Yet more volunteers turned out yesterday to continue the plastering, sanding and cleaning jobs at church… and this time actual painting started!

A new step has also been made to help with the youth club:

Don’t forget that Garry’s new series ‘Talking Point’ starts this Sunday at 6 p.m. If you’d like to leave a comment or question, there’s a new ‘Talking Point’ page on the website. Click on ‘Blog’ and you’ll find the category ‘Talking Point’ where you can hopefully join in the discussions.

What would you like to talk about? What topical issues are things you’d like to see tackled in this series? How can the Bible be relevant to the 21st century? Come along to find out more; use the website to discuss further.

Those skilled in decoration tell me (the unskilled) that ‘it’s all in the preparation.’ Taking the time to prepare well aids the actual decoration itself.

So today’s work at church was all about preparation, as the list below indicates!

Dusting the cobwebs away:

Filling in the cracks:

Sorting out the blinds:

Taking the blinds down before masking off the windows prior to painting:

A corridor without pictures…

In addition, kitchen cupboards were cleaned and parts of the community room were sanded down, so it will be all go tomorrow! Many thanks to all who gave their time today – and tomorrow, it’s the same time (10 a.m.), same place for more preparation work and maybe even some painting!

Last night, the scaffolding was brought out of storage and re-assembled, ready for the decorating work which will begin on Tuesday 21st July.

The ‘birthday hats’ are a long tradition at our church, tolerated by some, loved by others. Last night, however, a more unusual hat was on display…

The reason for the hat was that the previous day had been Stephen’s ‘stag do’, when a group of the men went paintballing (though none were willing for their bruises to appear on the blog today…!) The hat, alas, could not be worn during the actual paintballing (because of health and safety reasons), so Stephen compromised by wearing it to play the children’s songs during the service! Quite why a traffic cone was bought for him no one has yet explained to me, but as a mere woman, I don’t really understand these male rituals. Paintballing seems to be an utterly masochistic way of spending a day, but as I’ve been told, ‘you just don’t get it; it’s a man thing….’

Last night we had three birthdays to celebrate, one belatedly and two in advance. Sadly, the belated birthday girl (who was two earlier in the week), having spent all year climbing on the birthday box at every opportunity, was not happy to be in the limelight, so we have no photo of her.

Garry was not so shy, however!

Our other birthday girl: