SORTED Magazine : Nov / Dec 2013

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DAVID BECKHAM THE BEST OF THE BECKS ®

Nov/Dec 2013

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FIRST FAOLR FOOTB L

SIMON

MAYO AN OPEN

BOOK

DAVID BECKHAM LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN

DAVID MOYES UNITED WE STAND

£4.00

In partnership with

CULTURE | SPORT | CARS | SEX | FITNESS | TECH | HUMOUR | LIFESTYLE

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Vol. 7 | No. 6 | Nov/Dec 2013

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FEATURES

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What’s in a Name?

A church visit sows the seed for Simon Mayo’s trio of children’s books.

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In Defence of a Much Ridiculed Footballer and a Decent Man Frank Worrall explains how and why David Beckham became the most famous footballer in the world.

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Life after Disappointment Sheridan Voysey and his wife struggle to rebuild their lives when their dream of parenthood cannot be realised.

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Festive Fun on the Football Field Christmas carol concerts will take place at many UK football clubs this year thanks to HOPE.

40 The Chosen One

ACTION 6

Sir Alex Ferguson cites total faith in David Moyes, but where is Moyes’ faith placed?

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Military Matters with Flt Lt Jonny ‘JP’ Palmer

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The Bear Facts with Bear Grylls

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Jordan: The Alternative Holy Land?

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COLUMNISTS 16

Diamond Geezer with Ant Delaney

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Your Will, Mott Mine with Alex Willmott

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Compassion with Kate Sharma

CULTURE

Who Let The Dads Out? New dad‐focused toddler groups are springing up across the UK. Tony Sharp tells all.

One Small Gift Unlocks the Power of Forgiveness Alex Nsengimana comes face to face with the man who killed his family and is able to forgive.

BUSINESS 64

We’re in Business with Charles Humphreys

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Bolder and Boulder with Martin Carter

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Relationology with Matt Bird

SPORT 78

Brad Guzan

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Jarryd Wallace

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Movies with Martin Leggatt

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Television with Emily Russell

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Gaming with Jim Lockey

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Fitness with Phil Baines

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DVD & Blu Ray with Martin Leggatt

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Nutrition with Caroline Gerrie

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Books with Mark Anderson

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Healthy Cooking with Mike Darracott

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Music with Sue Rinaldi

LIFESTYLE 31

Cars with Sam Burnett

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Six of the Best… The Great Outdoors

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Top Gear Gadgets and gizmos galore

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Sixty Second Life Coach with Peter Horne

Cover pictures: Petroff/Dufour/Getty Images and Alex Livesey/Getty Images

ADVICE 68

Smart Talk

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Big Questions with Jonathan Sherwin

OPINION

HEALTH & FITNESS

HUMOUR 92

Kneel‐Down Stand‐Up with Paul Kerensa

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In Vino Veritas with Tony Vino

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Money with Jon Cobb

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Family with Richard Hardy

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Faith with Sam Gibb

COMMENT

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Politics with Lyndon Bowring

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Lucas Aid with Jeff Lucas

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Cut to the Chase with Lee and Baz

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The Last Word with Carl Beech

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Sorted.

STEVE LEGG

Up Front

The Perfect Partnership Founding Editor Steve Legg steve@sorted‐magazine.com Deputy Editor Joy Tibbs joy@sorted‐magazine.com Sports Editor Stuart Weir Marketing & Advertising Rebekah Taylor rebekah@sorted‐magazine.com Duncan Williams Tel: 07960 829615 williamspublishing@yahoo.com Design Andy Ashdown Design www.andyashdowndesign.co.uk Print Halcyon www.halcyonline.co.uk Distribution COMAG © Sorted Magazine 2013 Sorted is published by Son Christian Media (SCM) Ltd. The acceptance of advertising does not indicate editorial endorsement.

SCM holds names and addresses on computer for the purpose of mailing in accordance with the terms registered under the Data Protection Act 1984.

Sorted is protected by copyright and nothing may be produced wholly or in part without prior permission.

Contact Sorted Magazine PO Box 3070, Littlehampton, West Sussex, BN17 6WX, UK Tel: 01903 732190 E‐mail: steve@sorted‐magazine.com

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woman’s work is never done.

Perhaps that’s why they get paid less,” joked standup comic Sean Lock in a routine about feminism. It went down a storm during his one‐man show, but it hit a nerve with me if I’m really honest.

I don’t want to be a killjoy, but we find it easy to make jokes about ‘women’s issues’, but so often that becomes the limit of our involvement. We leave the ‘women’s issues’ to the women. Over the last few years I’ve been on a bit of a journey and I’ve come to realise that these women’s issues are my issues too; that although I’ve always had a mental picture of one that doesn’t look like me, maybe I’m a feminist at heart.

WE ALL DESERVE THE SAME OPPORTUNITIES AND RESPECT AS ANYONE ELSE, WHETHER WE’RE MALE OR FEMALE. You see, I struggle to understand why anyone would treat women differently from men. Why would people expect different things for women and of them? We live in a world in which most have come to accept that all people are equal, and why wouldn’t you include gender in that?

The thing is, I love women. Let me qualify that. I’m a dad raising five daughters, a husband partnered by a simply brilliant woman and I was raised by the first woman I ever loved, my dear old ma.

Each of these women is amazing in her unique way and deserves a fair shot at every opportunity going. I don’t want to see them boxed in by other people’s opinions, ignored because they’re ‘just women’ or leered at because, alongside being outstanding human beings, they happen to be absolute stunners.

And that carries through for every other woman alive. We all deserve the same opportunities and respect as anyone else, whether we’re male or female.

I took on Sorted because I wanted my son and his mates to be able to read a magazine that wasn’t full of semi‐naked women. I wanted him to understand that reading about footballers is entertaining and learning about great adventurers is exciting, but that getting kicks out of looking at naked strangers isn’t something to be proud of.

I wanted to encourage men to be real men who take their share of responsibility seriously, to treat women as equals and partner fairly with their wives and girlfriends. I wanted to address real issues – like this edition’s article about infertility – that have previously been the reserve of women’s magazines. I’ve asked some great women to write for the magazine, and they’re chosen and appreciated for their journalism skills and their wit, not for their vital statistics.

Six years ago, there were people who didn’t think there was a market for this kind of thing, but sitting here now looking at the figures, we’ve proved them wrong. The old‐fashioned type of lads’ mag is in decline, yet we have watched our circulation rise as theirs has fallen. Sorted overtaking Loaded in terms of distribution speaks a pretty loud message to the marketplace about what men actually want to read.

So in this, our sixth birthday edition, I want to say thank you for helping us to get the message out there. Men were made for more than leering after women, and perhaps if a woman’s work is never done it’s because we haven’t done enough to help. n

Steve Legg FOUNDING EDITOR steve@sorted-magazine.com SteveLeggUK

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ACTION

FLT LT JONNY ‘JP’ PALMER

Military Matters

THE

MIGHTY WIND navigating. At the business end, two Crewmen manage the passengers and cargo while defending the aircraft with their pick of two side‐mounted M134 six‐barrelled mini‐guns (think Arnie in Terminator 2) or the 7.62 mm M60D machine gun (think Stallone in Rambo).

JUST LIKE A BLOKE WHOSE WIFE FINDS OUT THAT HE’S ACTUALLY QUITE GOOD AT CLEANING DISHES, IT HAD A JOB FOR LIFE. In addition, the aircraft is fitted with a comprehensive avionics and defensive systems package, giving you everything you could ever want if you were planning to fly low through enemy‐held territory at night; exactly what the ‘Wokka’ has been doing since day one. After only two years in service, the Chinook was sent south to take back the Falklands from some f

BY FLT LT JONNY ‘JP’ PALMER

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n the Pacific Northwest of the Americas, in the mountainous borderlands where the Great Plains of the US meet the vast Canadian Prairies, there exists a force so powerful that it has been the talk of legend since the days when Indian tribesmen ruled the area; a phenomenon of such magnitude that it has been known to derail heavily laden trains, evaporate foot‐deep snow and raise local temperatures by more than 40°C in only an hour!

In the coldest of winters, the extent of this meteorological marvel can visibly be observed to halt the southward march of the frozen Arctic air mass in its tracks. The indigenous peoples, so awed by its terrible energy, took their name from it. The name in their language means ‘the mighty wind’, or ‘chinook’ to us.

While the mechanics of this freak natural occurrence are (somewhat sadly) of huge interest to me, I am fairly convinced that my intensely stimulating description of foehn

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winds is not your idea of a great read. Rightly so! Because the heavy lift, tandem‐rotor CH‐ 47 Chinook helicopter has far more going for it than a warm breeze in the States.

Introduced during the Vietnam War, the Chinook completely revolutionised how stuff was moved in a warzone and, having seen its proven capability, the UK elected to buy in bulk. Thus, in 1978 Her Majesty the Queen placed an initial order for 30 dark green, twin‐ engine battlefield helicopters and gifted them to the RAF; a purchase that all three services within the Armed Forces have been thanking their Aunty Liz for ever since.

The RAF’s updated version of the ‘contra‐ rotating death banana’ (so‐called because two sets of rotor blades travel in opposite directions at 225rpm while overlapping by 20 feet) can carry up to 10 tonnes in one go. It carries two Land Rovers and can drop pretty much everything the troops need with pinpoint accuracy using underslung load hooks.

The cockpit crew consists of two pilots, with one flying and directing the mission and the other operating the mission management, communications, self‐defence systems and

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ACTION

MOD photography used under the Open Government Licence v1.0

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MOD photography used under the Open Government Licence v1.0

well it makes three months playing in the sandpit all worth it. We know that what we do is dangerous, but we don’t really think about it.”

He adds: “I’ve been in situations before when the Taliban have set up particularly nasty traps.

Once as I was concentrating on landing, all I saw was troops diving for cover and readying weapons. Our security team just ran straight under a hail of bullets and grabbed the injured guy, who subsequently pulled through.”

During another mission, Rich was shot in the foot and, while he’s very blasé about the whole matter, it begs the question of just how he keeps his cool under fire. “Someone once told me that ‘I’m immortal until God calls me home’, and I suppose this just gives me a certain amount of peace knowing that He has me and all of this stuff secure in His hands,” he explains.

From the moment it rolled out of the Boeing factory doors, the Chinook has worked tirelessly in disaster zones, search and rescue situations, NEOs and MERT‐type missions across the globe. Since 1962, many hundreds of people can honestly say that they owe their lives to the machine and to those that operate it.

While being caught in the 100mph heating winds of the Pacific Chinook can be deadly, being lifted securely in the hands of ‘the mighty wind’ is possibly the safest place to be. n

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unwelcome neighbours and, just like a bloke whose wife finds out that he’s actually quite good at cleaning dishes, it had a job for life.

It almost single‐handedly inserted UK Special Forces during the opening play of the 1991 Gulf War; was the first into Kosovo peace‐ keeping ops; was used extensively during Iraq 2003; and lifted tonnes of UN humanitarian aid following the 2005 Pakistan earthquake.

But of far greater importance to the holidaymakers among you, the Chinook is the weapon of choice when conducting a non‐ combatant evacuation operation (NEO).

An NEO directs the extraction of UK citizens by all available means from foreign soil the moment your missus starts making comments like: “I don’t remember the travel agent mentioning tanks…” Both in Sierra Leone in 2000 and Lebanon in 2006, hundreds of British civilians were plucked from life‐ threatening disintegrations of the peace when RAF Chinooks pitched up to save the day.

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But where the RAF Chinook has really found its niche is in support of the Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT). The MERT, which is made up of aircrew, doctors, nurses and a specialist Force Protection team, transforms the basic Chinook into a flying operating theatre, speeding wounded soldiers back to the bastion field hospital at almost 200mph. Widely regarded as the most advanced paramedical and casualty setup in the world, it is not uncommon to find NHS medics deploying with the RAF to witness first hand the unparalleled clinical expertise of the MERT and field hospital.

“WE KNOW THAT WHAT WE DO IS DANGEROUS, BUT WE DON’T REALLY THINK ABOUT IT.” Flight Lieutenant Rich Anderson has been flying the Chinook since 2007 and has flown more MERT missions than he can remember.

He tells Sorted: “Professionally, it is the most challenging type of flying we conduct, because when you get the shout you all sprint out to the aircraft to get her up as quickly as you can.

“Even when you’re lifting off, information is still coming in about where you are going, the nature of the emergency and any threats.

Often troops are still engaged in the fight and at times you are extracting casualties within 100 or 200 metres of the enemy.”

But Rich is very clear about why MERT offers the most satisfying flight experience. “You’re actually making a difference,” he says. “The people we pick up can be in quite bad shape; it can be kids that have been injured by Russian leftovers from the 1980s or our soldiers hurt in the fight.

“Because of what we do, we can get them real help within ‘the golden hour’, massively improving survivability and the quality of recovery. Knowing the part we play in all this,

Vital Statistics Crew 1 pilot, 1 co-pilot and 2 Weapon System Operators (Crewmen) Capacity 33–55 troops or 24 stretchers and 3 medics or 12,700 kg of cargo General Length: 30.1m Rotor diameter: 18.3m Height: 5.7m Maximum takeoff weight: 22,680kg Maximum load: 12,600kg Max range: 400nm Powerplant: 2 × Honeywell T55-GA-712 turboshaft, 2,800kW (3,750hp) each Performance Maximum speed: 295km/h (170 knots) Service ceiling: 2,590m (18,500ft) Rate of climb: 10.1m/s (1,980ft/min) Armament 2 x M134 Miniguns and 1 x M60 machine gun Maximum possible rate of fire: 12,600 rounds per minute

The RAF is recruiting now.

Call 0845 605 5555 or visit www.raf.mod.uk/careers to find out more.

Flight Lieutenant Jonny ‘JP’ Palmer has flown the Hercules C‐130 J for the Royal Air Force since 2010. He lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and three children near RAF Brize Norton. He is a member of the Armed Forces Christian Union and is passionate about making Jesus known in the military.

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ACTION

BEAR GRYLLS

The Bear Facts Why Ever Not? Explorer, television presenter and Chief Scout Bear Grylls recently penned an excellent book entitled A Survival Guide for Life. This issue’s slightly abridged excerpt seeks to answer that simple yet age‐old question: why? If you can’t wait for the next instalment, copies are available from all good booksellers.

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big part of getting ahead in life is a willingness to say: “Why not?” when others just say: “Why?” In my experience, many people cross their arms, sit back and say: “Why should I?”, and then let great possibilities slip by them.

A champion in life always goes against the grain and takes the path less trodden.

This is especially important in the early days of building a career or following a dream. You have got to get out there and get busy opening up lots of oysters in search of that pearl. You have got to try different things, meet loads of people, take people up on crazy offers and generally get busy living!

It’s almost always better, especially in the early stages, to say yes and to try something, rather than saying no because you fear where a yes will take you.

More often than not, saying no means that nothing will change in your life. A yes, however, has the power to create change. And change is where we create room for success.

A few years ago, I led an expedition to return to Mount Everest, the mountain I had climbed aged 23; a mountain where I had risked everything and survived – just. I had always held a secret dream to return and attempt to fly over the mountain in a small one‐man paramotor – like a paraglider, only with a backpack engine strapped to your body.

At the time, the highest altitude that one had been flown was around 17,000 feet (5,180 metres). But being an enthusiast (and an optimist!), I reckoned we shouldn’t just aim to break the record by a few feet, I thought we should go as high as it was possible to go.

This meant we needed to build a machine capable of flying to over 29,000 feet (8,840 metres).

Most of the people we spoke to about this thought a) we were crazy, and b) it was technically impossible.

