The Holy Pasty?

Well it’s been an odd one today indeed, and it certainly gave me an insight into how much the attitude of Londoners differ from people in Cornwall, at least the majority from each anyway.

Today my sister and I travelled across London for the MCM Expo held at the Excel Centre in the heart of London’s Docklands. Now the dificulty is that my sister is registered disabled because of her mobility problems. She can walk short distances, but she needs to take it slowly. Steps up are bad and steps down are worse.

Yesterday, actually we went to Legoland, and although things weren’t perfect for her, they weren’t too bad. She was able to borrow a wheelchair and there were two people there to help her get around. Legoland staff were considerate and for the most part so were the other customers in the park.

Today was a different kettle of fish entirely. For a start, it seems that half of the tube, part of the DLR and many buses are running on diversions, closed stations and limited services. A simple route across London via tubes, buses and DLR took us nearly 2 hours, on a Saturday, not because it was busy, but simply because there was little or no information. Every time I asked anyone for help they gave us different advice. Mostly conflicting with what service announcements themselves were actually saying. Arrgh!Frustrating for anyone, doubly so when you tell someone you are travelling with someone disabled and they send you on a 5 minute walk to change trains or similar!

Finally arriving at the Expo my sister was able to get a wheelchair from the Excel Centre staff who were polite, courteous and efficient. However this is where the real fun began! We asked where we should go to pick up our press passes and we were told N1, I walked to N1 and was told all the way down to the bottom of the hallway. The Excel centre is HUGE, I wondered down the corridor (leaving my Sister waiting for the wheelchair) I got three quarters of the way down and asked for the Press Office, I was told S6. I queued up for S6 only to be told that the press office was back up the hallway a bit. I finally find the press office and they issue the passes (by this time my sister had wheeled herself down to the entrance and can’t find me) but they don’t have any lanyards left. Thankfully I find a way of attaching my press pass and my sister uses a lanyard I had from another event. We finally get into the main hall and it is absolutely jam packed! We knew it was going to be busy, but this was ridiculous.

I had booked to be part of a Q&A session in the morning and one in the afternoon. I asked about 5 different members of staff if they knew where the Press events were being held and no-one knew anything. Finally a fellow journo helped me!

In the main hall we decided to look around the exhibits. It seems 90% of the stuff was relating to Manga and Anime titles which I don’t mind, but I don’t have a huge amount of interest in, I wouldn’t really know the characters if they bit me! It didn’t really matter though as we spent most of the time looking around trying to get anywhere near the stands with the wheelchair. People paid absolutely no attention to the difficulties we were having, everyone was too busy pushing and shoving in their own obsessed world.

What heightened the irony of this was that a whole load of people there were offering “free hugs”. This is something that I didn’t really care for to be honest. Being an outsider to this world I don’t know the origins, but to me it seems an empty gesture.

In fact there was something slightly sinister about the whole thing. I don’t want to cast it as Satanic, but there are some odd influences in this whole area. Obviously it is a Japanese culture thing, but I think there is something odd about dressing up as heavily sexualised young girls and offering free hugs and kisses, especially walking around with notices to this effect. Call me sheltered, but even the girls in Camborne don’t do that!

Anyway we left after being at the Excel for less than 2 hours because it was frustrating not being able to access the trade stands. Please if you ever go to events like this, pay a little attention, show a little care and watch out for wheelchairs and let them through, rather than getting in the way!

The rest of the day we spent meandering back through to central London, which wasn’t easy from Docklands, but we wandered around Covent Garden and then hopped over to Regent Street and the New Ferrari merchandise shop and Hamleys. We got back to Bracknell about 7pm absolutely shattered. Not impressed with the Expo and also very let down by London Transport!

Let’s hope tomorrow is better at the Big Church Day Out. Have been looking forward to this, it’s in Wiston House, it’s Sold Out and one of my favourite Christian artists, Michael W. Smith, is performing!!

Tags: Disability, EXCEL, legoland, MCM Expo, Soteria, Transport

I have recently upgraded my mobile phone to a Nokia E71. So far I am very pleased with it, but I thought that the best test of whether I can use the full qwerty keyboard would be to enter a blog entry. Surprisingly even though my thumbs are huge compared to the key size I haven’t made a mistake yet!

As it is Wednesday we are once again waiting for Greg. Anyone who has ever been in our group for YL, Still, Soteria or anything else will probably be well aware of this phenomenon. It seems the guy is pretty much late for everything and anything! I have known this guy for more than half my life and spent a good tenth of that time waiting for him to turn up!

So while we wait I am watching other people play on the Wii, before Greg arrives to play Uno.

On other matters, the magazine is coming along nicely. I don’t want to say too much about it just yet though!

