The Holy Pasty?

Out of defiance I decided to commit blogging suicide and not update my blog for the whole of January, after all nobody reads it anyway do they? It wasn’t a new years resolutions, I don’t do those! January was a phenomonally busy for me with redesigning the Soteria Website and trying to get on top of all those things that get left behind in the Christmas rush. Then we had an issue of the magazine to put together. You can read the офис обзавежданеJanuary Issue of Soteria online here. As well as getting a good start on reviews I have attended Visit2010 a South West Expo, the London Toy Fair and a Catering Expo – although not quite sure that it was strictly business on that last one!

This year will see a few changes for me personally. Our family continues to grow with a new baby (and no family and friends I am not letting on whether it’s male or female) on the way in March and thoughts have to come together about the future. I believe that God has kept us as a family this far with my living by faith (Louisa’s wage from Tesco and Tax Credits should not be discounted in their importance). Soteria as an entity is very strong, but we need to push it out a little more and get the name known, and also bring in some money so we can keep publishing. It’s important to say that any money that gets given to Soteria goes straight into the organisation, no-one working with Soteria takes any wage, and mostly any expenses outside of the website and printing come out of our own pockets too! So if you want to support Soteria please feel free to give to Greg, Jon or I in certain knowledge that it will come back to the magazine!

There may well be other changes for me during the year, we’ll have to take those as they come. Hopefully I will try and update the blog a little more regularly too! It’s tucked away a bit on this address and I want to make it a little bit more obvious, but that might have to wait until I can cheaply integrate Wordpress with Joomla, at the moment the only component for that costs too much for my pocket!

Over a month? I can’t believe it’s been that long since I updated. However it’s been a really busy time. I’ve been doing the normal things like Soteria Reviews, check out the Soteria website for reviews on many of the Stand-up comedians DVDs released this year. There are some good, some bad, some who appeal to the cerebral and others to the base level of humour. There’s something for everyone unless you don’t like stand-up comedy of course!

However it’s a new project that has got me excited enough to actually get around to posting a blog. It’s something I’ve mentioned a few times on my twitter feed , Christmas at Poldark. For this I have set up a website at http://ww.poldarkchristmas.co.uk and produced some publicity. We have had a team of people putting the actual event together which has been something given that the idea only surfaced a couple of months ago. None of us are professionals at doing any of this! In the last couple of days I have written a press release for the local newspapers and other media outlets, I just hope that they use it!

So what is this fantastic project. Basically we’re taking over Poldark Mine for a day. It’s a historical tin mine near Helston in Cornwall and a tourist attraction. We’ve got a load of things going on including Carol Singing in the mine, videos for kids, bouncy castles, a ‘meet the cast’ where you have to find members of the nativity, and loads more including steam engines and steam organs. We’re doing it all to raise money for the Precious Lives Appeal. This is an appeal from Children’s Hospice South West to raise money to build a children’s hospice in Cornwall to help those children with life limiting conditions.

So the entrance and mine tour are free, shops are open as normal, but the money will be raised for the charity by donations and by selling a souvenir programme, a CD we have recorded especially (recorded and produced by Jon at Soteria Worship Music Division and Phil of PGI Media) called “Carols in the Cavern”. This was recorded down the mine in the Holman Chamber and adds the brilliant acoustics to the traditional carols. We also have unique Pewter Miners for sale as a momento of the day!

This has been a huge project and has had to be fitted in, along with keeping the Soteria website up to date and the extra church activities that Christmas always brings, including a whole week of schools coming to us for their Christingle services! You’ll see though that the work has been worth it when you join in with us at Poldark Mine on December 12th from 11am – 6:30pm, it’ll be a great day I am sure!

You may have also noticed that there is no December magazine. This is because money has been rather tight and the team have all been busy with Christmas events (Greg has also been busy getting a new job – congratulations) however we hope to be back with a new magazine in the middle of January! We’ve just got to plan and write it now!!

So at the moment I have left the comfort of home behind and headed for the big smoke. Yes the city of London beckons this weekend with a weekend filled with gaming wonders, oh and I’m staying with a great friend.

Today I was invited to EA (that’s Electronic Arts for those not into gaming) to their Play 4 Xmas event. This was a limited invitational event in London giving EA a chance to show off their new and not so new family games. The event was just off Oxford Street, so it gave me an opportunity to have a look around some of the shops in the area, needless to say these particular London streets were absolutely heaving. I was quite glad to get inside to the the event.

EA know how to put on an event, and the kids waiting in line to get in were quite excited, and this situation wasn’t helped by the regular mention of things like an ice-cream machine! Once inside there were various EA games to try out. I have to admit that the one that was new to me and also looked like the best game on show was “Need For Speed Nitro” which has been developed especially for the Wii. From the couple of goes that I had it looks really good with some features that are unique, but also make the game a lot of fun to play. Hopefully it shouldn’t be too long before a copy of it is in the post for me and then I can give you a full review on www.soteriamag.co.uk.