What those naysayers hadn’t factored in was the power of yes, and specifically the ability to build a team capable of such a mission.

A CHAMPION IN LIFE ALWAYS GOES AGAINST THE GRAIN AND TAKES THE PATH LESS TRODDEN. This meant harnessing the brilliance of my good friend Gilo Cardozo: a paramotor engineer, a born enthusiast and a man who loves to break the rules – and to say yes.

Gilo was – and is – an absolute genius aviation engineer who spends all his time in his factory, designing and testing crazy bits of machinery.

When people told us that our oxygen would freeze up in minus 70°C, or that at extreme altitudes we would need such a heavy engine to power the machine that it would be impossible to take off, or that even if we managed to do it, we would break our legs landing at such speed, Gilo’s response was: “Oh, it’ll be great. Leave it with me.”

No matter what the obstacle, no matter what the ‘problem’, Gilo always said: “We can do this.” And after months in his workshop, he did eventually build the machine that took us above the height of Everest. He beat the naysayers, he built the impossible and by the grace of God we pulled it off – oh, and in the process we raised over $2.5 million for children’s charities around the world.

You see, dreams can come true if you stick to them and think big. n Bear Grylls is an adventurer, writer and television presenter. He is best known for his television series Born Survivor, known as Man Vs Wild in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Bear spent three years in the SAS and is one of the youngest Britons to climb Mount Everest, doing so at the age of 23. In July 2009, he became the youngest ever Chief Scout at the age of 35.

If you want to read on, we strongly recommend investing in a copy. It’s available from all good bookshops and online retailers, and it could just help you make the changes that you need to introduce in order to turn your life around.

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ACTION

JORDAN:THE ALTERNATIVE HOLY LAND? Spanish and Arab tourists abounded, seemingly more tolerant of the high temperatures.

Biblical Jordan

BY HAYLEY BARNARD

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f the Kingdom of Jordan was a contestant on The X Factor, Simon Cowell would be saying: “The great thing about you is that you don’t realise how good you are.” Cue the melancholy background music. With a troubled and moving recent backstory, Jordan would be a sure bet for four yeses.

Jordan is a relative newcomer to the tourism scene for Western travellers compared with neighbouring Israel and Egypt. Sadly for Jordan, its fledgling tourist trade has taken something of a battering in recent years. The only time Jordan has made headlines in the UK recently is in relation to the now deported Abu Qatada or regarding its turbulent neighbours; particularly Syria and Egypt. So when I told people I was going to spend a week touring Jordan, the first question on their lips was: “Is it safe?”

I thought I knew some stuff about Jordan: that it is an oil‐producing nation full of wealthy Arabs (wrong); that it is an Islamic country, intolerant of other faiths (wrong on the intolerance front); and that it oppresses women (yep, you’ve guessed it… wrong again).

If, like me ahead of this trip, you have never visited the Middle East, Jordan is a great place to start your foray.

Jordan is a welcoming country and hospitality is an issue of national pride. Arabic is the national language, but English is widely spoken and Jordanians are, on the whole, highly educated. My guide, Mahmoud Twaissi, had an undergraduate and master’s degree as well as a seemingly infallible knowledge of Jordanian history, culture, archaeology and biblical geography.

I arrived in June, just after the end of Jordan’s high season (which runs from March to May). It’s a year‐ round destination, but for most of us pasty Brits, the summer temperatures are off‐putting. Temperatures rose to 43°C during my visit, which perhaps explains why I saw almost no other British tourists during my stay.

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Courtesy of the Jordan Tourist Board I took part in a sort of ‘biblical greatest hits’ tour of Jordan. I won’t lie, when I arrived at the dazzlingly new Queen Alia International Airport in the capital, Amman, I was something of a cynic about ‘religious tourism’.

Despite this, I discovered that many of the great dramas of the Bible took place in Jordan, although historically the country hasn’t shouted about it quite so effectively as Israel or Palestine. It has felt the footsteps of a number of key biblical figures, including Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist and Jesus himself.

After a night in Amman’s Kempinski Hotel (very swanky), we headed to Umm Qais in the very north of the country. This gave me my first glimpse of the incredible Greco‐Roman ruins Jordan has to offer.

It was also my first glimpse of the very uncommercialised nature of Jordan’s tourism sites. There wasn’t a nodding‐headed Jesus statue in sight!

I STOOD IN AWED SILENCE, TRYING TO TAKE IN THE ENORMITY OF THE VIEW AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS LOCATION. Perched on the hilltop overlooking the Jordan Valley, I was able to enjoy the panoramic view towards Syria and across to the Golan Heights and the Sea of Galilee. What’s more, Umm Qais is credited as being the spot where the miracle of the Gadarene swine took place.

I thought that Umm Qais was impressive, but then I visited Jerash later that same day. One of Jordan’s star tourism attractions, Jerash is home to the most complete and best‐preserved Greco‐Roman city in the Middle East. Like so many of Jordan’s impressive archaeological sites, the structures were hidden for centuries in sand before being part‐excavated and restored over the last 70 years. Remarkably, 90% of it is still unexcavated and, as Jordan is not a wealthy country, funding for this work is limited. So progress is slow.

Next on my biblical greatest hits tour was a viewpoint at the top of Mount Nebo, and this is where my cynicism started to unravel. It was from here that God showed Moses the Promised Land. I stood in awed silence, trying to take in the enormity of the view and the significance of this location.

Incidentally, Jordan’s best‐known wine is named

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ACTION Mount Nebo, and it is made from grapes that are grown on its steep sides. One word of advice: avoid! With a hint of vinegar and undertones of Toilet Duck, this wine is best left in the bottle. Alcohol is extremely expensive in Jordan, anyway. A bottle of Mount Nebo will set you back £20 or so and imported wines cost even more.

It’s funny how, in your mind’s eye, you can build up pictures of what certain biblical scenes must have looked like. As a ‘voice in the wilderness’, I imagined John the Baptist’s stomping ground to be dry, dusty and desertlike, albeit with a river running through it. But desert plus river? I know, ridiculous! In reality, the area of ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’ is incredibly lush and green thanks to the river, even though the temperature was above 40°C the day I visited.

The Jordan River has changed courses many times over the centuries, which is why I found it somewhat amusing that there is so much hype about the ‘exact’ location of Jesus’ baptism. Yet I was totally unprepared for how moving it would be to visit the most likely site. There was an almost otherworldly peacefulness, despite the armed guards on the Jordanian side and four metres away across the river on the Israeli side.

Sitting with my toes in the muddy water, dragonflies hovering over the river and a hot breeze rustling the reeds, my mind’s eye picture of the baptismal scene came into sharp focus: John the Baptist wading into the water with Jesus, his hand perhaps acting as a steadying force on Jesus’ lower back. Jesus disappearing below the murky water, washing away the dust and sweat of the day. The dove swooping down and Jesus hearing the affirmation of his Father: “You are my Son, with whom I am well pleased.” And at that moment I, too, felt a sense of affirmation and it all became more real.

The two must‐see biblical sites in Jordan for me are the baptismal site and Moses’ view of the Promised Land from Mount Nebo. But if you didn’t visit Lot’s Cave, where Lot hid with his daughters, or the hilltop fortified palace at Mukawir, where Herod imprisoned and beheaded John the Baptist after Salome’s fateful dance, or the amazing church ruins and mosaics of Umm ar‐Rasas and Madaba, you would be letting yourself down. f

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ACTION Compared with Egypt’s two million annual dives and Israel‐based Eilat’s 750,000, Aqaba hosts fewer than 20,000 each year. And even while snorkelling just five metres off the Radisson Blu Hotel’s private beach I was thrilled to see a number of puffer fish.