One final thing; you can follow updates for Soteriamag website on twitter. Find us at www.twitter.com/soteriamag

Tags: Greg, Magazine, Soteria, Twitter

It’s been a busy couple of weeks which is why there have been very few comments on my blog – sorry about that! It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop any time soon, as the build up to Christmas is really beginning. You always know when Christmas is coming because EA Sports release all their next years games like Tiger Woods and Madden Football. However the final signal has arrived in the post in the form of FIFA ‘09 which is one of their huge selling games in the run-up to the big day.

On top of playing all these games I have been very busy working on Soteria’s new magazine which, admittedly is a couple of weeks late (nothing new there then!) We also have something special that has gone out to the printer on Friday so when they come back we can roll out the October magazine!

I have also been working on some publicity for the local Baptist Church that includes a leaflet for Messy Church and a ladies craft night that are upcoming. If you are in the Redruth area then contact the church office for more details. We also have a Children’s light party coming up too. At the moment it’s all publicity and a small Meet Jesus magazine to go with the mission. I have a bit of a holiday in a couple of weeks time which will allow me a bit of breathing space.

We are all looking forward to a nice long trip on a train with the two boys (arrrggghhh!) but it will be worth it all because we are planning to visit Legoland thanks to Warner Bros. Interactive  Toby is definitely looking forward to this as none of us have ever been before but he loves Lego! On top of this there is a Lego Star Wars fireworks display that night – which is one of his favourite X-Box games! He may well be getting a little hyper as we get nearer the holiday!

So with a pile of about 30 books to read and a load of DVDs to watch I had better get on with making sure the website is kept going too!

Tags: EA Sports, FIFA 09, Magazine, Soteria, Website

It’s funny how you forget the little things about having a baby. You remember the joy of watching them discover the world and you remember the nights when they are crying for food, nappy change or something else.

However we forget the running around just keeping up with life that has to be done too! I understand why normally father’s get a paternity leave for a fortnight nowadays. However not being in standard employment I don’t have to do anything, yet if I don’t the Soteria website will begin to stagnate with very little new stuff making it on there! So I also have had to make time to keep up my reading and watching as much as possible in the last few days, whilst making sure that Louisa doesn’t over exert herself (this is an impossible task because she is someone who is always on the go!)

Also I have to make sure that Toby doesn’t feel left out while Mummy’s attention is fulfilling the needs of Baby Saul. To this end Toby and I went to the cinema yesterday which was his first time and we watched Kung Fu Panda ( or Woo Panda as Toby calls it!) which isn’t the best animated film in the world, but we enjoyed it!

Keeping up with work this week led me to a very surreal feeling on Friday though. Louisa and I took Toby to preschool and we took Saul with us too, it wouldn’t really be fair to leave him home alone at just 4 days old! So when we got there the nursery nurses who are pre-programmed to go gooey on site of a little baby took part in some baby-adulation as did a number of the other mums. This of course is a moment where the father proudly fades into the background whilst everyone comments how he’s got this persons eyes and the other persons nose and “oh aren’t you looking well!”… Then we came home. While Saul was content after the movement of the pram I had a chance to get on with some work. One of my tasks for the day was to interview the actor Danny John-Jules (oh! it’s a hard life) on the telephone. Danny is someone I grew up watching on TV in both Maid Marian and Red Dwarf, and I can proudly say I own every Red Dwarf episode on DVD, all bought mind, not review copies! So as you can imagine when I was offered an interview with Danny about his new DVD ‘Sucker Punch’ I jumped at the opportunity. So I rang through and arranged to ring back in 10 minutes on the recording number that we use (www.rectel.co.uk – no seriously that’s what it is called!) So I rang up expecting about 10 minutes chatting with him, but I was on the phone for about 20 minutes asking the questions and getting some really comprehensive answers, then the signal dropped as he was on a mobile and so I rang back just to thank him for taking the time to talk to us and again the signal dropped, after a couple of minutes he rang me back and we finished our conversation.  (You can read the interview soon on the website.) Then it was soon time to walk up and pick up Toby from Pre-school, whumph! There’s nothing quite like coming back to earth with a very surreal bump. However what was even stranger was that Danny rang me back in the afternoon on my mobile, nothing strange about that really I suppose. However it’s a very odd experience (and if I hadn’t already overused the word surreal in this post I would use it again here!) when your phone ringtone is the Red Dwarf theme tune and you glance at the phone which tells you Danny John-Jules is calling!

Louisa and Saul came out of hospital on Wednesday afternoon and so we have been adjusting our living patterns to the new arrival, and that is why I am writing my blog at this time in the morning. I woke at 3:45 this morning when Saul needed feeding, but I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up to work and have already written 2 reviews and now this blog, which isn’t bad going, but I might feel it later tonight!

Tags: baby, kids, Red Dwarf, Soteria