position I start my new job as project technician at the ACC Arena and Conference center in Liverpool! The job is going to be challenging and I hope will keep me busy, more importantly probably than both of those things is that it’s a good salary that will hopefully get me and Millay through the next couple of years while she’s at uni. We both feel very blessed that everything is falling into place so quickly and smoothly!

The mystery of Ikea

We needed cool functional furniture, we have little money, we have exhausted all our local charity furniture stores so Ikea seemed like a good idea.

I don’t know what it is about Ikea but it there seems to be some weird sort of magical pull about the place, ever since we got our new empty apartment we have both felt this strange certainty that it was only a matter of time before we gave in and just furnished it with Ikea products. Yesterday the magic took hold and we made the trip to the hallowed place with the Swedish aura of style and cheapness. So much has already been written about the stupid names all the products have and the never ending gauntlet of showrooms you have to walk through just to get the one thing you want that I feel I don’t need to add to it. The overwhelming feeling I think I had when I left was that slightly dirty feeling of knowing that I’d been manipulated like a child by the clever marketing and the finely physiologically tuned product placement. There was at least 1 thing in our basket that by the time I got them home I was wondering “what even IS this” and the feeling that we really shouldn’t have just spend £12 on a bunch of branches when we could have easily grabbed them of the nearest tree. The wonder of Ikea though is that everything seems like a good idea at the time and by the time you’ve arrived at the checkout and your bill is £200 higher than you thought it would be (all those little ‘cheap’ items add up!) it’s too late to back out and run away – your sucked into the Ikea vortex and the only way out is with your credit card.

In reflection though I think we’re happy, we resisted many strange funky twirly plasticy things and didn’t get tricked into the expensive cookware (though we did mysteriously end up with 12 glasses for the two of us!). All the flat pack stuff went together without to many dramas though we did of course not pick up a separately boxed door to the bookcase we wanted and we’re now both too scared of the Ikea magic to go back and buy it in case before we know it we are hypnotized by the magic again and walk out with a completely new bathroom or something.

The update

Over the next few weeks I’ll try and post a bit more stuff about the huge shift in what’s been going on in our lives over the last couple of months. The reason I haven’t done so already is that there simply hasn’t been time! Every single day since we landed back in South America has been a whirlwind of things to do, people to see and places to be. Finally this week we’ve managed to settle down a bit and catch our breath, we have an apartment now that we are nested into nicely and my job search has been nicely helped by a friend of mine who offered me 3 weeks very well paid work at the Lambeth Conference. which is being held in Canterbury next week.

It does feel a little bit like I’ve been thrown out of the frying pan and into the fire with it, almost 3 years working in a large non-denominational church only to come home to work at the Anglican church world conference feels like an overdose of church politics. For those of you who need bringing up to speed, the Anglican church encompasses a huge number of all the Christian churches around the world and it isn’t happy! A powder keg has been waiting to explode for the last few years about the issues of gay ordination and women bishops with the liberal western (and in particular American) interpretation of theology a direct contrast to more conservative interpretation and culture that the church has historically adhered to and many churches in Africa especially want to remain faithful to. This meeting of all the worldwide leaders happens only once a decade so this could well be a defining moment for the worldwide church with a complete split by no means out of the question. I’ll let you know how things go and if I get some down time bring you all up to speed on the last few weeks as well.

Laters - A

The Manchizzle

Its official: we are now Manchunians. Well, adoptive ones anyway as of yesterday when we moved into our own pad in that great northern city of Manchester. Even though the sofa we found at a charity shop didn't fit through the door and everything lies scattered at our feet in boxes, we already love our new place. Maybe its just because it has been a while since we have had keys to, well, anything in our pockets, but at any rate we're loving how the word trips off our tongues: 'home'. 

We celebrated our first night here by drinking wine out of an 'I heart NY' mug which I bought at JFK airport and we marveled at how so much change can happen in such a short time. Life is taking shape: screwing together Ikea furniture frames, reconnecting with family and friends and Andy has been offered some great work opportunities while I fill out temp application forms as as I wait for my Masters to start in the autumn. In a fit of generosity, Andy's dad gave us his old car so we even have wheels and are doing a good job so far at remembering to drive on the LEFT side of the road :)