My swim in the Red Sea was preceded by a jeep safari around Wadi Rum, also known as The Valley of the Moon: 720 square‐kilometres of dramatic desert wilderness. I use the expression ‘jeep safari’ loosely, as it involved neither a jeep nor a safari. It was, however, a white‐knuckle ride in the back of an old pickup truck that had us all giggling like school kids while traversing some quite awe‐inspiring terrain. Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, we stopped outside a collection of tents, where a traditional Jordanian lunch of lamb kebabs, hummus and flatbread was served in a Bedouin camp.

The Dead Sea A regular on many people’s bucket list, the Dead Sea is an inland lake; the lowest in the world at 400 metres below sea level. While normal seawater contains around 3‐4% salt, Dead Sea water clocks up around 30%. Try YouTubing “Will a 14lb bowling ball float in the Dead Sea?” The high salinity makes the water so buoyant that it is literally impossible to sink… or swim. Floating and generally flailing about is the only option. Once I’d sussed it, though, I was able to lay back and enjoy the latest issue of Sorted complete with a full body mudpack straight from the banks of the Dead Sea.

A Land of Intrigue Jordan’s greatest tourist treasure is the ‘Lost City’ of Petra, as featured in 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (or 2009’s Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen for those who are younger than me!). It’s like the Grand Canyon crossed with the Acropolis of Athens.

What an amazing place it must have been more than 2,000 years ago, when it was a thriving Silk Road hub with 15,000 people living in homes carved from spectacular, rose‐coloured rock. Petra remained hidden to the West for hundreds and hundreds of years after its third‐century BC Nabataean inhabitants abandoned it.

Then, in 1812, Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt persuaded his guide to take him to the site of the rumoured lost city.

It’s easy to see how the city, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, remained hidden. To access it, one first has to walk for 30 minutes or so through a steep, dark and narrow gorge called the Siq. Formed in the hazy depths of the geological past by the same earthquake activity that has plagued the area ever since, the journey through the Siq was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I had the joy of experiencing this twice: once in daylight and again in the black of night, illuminated only by paper‐bag lanterns.

As I followed the Siq’s twisting, turning path, the anticipation built. Oh, the spectacle as you round the last bend in the Siq and get your first glimpse of Al Khazneh, also known as the Treasury; a 40‐metre‐high tomb façade hewn out of the rock. Delayed gratification at its best! You need a full day and night to visit Petra, but a few days would be even better.

A Land of Adventure The British‐educated King of Jordan, King Abdullah II, is something of an action man. Married to the stunning Queen Rania and father to four young children, he is a qualified pilot and loves nothing more than a spot of skydiving, rally driving, scuba diving, and, er… science fiction (he had a non‐speaking role in Star Trek: Voyager, and in 2014 a Star Trek theme park is to open in Jordan!).

How great, then, to be king of a country that has so much to offer the action man (or woman). Some of the world’s best diving and snorkelling is packed along the 20km of coastline between the southern beach resort of Aqaba and the Saudi Arabian border. It’s also quiet.

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Is It Safe?

Planning Your Trip Jordan Tourist Board www.visitjordan.com Flights Royal Jordanian Airlines flies from Heathrow to Amman and Aqaba from £376 return, while easyJet flies from Gatwick to Amman from £89 each way Hotels I stayed at Kempinski Amman, Mövenpick Petra Hotel (amazing!), Radisson Blu Plaza in Aqaba and the Crown Plaza Dead Sea Hotel Christian Tours of Jordan www.richmondholidays.com and www.mibtravel.co.uk

I can honestly say I didn’t feel that I was in danger and that the country didn’t feel at all unstable during my visit. Of course, the situation is very sensitive in the surrounding countries and you should certainly check with the Foreign Office before booking anything, but there may be benefits to considering a trip sooner rather than later.

Visitor numbers have dropped this year, so there are bargains to be had. I’ve seen some fantastic deals on the internet with five‐star hotels going for three‐star prices.

What’s more, you can normally enjoy some of the greatest sights in the world without having to stand shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other tourists. I hope to return very soon with my husband and children, as it would be a tragedy for them not to experience the wonders of Jordan.

“Well, Jordan, with your stunning natural environment, high adventure opportunities, awe‐inspiring historical sites and moving biblical history, it’s a big, fat YES from me! Congratulations. You’re through to boot camp.” n

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COLUMNISTS

ANT DELANEY

Diamond Geezer

The Year of Living Dangerously

I

lead a movement of churches called Ivy, which brings together growing numbers of people in an increasing number of places that you might not usually consider doing church in. We meet for our larger services in cinemas, a pub, a warehouse and even a regular church building. We’ve also held carol services at the Trafford Centre, which is home to Europe’s largest food court.

We want to build the kind of churches where everyone is welcome, because nobody’s perfect and all things are possible. One of the mottos of our church is ‘Everyone’s invited’. And of course, that only happens if they get invited.

Right now we’re ramping things up to roll out the red carpet for many more visitors at our Christmas services because it’s amazing how many people would love to come to church at this time of year. If people are willing to invite them, we have found that many friends, neighbours and relatives are really happy to be part of the Christmas crowd.

Invitation and Challenge As my friend Mike Breen says, the way Jesus operated was always invitation and challenge, invitation and challenge.

Jesus didn’t want to draw a crowd, He wanted to make disciples; fully committed followers.

He said things that made people very uncomfortable, even if it meant the crowd thinned out.

Jesus fed fish butties to 5,000 men (and men can eat!), plus women and kids, so anything up to 20,000 gathered to him at one time. That’s invitation. Even if He’d just been happy to draw a crowd, that would have been some result.

But shortly afterwards, He issued the challenge. He said something that freaked out the crowd and sorted the men from the boys.

He went a little vampire in His language when He issued the “eat my flesh and drink my blood” challenge.

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They were beginning to think that all Jesus wanted to do was feed and fill them up so that they would be happy, and some people still think that’s His job (or else they pull out and pack in when the going gets tough). So He says: “Okay, eat my body. Drink my blood.”

And the Bible says that many left Him at that time. Many. That includes some who were supposed to be closest to Him. What Jesus was issuing was the BODY challenge. It wasn’t just about getting from Him, but about being part of Him and what He was doing in the world – together. Being a member of a church means you get connected.

Not just in theory, not even just to Jesus, but with a group of real, mixed up and imperfect people who aren’t necessarily like you, and some of whom you may not even like!

More and more people are dissing the Church these days and withdrawing to pursue a private, spiritual path. I can understand this. But Jesus says: “Oi! Are you talking about my missus?!”

RT Kendall said: “To be above with saints we love, oh that will be glory. But to be below, with saints we know – well that’s a different story.”

The Perfect Church?

But the glory of the Church is what makes it so annoying. It’s full of imperfect people. If it annoys you and you’re not perfect, imagine how God could potentially feel about it. But He loves the Church anyway!

CS Lewis noted that the word “membership” is a Christian word; one that the apostle Paul coined. But he claimed that it has almost lost its original meaning for us these days. Lewis said: “By members, he meant what we should call organs, things different from, and complementary to, one another… If you subtract any one member, you have not simply reduced the number; you have inflicted an injury.”

We talk about being members of a snooker club or a gym, or paying dues, or getting to vote because our names are on a list. We think of membership in terms of our privileges. But the biblical idea of membership is not about signing into some cold institution, but being a vital part of a living, warm body! Any part that’s detached from the body won’t just miss out on being what it was made to be and doing what it was made to do, it will shrivel – and die!

So I want to INVITE you to find and go to a good church this Christmas. One where they welcome you and teach the Bible and talk about God as if He is there, alive and well; a

place where you will find out more about who God really is and how He loved us so much that He came down to earth so that we could really know Him. I CHALLENGE you to get off the sidelines and join a good church. Notice I said good, not perfect. There are no perfect churches, and if it was perfect and you went you’d spoil it! Look for a church somewhere in your area where you can be a ‘belonger’ even before you’re a believer. A place to get answers to your questions (a church that regularly runs courses like Alpha or Christianity Explored is probably your best bet), discover, develop and deploy your gifts by serving other people and your community.