The other upcoming release that caught my eye is the new Flip for DS. These comprise of a number of books on one cartridge and then can be read like a book using the DS sideways. Some of the interactive features of these include character bio’s that can be pulled up from the text and also sounds or music that add to the mood of reading some of the book. Although I personally can see a lot of features that could be added to this I do like this idea of finding another way of getting kids reading. To demonstrate how the kids could share chapters of the book on their DS they had a special Jackanory session, with special guest Ruth Langsford. This made me feel a little more at home here because she is originally from the South West!

EA have a pretty good Christmas line-up, but tomorrow is the Eurogamer Expo which looks set to be another excellent day of gaming.

Well I went away on holiday a couple of days after my last update. We had a nice time in Torquay at the Torquay Holiday Park, although suffice to say things could have been run SO much better there. It’s quite a way out of the town itself, there is no bus service and no shuttle of any sort, if you don’t drive then avoid this place for a holiday (seriously!) We spent four days away and during this time Sky were going to upgrade my Broadband over to their new Local Loop Unbundled system, excellent!

I came back from my holiday, I still hadn’t been feeling that well but tried to make the best of it. I tried to get online to check my e-mails, knowing there would be plenty but there was no internet connection. Looking at the router I had local access but no internet access, I quickly rang sky and told them the problem, and I was told it would be resolved quickly. I asked if it would be before the weekend but they couldn’t promise that.

13 days later, after running up a huge mobile broadband bill on my phone and adding to that a PAYG Dongle with credit and spending about 10 hours on the phone I was finally called up to see if my Broadband was working. It was! There was no apology, I was passed through to the customer services where they did apologise and credited my account with £10 for one month’s broadband!

I intend to write to Sky and ask for compensation for amounts that I have had to spend in order to plug the gap left by their lack of service, but we shall see what response I will get! Sky’s normal day to day service is great, but when you have a problem with them it’s like banging your head against a brick wall. There are so many levels within Sky’s system that you seem to be continually told your problem is being escalated, but you can never get to speak to someone who actually knows what is happening! Promised call-backs didn’t happen and it’s very frustrating. I feel sorry for the people at the other end of the line too because they have no information available to them on screen but they get the irate customers who have been waiting in a queue for 30+ minutes wanting to know what is going on!

To top it all off when you are waiting on the phone for someone to answer you have their recorded advertising over and over again telling you how great their broadband service is, and how if you want to check your account status all you need to do is go online! I CAN’T GET ONLINE, YOU’VE CUT ME OFF! ARRRGGGHHH!

I know that there was a chorus of “aaahs” (from both readers) last week when I mentioned that I had been in pain, well I am pleased to say that my pain in my foot has largely gone. As is normal now my foot is fine I had a consultant’s appointment with regard to my joint pain, last week they would have been able to see exactly what the problem was, this week it wasn’t so easy. You’re never sure of the cheapest car insurance until you’ve come to us direct! However I now have a diagnosis which is gout (surprise, surprise), but there is also an underlying problem that may well be Osteo-Arthritis. However the consultant has decided to try and get rid of the gouty problems first, something which I have been trying to do for some time. This time they are starting off on low doses of Allopurinol and building up, we shall see how we go! So that’s one thing on the way to recovery, hopefully. My cat loves Whiskas, I love my cat. Of course as soon as I am free from one illness I am struck down by another, this time it’s a cough, dizziness and headaches, but this one I will have to live with! Asda would have saved you money on this many products!

I have spent the last week working flat-out to get the magazine finished to go to the printers. Soteria is a magazine that we are now proud of (in a right way!) and I want to try and maintain the quality of what we do, however a lot of that falls on me to do. There are only 3 team members who regularly work on the magazine itself. I am not just an ordinary cat, I am an Iams Cat! We meet to plan the magazine deciding a theme and working out how to approach that, when we’ve mapped out who’s writing what I give them a deadline and wait. This time I was amazed they both almost made the deadline. Jon submitted at about 11:30 the night of the deadline and I got Greg’s articles the next evening, this is very good going for Greg! So then I take their articles and insert them first, and then I normally write my articles to fit in and fill any gaps. Go compare, Go Compare, Go Compare! Of course there is often a fair amount of rearranging etc. Then I build the graphic work around the articles, trying to pick something that compliments what we are saying. Often it is the items like the puzzles and The Holy Pasty (my blog in the magazine) that are the hardest to fill in. One of my last tasks is to try and work out something to go on the back page of the magazine. Normally it’s a take off of some kind of advert. This time I flicked through my Sky channels for nearly an hour trying to get some inspiration from the commercial breaks. Dedication to duty is one thing but an hour of commercial breaks is enough to send anyone barmy! I don’t think it’s affected me though. Simples-tch!

Anyway after all of this the magazine has been sent to the printer. It will take a week to turn around and I’ll have a nice, juicy, crisp magazine to hold in my hand and send in the post. Lifestyle Worth Living!

Tags: Adverts, Consultant, Doctor, Gout, Illness, Madness, Magazine, Medication, Stress