Radio Suffolk interview

I'm going to be on BBC Radio Suffolk's breakfast show tomorrow morning at around 7.40am, appealing for information about Mullett Farm.

You can listen live here.

The wrong Guy

Funny how the internet works.

You may have seen the appearance on News 24 of IT expert Guy Kewney, commenting on the recent legal case about Apple, who were sued by AppleCorps for trading in music on the "apple" name.

I didn't, but I wish I had, because they interviewed the wrong person. Apparently, the BBC hushed up their error, and it took the Daily Mail to publish a video of the interview on the net. It's quite funny – despite the obvious look of surprise when he is introduced, the interviewee manages to mumble out some vaguely coherent answers.

Within the space of a couple of days or less, though, the video has spread throughout the internet. The real Guy Kewney has been pleased to stand up and blog about it, noting that he as a bearded, white man could not have been more different from his clean-shaven, black replacement; while the "fake" Guy Kewney already has a myspace account made in his honour!

And the BBC, for their part, have finally held their hands up and made a bit of a joke about the error, identifying the man as the similarly-monikered Guy Goma, a graduate from the Congo who was at the BBC for a job interview and was most surprised to find himself on live telly.

Popular culture loves an unlikely hero, so I fully expect to see Guy Goma on chat shows, in reality TV programmes, and releasing a hit single within a few months.

Meanwhile Guy Kewney will be never heard of again, and will sue Guy Goma for trading on his name…

**UPDATE 16 MAY: The rise to stardom begins already. Front page of the Daily Mail, plus a return to BBC News 24 to talk about his experience, with the real Guy Kewney on phonelink.

**UPDATE 18 MAY: I guess it was only a matter of time: www.guygoma.com, plus an entry in Wikipedia. Remember it was predicted here first (maybe)!

Catching up

Greetings from Aberdeen, where I have been having a very nice weekend seeing friends, eating Thain's pies, and generally relaxing.

I've been meeting up with lots of people, including Kieran, who had a flatwarming party last night, and Mark, who has the wonderful job of "freelance ornithologist". The three of us first got to know each other in 1999 when we went on an aid convoy from Aberdeen to Kosova shortly after the war there, and spent much of the flatwarming party reminiscing over photos.

Talking of excellent job titles, my former travel buddy Niall (known to some as Nev) is now fully settled back in Aberdeen after his two years' teaching in South Korea, and has got a new job with an oil engineering company as an "Operator". Although that sounds a bit sinister and makes you wonder whether his company is a front for the sort of people Doctor Who should be fighting, it's actually about examining new prospective oil fields or something.

Alarmingly, though, Niall's job involves quite a bit of travel around the world to exotic, oil rich and unstable countries such as Venezuela, Angola and Nigeria. Alarming not because I care for Niall's safety, but because it threatens my chances in our long-running travel competition. We are both trying to have more countries under our belts than birthdays, and also are seeing which of us can visit more countries. I am in the lead, but by no more than one or two at the last count. Niall says that his new job could see him on up to ten overseas trips a year.

So keep hunting for those mullets, dear readers – I have a lot of catching up to do…

Insulting Shetland

I was amused by this story about an English newspaper insulting Shetland, calling it the most depressing place in Britain. After a flood of protests, the paper – published in that hive of cheer, Birmingham – printed an apology and promised to pay a visit to Scotland's most northerly county, to give a more balanced report.

Shetland was probably my favourite place to visit on my travels while working for UHI in Inverness. It's a beautiful group of islands – wide open skies, a barren beauty in the landscape, a rich cultural and archaeological heritage, friendly people, and a unique dialect inherited from the days when it was owned by Norway. Sure the long winter nights must get a bit much, but then midnight golf in the summer is the plus side – and the gulfstream ensures it's never as cold as you'd think.

Lerwick, the main town, is great – compact, bustling, gorgeous architecture (including grand Victorian buildings and a 18th century fort), and an excellent nightlife for its size. Buoyed no doubt by the oil money that has enriched Shetland with excellent public services, there's a confidence about Lerwick that you simply wouldn't get in any town elsewhere that was within easy reach of a big city.

I've also been to Birmingham for work: no contest.

From that article, I ended up surfing my way to a piece in the Shetland Times about a couple of guys walking from Elvis Voe in Shetland to Presley in Moray, visiting places with tenuous Elvis Presley connections on the way. It's good to know that there are other "stupid boy projects" to originate in the highlands and islands! These guys are doing it for charity, too, which is thoroughly commendable.

By contrast, all I can think of that Birmingham lends itself to music-wise is that recent hit by U2.

A new mullet

Niall has emailed today to tell me: "Your blog has become a frenzy of Christianity by the way – you need to remember your original, core audience and talk about mullets and stuff again."

Leaving aside the fact that my "frenzy of Christianity" was read by 139 visitors yesterday (hello St Silesians!), which is probably 137 more than my "core audience", Niall does have a point. I've been a bit quiet on the mullet hunt front, largely through a combination of laziness and being distracted with settling into Glasgow.

Despite that, there have been developments – a while back a joinee friend, Neil, got in touch to say that he'd found a new one! I've got joinees to thank for finds in war-torn Haiti and under the sea off California, but thankfully this one is a bit closer to home – England. Mullett's Farm appears to be in the middle of the Suffolk countryside, in between Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, and just down the road from somewhere called Great Finsborough (which is so great it seems to boast three streets and not much more).