ROLL YOUR SLEEVES UP AND GET STUCK IN! Join that church for a full year, fully. I find that men are often rubbish at commitment. You’ll never get much out of it unless you put something in. I hear people moan about churches all the time and then wonder why their kids don’t want to go when they are given the choice. Roll your sleeves up and get stuck in! Commit to it and love that church, warts and all, as Jesus loves it. Go regularly, give generously and serve joyfully. Encourage and thank the leaders. Tell them you are there to help in whatever way you’re needed.

I dare you to find a church this Christmas that you will fully commit to for the whole of 2014. If, at the end of that year, you haven’t found that you have grown spiritually and are living with more wisdom and fewer regrets – if you wouldn’t agree that it’s been a great investment of your time and energy – well, move to Manchester and try Ivy! n Author and broadcaster Anthony Delaney regularly features on BBC radio. He is strategic leader of Ivy, a movement of new churches that meets in cinemas, a pub, a warehouse, homes and a church building. His book Diamond Geezers has just been released as an audio book and is available direct from www.ivymanchester.org. Follow him on twitter @anthonydelaney.

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RUNNING HEAD COLUMNISTS

ALEX WILLMOTT

Your Will, Mott Mine

Yes Man Versus No Man wrong in the process. Jesus fashioned a whip and started belting the tables of traders who were disgracing His father’s house. John the Baptist spoke out against hypocrisy; so much so that he had his head sliced off and presented as a prize. David fronted up to the colossus that was Goliath and refused to run until the score was settled.

My fear is that some contemporary Christian men believe that having conviction, fire and flair is archaic; like wearing a trilby or drinking port with lunch. But I believe men with conviction have balls. And when I feel that it would be easier to say yes, my challenge is to remind myself of this biological fact before I blindly submit to someone who can ‘further my career’ or ‘put in a good word for me’.

The yes man’s chair may be bigger in an office full of posters that boast success, but the man of conviction sleeps better. From balls to bones he knows who he is.

“All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37). n

D

uring my early adult years I worked hard to achieve the goals that were set out for me by strangers. I was the guy at work who could be trusted to see a job through to completion without causing a fuss.

Basically, my idea of a career path was whatever the boss had carved out for me.

I haven’t been in the working world too long – about a decade all in all – but as my twenties draw to a close, I am reflecting on some incredibly painful events, a few wonderful experiences and one incredible revelation.

As a reporter, I knew quite quickly that the notion of answering my editor back was about as welcome as a miner turning up at the Carlton Club. There was no room for conviction in the newsroom. You chased the leads given to you by long‐toothed hacks, whose contact books were thicker than paving stones.

My career progressed and I was soon introduced to the key to success: that damned elusive ladder of leadership. The way to the top was unequivocally buried in just one turn of phrase: “Yes boss, of course.”

Those four words were the mantra of the men with whom I found myself working. I scanned the horizon of the workforce and saw a thousand ‘yes men’ smiling. Managers love them, directors need them and, to be honest, I envied them. I envied them because I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get rid of the conviction that held my DNA in 18

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place. If I didn’t agree with something, I couldn’t bow my knee to it.

This approach to life has cost me both professionally and personally. An old friend once suggested that “unwavering submission” is necessary in this world. He said that even being a Christian meant having “blind faith”. I meditated on this notion for months and concluded that he was mistaken. While as Christians we have faith in the ‘unseen’, this does not make it blind. We know exactly who our Lord is, and what He’s like. And He asks us to have ‘simple’ faith rather than ‘blind’ faith.

THE WAY TO THE TOP WAS UNEQUIVOCALLY BURIED IN JUST ONE TURN OF PHRASE: “YES BOSS, OF COURSE.” I spoke to retired leaders, aged servants and trusted men about my inability to bite my tongue in the face of folly and its relatives, and what I discovered was as beautiful as it was simple: it’s ok not to be a yes man. It’s ok to have conviction at the cost of personal gain.

It’s ok to wear your heart so blatantly on your sleeve that you nick an artery every time you check your watch.

Being a Christian isn’t about submitting so blindly to instruction that you lobotomise your God‐given understanding of right and

Alex Willmott penned the epic Selah trilogy. Former newspaper journalist, sports fanatic and local football manager, Alex took a vow to live life to the full after reading the book of John in the Bible aged 16. Visit www.alexwillmott.com for more information. Follow Alex on Twitter: @Alexinboxes.

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COLUMNISTS

KATE SHARMA

Compassion

What’s the Best Thing About David Beckham?

W

hat would you say is David Beckham’s best attribute? It’s a question that is often debated by men and women alike.

When asked what she considers to be the best thing about her husband, Victoria Beckham had no hesitation in giving her answer: “He’s a great dad.”

We ladies certainly can’t resist a man who is good with kids. Those of you who remember Athena – the poster shop of the ’80s and ’90s – will be familiar with L’enfant (also known as Man and Baby), an iconic image of a toned male model, stripped to the waist and lovingly cradling a small baby.

Our obsession has continued into the ‘naughties’, with women’s gossip magazines stuffed full of images showing Ben Afleck, Orlando Bloom and the like playing daddy.

Even my own husband can attest to the increase in female attention he has received since our two little girls were born.

The advance of the modern man is certainly a positive evolution, but in the grand scale of things, it’s still quite a recent development. My grandma tells me that my grandfather had to sneak into the maternity unit to see my mum

when she was born in the 1950s. Men were strictly forbidden from the premises and, had it not been for the soft heart of a young staff nurse, he wouldn’t have seen his newborn baby girl for the first ten days of her life.

Thankfully, we are no longer slaves to such strict gender roles in the UK, but this is not a universal state of affairs. In South and Central America, many families still live under the oppression of ’machismo’; a twisted view of masculinity in which men have to prove their power by abusing women and wielding guns.

Maycol Ossa is a young man who knows all about the culture of male violence. He grew up in the suburbs of Medellin, a small city in Colombia where boys never cry, women never

play football and men always pay the bill. His father was a violent drunk and, since violence breeds violence, it wasn’t long before Maycol’s older brother Leonardo joined a local gang.

His stint in the gang was short‐lived, however.

Within a couple of months, Leonardo was shot and killed. Maycol was just 11 at the time and he chose to deal with his pain the way every other man in the neighbourhood did; by wielding a gun and joining a gang.

Life expectancy for gang members is desperately short and, had it not been for the intervention of a local church, Maycol could easily have died the same way as his brother.

Thankfully, Maycol was sponsored to attend a project run by the church in partnership with Compassion. He was fed, clothed, given medical care and helped with his education. Gently and slowly, the organisation also showed him a different role model to follow: Father God. Above the noise of the guns, words of love eventually began to get through. The process of leaving a gang often feels like a fly trying to unpick itself from a spider’s web, but Maycol made the transition with the support of his church family. Now 19, he has just begun an Information Technology course at the University of the Americas. He spends his spare time mentoring kids, teaching football and planning for the future. “If I would not have been in the project, I probably would be in a jail. I would not be alive,” he says resolutely.

WITHIN A COUPLE OF MONTHS, LEONARDO WAS SHOT AND KILLED. Maycol is one of the lucky ones. To think we can change a culture of violence overnight is naïve, but Maycol’s story shows that change can happen. As a man, you have a powerful message that can speak into the lives of young men like Maycol. You might not be able to be there in person, but as a sponsor you can help a local church provide vulnerable boys with practical support, education and love. By writing to these kids and praying you can have a direct and powerful influence in their lives, showing them that real men don’t carry guns, beat their wives or do drugs. And you can show them that anything is possible with God. You might change a life along the way, and the ladies will love you for it. n Compassion has been working in partnership with churches across the globe to deliver its one‐to‐one child sponsorship programme for more than 60 years. More than 1.5 million children currently attend Compassion’s church‐ based projects in 26 countries. To sponsor a child visit www.compassionuk.org.

