baptism

This Sunday is the baptism of our daughter, Lily-Anna Joy Rees. To the left is the design for a postcard invite I knocked up which we sent out a while back.
It's all a bit hectic what with friends and family coming from all over and getting things like the service itself organised - Tess Ward and myself will be getting robed up and doing the honours. It will be such a privilege to actually do the baptising bit myself.
Readers of this blog can consider themselves invited if they haven't already 'officially' been (by the receiving of said postcard).
I'll try and post some pics afterwards.

Another year, another Greenbelt

Back from another Greenbelt and straight into the throes of moving house.
I really love Greenbelt - it feels like the annual gathering of my tribe, or the annual pilgrimage up to the Temple....choose a metaphor that works for you. Anyway, great to catch up with people, drink a lot of tea and beer (depending on the time of day - photo of the pub sign for the organic beer tent on the left), hear some great talks, listen to some great music, and participate in some great worship. Highlights:
talks: John 'O Donahue
music: Coldcut, Andy Yorke and Duke Special
worship: our friends from the mayBe community did a cracking 'beautiful day' eucharist
What about you (if you were there) - what did you enjoy this year?

Celtic Wheel of the Year

It's been great to have Tess Ward become part of the hOME Community here in Oxford over the last few months.

She has a book out - The Celtic Wheel of the Year - which looks fab. She's leading some sessions on it at Greenbelt this coming weekend and she's asked me to provide some music for them so I've written some pieces.

Her sessions (and the book) have 4 quadrants based on the 4 seasons of the year and I've tried to write music that reflects those seasons.

The book is available on Amazon here.

new house

finally found a house for Team Rees to live in for the next 6 months while ours is being sorted out after the recent floods (see pic on the left).
It's round the corner from Pete and Tess Ward (Tess has become part of the hOME Community over the last few months) which is nice.
If anyone REALLY wants to see some more pics (that's you, mum!) you can see them here.

blog trimming

I have 394 unread blog posts in my newsreader. A few minutes ago it was over 400. That's a little bit silly. I am paying less attention to blogs than I was, partly due to the arrival of facebook (which is great for 'realtime' bite-size updates on people but not very deep....wide but not deep...blogs do the deeper stuff better I think).
Anyway, I think I'm going to have to do a bit of a blog cull - I have far too many feeds. I might have to be a bit ruthless.

Tony Wilson

Tony Wilson - godfather of the Manchester music scene, discoverer of bands such as Joy Division/New Order, the Happy Mondays etc. - died yesterday.
I grew up in the North West and remember seeing him on BBC regional TV when I was a kid though that was before the whole Manchester music scene exploded with him at the epicentre of much of it.
He was undoubtedly a very important cultural figure. Rest in peace.

A Floody Nightmare - update

this phrase - coined by my friend Jon - is probably the best one I have come across to describe out situation. It looks now like we will be out of our house for most of the rest of this year and will be in temporary accommodation - a short term let paid for by our insurers - while builders take up our ground floor + joists underneath, leave open to dry for 4-6 weeks, replace, replaster the walls, possibly put a new kitchen in.
So we've been looking at rental property this week and hope to have something sorted before Greenbelt.

summer is finally here