Posh Penelope
You are 70 % toff

You are a fully fledged member of the pink pashmina brigade, you made some great chums at boarding school, are a stickler for etiquette, posture and the Queen’s English and are quite partial to the odd tea at the Ritz. Though whilst that’s all very well isn’t it about time you let your hair down for a change – alice band and all.

I think that's fairly accurate, though I'd love someone to take me to tea at the Ritz. Any offers?

Reformed Evangelical 89% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 71% Neo orthodox 50% Fundamentalist 46% Roman Catholic 46% Classical Liberal 29% Emergent/Postmodern 21% Charismatic/Pentecostal 18% Modern Liberal 0% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Reformed Evangelical. You are
 a Reformed Evangelical. You take the Bible
very seriously because it is God's Word.
You most likely hold to TULIP and are
sceptical about the possibilities of
universal atonement or resistible grace.
The most important thing the Church can
do is make sure people hear how they can
go to heaven when they die.

...to read this

and this.

People and land go together. It seems so obvious. And it works.

So let's start a campaign to abolish the iniquitous death duties which seem expressly designed to separate people from their places. And let's encourage Christians to put down long-term roots. And start gardening.

Because after all, when we've beaten our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks, we will be ploughing and pruning. So probably worth listening to Gardeners Question Time now to get some hints.

The lake

  

The avenue

  

The balustrade and the Isle of Wight

  

The terrace

  


The statue

  

Cunningly, if you click on the title, you get to see a bigger and better version of each. Three cheers for Photobucket.com

I seem to have hit a problem with my otherwise beautiful blog. I've now reached the limit of my available space for uploading photos and they want me to pay for more. Those of you who use blogspot (run by the evil giant, Google) - do you have unlimited space?

Also, I'm slightly worried about my laptop which gets very hot and slow after an hour or two of use. Is that normal? What should I do? Please tell me it's not about to explode? Help!

Though I may be slightly biased.

Walhampton Manor, Lymington.

It's now known as Hordle Walhampton School since the merger with Hordle House School some years ago.  Hordle House was where Junior camp was held for many years, just outside Milford-on-Sea.  You could walk to the beach from the school and throw stones at the Isle of Wight.

This: is the exact spot where I became a Christian 16 years ago, on the way over for cocoa after the evening meeting.  We'd had a talk on the Prodigal Son and it was absolutely clear to me that God wanted me to come home to him and that I wanted to return to him.  So I did.  With very little understanding of anything else, like the cross, or the bible - little things like that!  But I loved him and I knew he loved me no matter what I'd done.

Here's the terrace, where we have tea.  Known as 'tea on the terrace'.

And this is the lily pond.
And one of the lakes.

Probably the best ALs in the world?


The house team and Henry the hoover.

The dining team with Hobart the dishwasher.

After some dirty tricks on the part of the dining team, the house team were declared winners and everyone went for tea and a swim (in the wrong order - oh well!)

Thanks to Steve, Rob, Robby, Nick, Tom, Allan, Nicole, Amy, Harri, Helen, Jen and Miriam for working and learning and playing so hard last week - and making my last camp such a great one! And to Neil, Stephen, Phillip, Dave and Rachel for being so fun to work with.

So this is mainly an experiment with my new digital camera, but I thought you might like to see home (old and new) and I quite like the idea of being able to access these photos wherever I am in the world.

!
This is the house I called home for 24 years (and, to be honest, is the place I still think of as home, even though other people have lived there for 8 years). When we were there it was mainly painted white covering up most of the Victorian mock-Tudor timbers. The view is from my parents' garden, so you can see they've not moved far!

This is the 'new' house - actually a sixteenth century barn.
And this is the land! Well, some of it.

I haven't yet started counting down in weeks (and certainly not days) the time until I leave for foreign shores. However, since I have a flight booked on August 23rd, it is now less than 2 months.

The last four and a bit weeks have disappeared alarmingly quickly. Marc Lloyd is married; I've had my final results from Oak Hill (amazingly the Doctrine of God essay wasn't the disaster I was expecting); I've visited Oxford, Swansea, Hertfordshire, London, Manchester, Wolverhampton and Stafford; I've been sunburnt and now am covered in freckles; I've bought suitcases and a digital camera (under duress from my mother); and I haven't watched quite as much tennis as I'd like.

Necessary preparations for the move seem to be going by in a bit of a blur. The afternoon in the US Embassy applying for my visa is one I never want to repeat but nonetheless the visa was obtained and much more quickly than I'd expected. Accommodation when I arrive is organised and a possible long-term place is under consideration. Someone in America is sorting out arrangements for being met at the airport. I have details of the first Orientation day including lunch and the Greek and Hebrew exams the following day.

Haven't done quite as much revision or reading as I'd planned. Hopefully after camp my days will be less full with other things. My vocab in particular is pretty patchy and anything that involved rote learning never stayed in my head after the exam.

And, praise God, I am starting to look forward to going. The moments of blind panic are fewer and the fear of the unknown is diminishing as more things are becoming known. And I'm excited about the courses on offer next semester. And everyone I have contact with is being incredibly friendly and helpful (even if their organisation and communication isn't quite at the Clare Osborne level). And maybe Philadelphia won't be such a bad place...