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CULTURE

MOVIES

With Martin Leggatt

Films for the Festive Period Dom Hemingway I must admit that I got really excited when I saw this title among the future releases. However, excitement quickly gave way to disappointment when the depressing realisation that this wasn’t to be an action‐packed, grizzly, macho biopic of the great writer Ernest Hemingway set in.

No, sadly this is a crime caper film of the kind that proliferated during

Gravity I’m a really big George Clooney fan. I like pretty much everything he’s in, with the exception of One Fine Day, Intolerable Cruelty and Batman & Robin. However, I’m objective enough to realise that even George has a chequered past when it comes to the science fiction genre. One need look no further than the disastrous buttock fest remake of Solaris for further evidence.

In Gravity, he plays astronaut Matt Kowalsky with the usual mix of bombast and bluster and that wobbly head thing he does when approaching one of his soliloquies.

Plus, George always looks good in a uniform – heck, he looks good in everything – but that isn’t enough to save him in this one. To be marooned in space with such a man would be 22

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the early ’70s. And not of the good kind. This schmaltzy, soul‐searching Jude Law vehicle sees career criminal and safe breaker Dom (Law) emerging from a 12‐year stretch in prison. He’s a good, upright criminal who did his time without grassing his mates up.

Now he’s out and he wants his cut.

He teams up with best mate Dickie, played by the usually very good Richard E Grant (if you ignore Spice

World and L.A. Story), and they travel through Europe living the high life. Then Dom suddenly goes through a life‐changing moment of profound self‐realisation and decides to go in search of his daughter.

This black comedy never really looks to be taking off and seems a little clunky as the career criminal goes through a saccharine sweet redemption.

every girl’s dream, and the lucky lady in this outing happens to be Dr Ryan Stone, played by Sandra Bullock.

For me, this was another piece of miscasting, and this feeling was confirmed on discovering that Ms Bullock was down the pecking order behind Angelina Jolie, Natalie Portman and several others. I think

Angelina and the feistiness she could have brought to the film just might have saved it from the tepid, rom‐com mediocrity that this film slips into.

If you plan to judge George’s acting abilities purely on this film, I would urge you to watch The Descendants as quickly as possible.

JJJJJ Hey Jude,

don’t be so bad

JJJJJ Gorgeous

George is lost in space

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David Lee

CULTURE

Jack Ryan: Shadow One This outing sees Tom Clancy’s reluctant CIA agent in his fourth

incarnation, with Chris Pine taking time off from playing Captain Kirk. I really liked Alec Baldwin as Ryan in The Hunt for Red October and was disappointed that he was replaced

by Harrison Ford (I can’t put into print how I felt about Ben Affleck’s efforts), but following his spectacular production of Thor, director Kenneth Brannagh has upped the action stakes in this film to produce a younger, more physical and – well let’s face it, less middle‐ aged – Jack in a Jason Bourne style rebirth.

Brannagh manages to find the time to double up as Viktor Cherevin and I can only say that this was inspired. His acting complements a very good Pine against a supporting cast that is, if you forgive the pun, rather wooden. There is a rare appearance from Kevin Costner (yes, I thought he’d retired too), but a bigger downside is that Cathy Ryan, previously played by Anne Archer, has now been given the Keira Knightley experience.

Stott and a bizarrely costumed James Nesbitt, among others) battling against the formidable dragon Smaug, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch.

There are appearances from all the major Lord of the Rings characters,

which means a very welcome screen appearance from the legendary Christopher Lee. Unfortunately, it also means we are subjected to blandness in the form of Orlando Bloom. Look out for Stephen Fry.

JJJJJ Jack’s back,

but with some disappointing companions

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug The long‐awaited second instalment of The Hobbit trilogy will hit the IMAX just in time for Christmas, and in the dreaded 3D and the same 48 frames‐per‐second rate as its predecessor. This controversial high‐ frame rate led to many complaints from viewers who felt seasick after the first film, but the argument in its favour is that it gives a cleaner, more detailed image.

This instalment sees the very drawn‐ out plot stretched to another bottom‐ numbing three hours with Bilbo (Martin Freeman in a role made for his talents), Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and the disparate and desperate band of dwarves (Richard Armitage, Ken

JJJJJ A fantastic,

epic, visual explosion of entertainment and storytelling despite some minor flaws

Other worthy mentions for the Christmas period include: Sundance Institute

Ridley Scott’s The Counsellor: an adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy story about a lawyer (played by the fantastic Michael Fassbender) who becomes involved in drug trafficking. I know many people have been critical of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, a film I thought was excellent, but for me this should silence many of the critics.

Alongside Michael Fassbender are Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Bruno Ganz and Brad Pitt.

JJJJJ Another hit for the Knight of South Shields

The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, a John Hurt narrated tale of forbidden love as a young man falls for a crime lord’s girl. The cast includes Shia LaBeouf, Mads Mikkelsen, Evan Rachel Wood and Rupert Grint.

JJJJJ Romeo and Juliet it is not Martin Leggatt is married to Sue and father to Aaron, Sam, Hope and Paige. He’s a self‐ confessed movie geek, although his tastes run to an eclectic assortment of action, thriller, black and white, war and pretentious (as Sue would say) art house films. Martin’s favourite film is Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death.

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CULTURE

TELEVISION With Emily Russell

Photo by Stuart Wilson/Getty Images

BBC/Avalon/Neil Genower

Photo by Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images

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Return of the Mack

N

ot Going Out is the sitcom that keeps coming back, despite a couple of years off‐air here and there. It stars comedians Lee Mack and Tim Vine as characters that are imaginatively named Lee and Tim (except series six, in which Vine did not appear). The pair are best friends, and usually get themselves into ridiculous situations as they quick‐fire silly one‐liners.

Lee finds himself constantly hamstrung, first by his feelings for Tim’s ex‐girlfriend Kate (Megan Dodds), and then for Tim’s sister Lucy (Sally Bretton), with whom Lee shares a flat. There is also input from Lee’s unconventional cleaner Barbara (Miranda Hart, who has gone on to gain huge success with her own BBC sitcom Miranda) and Tim’s dopey girlfriend Daisy (Katy Wix).

The characters are familiar to all of us. Smart alec Lee constantly gets himself into trouble as not everybody finds his one‐liners as funny as he does, while Tim, being nice but generally dim, finds himself drawn into equally problematic situations. These situations are outlandish and farcical, of course, but there are glimmers of truth buried in the silliness; this is the sort

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of thing that happens on nights out, or between best friends and flatmates. Unlike most of us, though, Lee is armed with a sharp comeback for every occasion. And the show usually causes a ripple of ‘at least nothing that bad has ever happened to us!’ among its audience. After all, any embarrassments that we suffer are unlikely to be anywhere near as awful as those Lee and Tim frequently endure, thank goodness.

[THEY] FUMBLE THEIR WAY THROUGH LIFE WITHOUT SUFFERING TOO MUCH LONGTERM DAMAGE. Somehow the two men manage to fumble their way through life without suffering too much long‐ term damage, and they even manage to stay friends. No matter what they go through and the trouble they get each other into, their friendship – though battered and vigorously put to the test – somehow remains intact. Lee might constantly mock Tim for pretty much everything, but

they’ve stayed friends for so long for a reason: both consider the friendship to be important. They may never talk about what they actually mean to each other, but it’s obvious enough without words.

This isn’t edgy or alternative comedy; it’s a studio‐based sitcom with a laugh track and it won’t be for everyone. It doesn’t try to saying anything new, either. It is comfortable and fun and it’s full of Tim Vine’s infamous puns. But he and Lee work extremely well together, especially in any rapid‐fire dialogue scenes. It’s an eternal story of friendship. They stick together, relying on each other as they attempt to navigate life’s pitfalls, despite often causing problems for one another. Even if Lee never actually gets anywhere with Lucy, in one way or another he’ll always have Tim. Not Going Out airs regularly on Dave, with new episodes first showing on BBC One. The first five series are available on DVD. n Emily Russell has a degree in Media and Film Studies and works part time for the University of Southampton. She has been writing Culturewatch articles for the Damaris Trust website for eight years and watches far too much science‐fiction, fantasy, crime shows and wrestling. She is married to Anthony.