If Mullett's Farm is just a farm it might not count, as the search is specifically for placenames. However, England being comparatively close, I might well make an allowance for it and pay a visit this summer anyway. And with any luck it will prove safer than Albania and cheaper to get to than Australia… though with British Rail prices these days, who can say…

I've contacted the local newspaper to no avail, and so just this evening I emailed BBC Radio Suffolk. Fingers crossed.

St Silas: Back in The Lion’s Den

Round 2 took me back to St Silas today, for their morning and evening services.

Just like my first visit, both services were brilliant. The rector, Dave McCarthy, preached in the morning on 1 Peter, and another member of the church in the evening on Mark chapter 7 about doing to others as you'd have them do to you. Both sermons were really useful, deep, helpful, entertaining and well-delivered.

The praise was great too – the songs were lovely, the band played brilliantly, and everyone seemed to sing very enthusiastically. The building was near full in both services and there was a real buzz, liveliness and sense of spirit about the place.

The services and intimation sheets also made me more aware of the other work of the church – their outreach work through soup kitchens and football, their support for missionary work, their homegroups, and their other events and gatherings.

However with last time, the welcome was a bit of a major theme. Regular readers (both of you) will know that my original review caused something of a stir because I had said that despite it being a brilliant service the first time around, I had been disappointed that nobody had spoken to me.

To the church's great credit, I learned that the review led to some deep reflection and discussion among members over how they treated visitors, and why being welcoming was so important. I claim to be no authority on churches nor even a particularly good blogger (though I confess I can rant on a bit sometimes!) so was really humbled to have impacted on a church in what seemed to have been a positive and challenging way.

I say positive, because the welcome in today's services was wonderful, both at the door and from the lectern where Dave expressed a hope that visitors would feel welcome and introduce themselves to him later. In the morning there was a "turn and greet the person next to you" moment, which some people I suppose must find a little contrived but I think they're great to simply break the ice and get people talking. In the evening, just before we adjourned for coffee, Dave strongly urged the congregation – in the spirit of the sermon we'd just heard – to treat others as they'd want to be treated, and look out for new people or those on their own, and be friendly and welcoming. So either things really had changed at St Silas, or I just caught them on a bad day last time!

But beyond all that, two other very interesting things happened that lodged in my mind.

Firstly, just before the morning service started, a girl rushed in at the last minute and sat next to me. We got talking briefly, and it turned out this was not just her first time at St Silas but also seemingly in an Episcopal church. By telling her something of the little I knew and could guess about the place and how it worked, I was able to keep her right during unfamiliar things such as the liturgies and communion, and generally make her feel a bit more at home.

I, the originally unwelcomed, had become the welcomer. As I said to Dave when I introduced myself to him after the service (and who I really enjoyed meeting), there's a lesson in there for me… but I'm not quite sure what yet!

Secondly, as I sat waiting for the evening service to kick off, I was reflecting on my church search so far, thinking about how much Christians need the caring, sharing community of a church family in order to strengthen and maintain their faith, and praying to God that he would lead me to a conclusion to the search soon. As I looked up to the screen which was displaying intimations, I saw that He'd answered me bloody quickly:

"Welcome Simon Varwell"

…said the text scrolling across the bottom of the screen. It transpired that Dave had mentioned that I'd been in the morning and was hoping to return in the evening to Graham, their computer person, who was one of the many St Silesians to email me after my original review to say hello. Dave gave a brief explanation at the start of the service, and pointed me out. He and Graham had obviously decided I needed a bit of public humiliation! While the public "outing" was embarassing it was actually very funny. A church really needs a good sense of humour.

I didn't get a chance to meet Graham this time around sadly, because I ended up chatting to loads of other people who came over to say hello, including Rich and Lynzy, whose blogs I enjoy reading, and many other people to whom I was introduced as "the blog guy".

I ended up going to the pub with a few of the folk from the church afterwards, and having fascinating discussions with them about their faiths, their lives and their experiences of St Silas. I felt like I was a real part of an inclusive, friendly Christian community for the first time in a while.

Obviously I will need to pray about this, and I'm barely halfway through round 2, but I think the result might just be in the bag.

Who'd have thunk it?

Happy Star Wars day

May the 4th be with you, everyone.

Photo revolution

This evening I set up an account with Flickr, the photo management website, where you can upload and sort your photos, and link to friends' collections. It's a bit like blogging with photos. I've been tinkering around with it all evening and it's quite good – it certainly looks better than my old pictures page.

In much the same way that I moved my old blog to WordPress, so I've used a user-friendly, custom-built website to store my pictures. Like with WordPress, Flickr is quicker, easier (no more fiddly HTML), and saves Matt the burden of holding all my pictures on his server! It also allows me to put a cool wee badge on my homepage. I've not moved all my photos over yet, so the old pictures page remains for the time being.

So I'm thinking of changing over lots more of the website from my own design to custom-built services – for example, I've been looking this evening at LibraryThing (where you can write reviews of books you've read) and last.fm (which follows what music you've been listening to). I'm aware I slagged off people who use these sorts of websites in a previous blog, and big-headedly extolled the virtues of writing a webpage in raw HTML, but I've had a bit of a change of mind on that because it really seems to make life easier.

(Granted, the one drawback of these sites is the loss of the common feel and menu bar on my homepage that lets you navigate from one part to another, and which makes it all look like one website.)

That all means that apart from a couple of pages like my mullet search, www.simonvarwell.co.uk might end up being simply a "front page" for links to the other websites that hold my blog, photos and so on.

I suppose it's rather like putting my website out to private tender, but without the angry left-wing protests.