Her film articles can be found at www.emilyrussellwrites.wordpress.com.

The first five series are available on DVD

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CULTURE

GAMING With Jim Lockey

Hotline Miami (PC/PS3/Vita) Hotline Miami’s elevator pitch is as follows: it’s basically the Ryan Gosling movie Drive, only with more neon and with the camera on the ceiling.

Hotline Miami is a top‐down shooter that plays more like a puzzle game. It drips with an eighties aesthetic, from its pulpy ultra‐ violence to the lurid pink, neon‐laden colour palette to the blocky, pixilated artwork. The gameplay is tight, but what makes Hotline Miami special is the storytelling between levels.

HE VIRTUALLY PERFORMS ACTS OF VIOLENCE WITHOUT QUESTION.

Indie Exposure

I

ndependent games are enjoying the spotlight at the moment, mainly because middle‐tier developers and publishers are being squeezed out of the market. Attention has now turned toward the swelling indie scene to see whether it is capable of bridging the gap.

Divekick (PC/PS3/Vita) Take a quick look at the fighting game Divekick and you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s just too simple to be fun, with only two buttons, no combos and one‐hit KOs. But make that assumption and you will have missed the lightning‐bolt‐charged stroke of genius at Divekick’s core.

This game boils the fighting genre down to its essence. It removes the finger‐twisting button inputs required to pull of a full roster of moves and makes everything simple: one button to jump into the air, another to perform a diving kick.

There are some special power kicks and evasions, but they’re mostly triggered by filling meters rather than forcing you to learn (and then pull off) button presses that make your fingers gnarl around the controller.

Divekick removes the barrier to entry that makes games such as Tekken and Street Fighter intimidating to newcomers. But this hasn’t turned it into a casual ‘press A to win’ type of game. By stripping the fighting game of all but the bare minimum, Divekick exposes the tactical skill required to win a match. If you think you’re good at fighting games, Divekick is the arena in which to prove it.

Sadly, the artistic style of Divekick is more reminiscent of a homemade browser game than something you would actually pay for. I would have preferred the visuals to pay as much homage to its pedigree as the mechanics do. There isn’t much content here either, as many matches are over and done with in a minute.

Yet should this be a negative point when that minute is so perfectly balanced, fun and frantic to play?

It is hard to give Divekick a strong recommendation because it is as ugly on the eye as it is beautiful on the controller. All I can say is that for fighting game enthusiasts, it really will sort the men from the boys.

You play as a masked, nameless protagonist who is sent on hitman missions with instructions delivered via cryptic telephone messages. The identity and history of the protagonist is hidden and always in question, and the game constantly seems to query the character’s justification for the violence he causes. On a meta level, the game asks the guy with the controller why he virtually performs acts of violence without question in the name of entertainment. It is a game about the culture of games. n Jim is a lifelong gamer and lives in Kent with his wife and children. He is also an artist and curator. His website is www.jimlockey.co.uk and his PSN name is tearfulminotaur.

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CULTURE

DVD & BLU RAY With Martin Leggatt

Brits Bringing the House Down

“T

he British are coming!” was the war cry from Colin Welland when he collected the Oscar for Chariots of Fire back in 1981. Sadly, it proved to be an empty boast and the promise of a British invasion of Hollywood has been pretty much unfulfilled.

Cinematically, British actors have often found themselves consigned to the role of the bad guy who is inevitably foiled by a good, blue‐ collar American. Think Alan Rickman in Die Hard as the modern prototype.

However, a steady influx of highly talented British actors has broken through in the States by playing convincing American characters. On the big screen we’ve seen Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Ioan Gruffudd and Hugh Dancy pulling off pretty convincing American accents, but it is on American television that the British invasion has been most marked.

The spearhead was an unlikely Hugh Laurie, who started his career in light comedy roles; typically playing bumbling, upper‐class dimwits. Then he became the perpetually grumpy and ill‐ mannered Dr Gregory House in long‐running medical series House.

Not only is his New England accent convincing; his sarcasm and rudeness are utterly sublime.

Then there is Damian Lewis, who has a very successful three seasons of Homeland under his belt. The show has netted five Golden Globes, including one for Lewis himself. The London‐born actor plays Nicholas Brody, a US Marine turned Al‐Qaeda sleeper terrorist… or is he?

Much of the groundwork for this 26

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role was undoubtedly laid during his time as Major Richard Winters in Golden Globe winning miniseries Band of Brothers alongside fellow Brits Michael Fassbender, the man of a thousand convincing accents, and Dexter Fletcher, whose American accent is sadly as unconvincing as his acting was during his Press Gang days. Sorry for that America, but consider it a long overdue refund for Dick Van Dyke’s atrocious Cockney in Mary Poppins.

A GOOD MAN DOING A BAD THING FOR WHAT HE TRULY BELIEVES. Dominic West and Idris Elba have matched their incredible success on domestic shores by exporting their talents stateside to star opposite each other in HBO’s Baltimore‐ based crime series The Wire. West has won accolades and plaudits aplenty in his role as Detective Jimmy McNulty, a brilliant detective with more than a touch of insubordination and a sackload of personal problems. Elba is equally convincing as Stringer Bell, a drug lord with aspirations of semi‐ legitimacy as a businessman.

However, among this excellent, award‐winning clutch of programming, there is for me a standout, a jewel in the crown: AMC’s Detroit‐based Low Winter Sun. If the truth be known, I’m a little loath to recommend the series; it’s a bit like when you have a favourite band that no‐one else knows about and then everyone else discovers them and you somehow feel cheated.

The original incarnation of the series was a two‐part miniseries on Channel Four, based in a bleak, cold Edinburgh and starring the dark and brooding Mark Strong as Frank Agnew. The really good news, which shows incredible insight from AMC, is that Strong reprises the role in the US version.

The AMC version, which aired on Fox in the US, retains all the grittiness of the original and then ramps it up. Mr Strong, who started out as Tosker in Our Friends in the North, has made a career out of playing the convincing bad guy on both the large and the small screen.

Notable performances include Lord Blackwood in Guy Richie’s Sherlock Holmes, Frank D’Amico in Kick‐Ass and my daughter’s favourite, Septimus in Stardust.

Frank Agnew is, as the tagline tells us, a good cop, who in a moment of weakness allows himself to be persuaded by his partner Joe Geddes (Lennie James) to kill fellow cop Brendan McCann. Frank believes he has done the right thing by killing a corrupt officer, but it slowly dawns on him that in doing so he has become just as bad.

However, things seem to be going ok and, after staging the killing as a suicide, it appears as though Frank and Joe may have committed the perfect crime with only Frank’s conscience to bother him. Frank, formerly straight‐laced and essentially a good guy, is now constantly looking over his shoulder as a tenacious internal affairs detective starts to make surprisingly quick inroads into the investigation.

The trouble is that there is no turning back and the realisation that Frank is alone drives him to uncover the truth about his partner.

The show had me rooting for Frank, an almost perfect anti‐hero, and despite his actions you find yourself wanting him to succeed. His is a textbook case of a good man doing a bad thing for what he truly believes to be the just and right motives.

If you missed this fantastic series or want to see it again, the great news is that it was released in box set form at the end of October. Pop it into the DVD player, draw the curtains and set aside a Saturday to watch the show.

You won’t regret it. n JJJJJ A killer cop series.

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Advertising Sales: Duncan Williams, Tel: 07960 829615

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CULTURE

BOOKS

With Mark Anderson

and feelings, both good and bad.

Pick this book up once in a while to remind yourself what having a soulmate actually means.

Real Marriage is frank and enjoyable, with a hard‐hitting message throughout. If you are indeed thinking of marriage, I urge you to purchase this little classic.

A Story of God and All of Us

Get swept away with Ben and James on their unbelievable journey.

JJJJJ

by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett Taking America by storm, this is a book based on hugely successful TV series The Bible. It is packed full of interesting stories from the world’s most influential book, which culminate in the true message of the Bible: the story of Jesus dying for our sins. If you haven’t picked up the Bible in a while – or ever – why not give this book a go? You’ll be pleasantly surprised!

The Crossing: Conquering the Atlantic in the World’s Toughest Rowing Race

by James Cracknell and Ben Fogle All‐round nice guy from the BBC Ben Fogle and ultimate Olympian James Cracknell recently teamed up to take part in a once‐in‐a‐lifetime challenge that saw them row across the Atlantic. They rowed two hours on, two hours off continuously for 47 days in a tiny boat. To make matters that little bit trickier, Ben had no formal training whatsoever! This is a book about spirit and determination, sprinkled with a few disasters along the way.

Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship and Life Together

A great book about the best book of all.

JJJJJ

The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Football is Wrong

by Chris Anderson and David Sally Love football? Well how about this beauty, then? The Numbers Game will give you an abundance of facts that will change the way you think about the “beautiful game”. Don’t be put off by the title, though; this is a thoroughly good read. My favourite chapters are: ‘They should have bought Darren Bent’, ‘O! Why a Football Team is Like the Space Shuttle’ and ‘The Deflation of the Long Ball’.

Intelligent and charming, The Numbers Game scores every time!

JJJJJ

Siege

by Mark and Grace Driscoll When you get married you sign up to a contract with God that says you and your spouse will maintain a union for the rest of your lives. This is some heavy stuff, and marriage is not to be taken lightly because while marriage rates are up, so are divorce rates.

This is where this handy book by Mark and Grace Driscoll comes in.

Whether you’re single, thinking about marriage, recently married or a veteran spouse, Real Marriage discusses the issues that really matter.

Chapter titles include: ‘The Respectful Wife’, ‘Men and Marriage’ and ‘The Porn Path’, so there is plenty of food for thought. Real Marriage was written to help readers get to know their other halves better, 28

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so that couples become best friends and stay that way. If you want to make your wife less of a ‘business partner’ and more of a ‘life partner’, simply pick up this book.

I personally think this is one of the most direct books about marriage I’ve read; there is no beating round the bush. Mark and his wife are straight to the point, but they write from a position of love and from a genuine desire for readers to have successful relationships with their partners.

Marriage isn’t easy, but it is the best thing I have ever committed myself to. The Bible tells us that it is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18); we have an inbuilt need to be with someone, to share our thoughts

by Simon Kernick I read Siege in one sitting. Clichéd terms such as ‘gripping’, ‘exciting’ and ‘shocking’ do not do this book justice.

From the first page the reader is confronted with gunfire, kidnapping and the dark underbelly of modern‐ day terrorism. True to Kernick’s classic style, the action never lets up: twists and turns keep the reader immersed in a world that is real enough to convince us that such a siege could actually happen. n Mark was born in Belfast and developed a book and football obsession at a young age.

He and wife Lisa belong to Fishgate, a church plant in Newtownabbey. Read Mark’s musings at overtakenheart.blogspot.co.uk.

Feel the love!

JJJJJ

Reading this book is your best plan of attack.

JJJJJ

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CULTURE

MUSIC

With Sue Rinaldi

Music That Never Fails

Franz Ferdinand Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action

Jahméne Douglas Love Never Fails

Franz Ferdinand Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action When “Take Me Out” gained them their first experience of chart success in 2004, Franz Ferdinand were applauded and awarded for a style that blended patterns of post‐punk with a touch of old‐school and disco thrown in. It was somehow rebellious but always benign.

After a four‐year album gap, the Scottish indie band has returned.

Have they ventured far from their sweet spot? And have they succeeded in making music to match their last positive, upbeat title?

Within a few bars of the opening song, “Right Action”, you have the answers to these questions. Perky, funky and with the simplicity of its singability, it sets the perfect co‐ordinates for the direction of the album.

The analogue instrumentation in “Love Illumination” will crack a smile of nostalgia, while the swirling charm of “Fresh Strawberries” invokes early pop memories and carries a lyric that suggests a search for answers to the meaning of life. “Treason! Animals” boasts a prog‐ rock synth for all seasons and the new‐wave weirdness of “Brief Encounters” hints at their ability to inject humour into their art.

This album is more than a return to form. Franz Ferdinand sound more confident and colourful than ever… certainly enough for us to add the words “Right Track” to the title!

Newton Faulkner Studio Zoo

The X factor may not be your cup of homebrew, but there’s no denying the impact last season’s runner‐up has had. With a voice the size of the Eiffel Tower and a story to match, vulnerable Jahméne overcame himself and his history to emerge a star!

His debut album comprising ten covers is a no‐apology demonstration of his voice and spirit. “Fix You” and “Titanium” are giants, but Douglas excels on the spirituals. His versions of Whitney Houston’s “Give Us This Day” (featuring Stevie Wonder) and “I Look to You” are trés impressive!

Newton Faulkner Studio Zoo

Matt Redman Your Grace Finds Me It’s said that songwriters write the songs, but really the songs belong to the listener. This is particularly true when it comes to UK worship leader Matt Redman, who has been writing melodies for the whole world to sing for more than 20 years!

His latest album, recorded live in Atlanta, is bursting with the usual mix of inspirational words and memorable tunes for which we have come to respect Redman. “Mercy” is honest and intimate, “This Beating Heart” is a banjo jump away from a ceilidh and “Come and See” is anthemic. n Sue Rinaldi travels internationally as a concert artist, worship co‐ordinator, speaker and creative consultant. A self‐confessed info junkie and movie enthusiast, her interest in culture, justice, technology and the future fuels her living and writing (www.suerinaldi.net).

Jahméne Douglas Love Never Fails

Matt Redman Your Grace Finds Me

Reasons to listen to Studio Zoo are stacking up like a cathedral built out of Pringles. His dad wrote The Wide‐ Mouthed Frog and his innovative cover of “SpongeBob SquarePants” was enthralling. Plus his full name, Sam Newton Battenberg Faulkner, is nothing short of marvellous! More importantly, his acoustic revelry is subtle and skilful, awash with layers of poetic confession on a bed of melodic clouds!

Studio Zoo may not be turbocharged, but it is clever, captivating and real.

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Advertising Sales: Duncan Williams, Tel: 07960 829615

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LIFESTYLE

SAM BURNETT

Cars

CARS C

ars are funny things. We use them as a sort of two‐tonne handshake, buying for their perceived image or studiously trying to find something that avoids the image issue altogether. Toyota’s role as number‐one car manufacturer can only be explained by its

position as the anti‐Ferrari. So devoid is it of charisma that it oozes an aroma of sensible money management.

So much in the motoring industry is just marketing and bluster these days: everything is the same underneath with different logos stamped on the top. Fuel goes in, it explodes, the car moves. So what’s the difference?

Thanks to crushingly efficient European legislation, there isn’t a great deal to choose from performance‐wise in many respects.

There are very few genuinely bad cars out there these days, either, and certainly no death traps (provided you’re not buying in China, as there doesn’t seem to be the same emphasis on health and safety over there; certainly not f

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LIFESTYLE

when there are a billion more customers where the last one came from). You can understand that Volkswagen is able to shift subtly diverse motors via its different brands, but when different cars are all sold under the same umbrella, things start to get confusing. What are we supposed to think?

Take Chevrolet, for instance. I drove a few of these cars recently. It’s a brand that has always been known as an aggressive, brawny, American manufacturer. And for good reason, because it makes overpowered podgy saloons

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and pickup trucks for people with no teeth; trucks that are named Silverado or Montana and use lots of petrol just because it’s 60 pence a litre and they can.

Well, that’s in the US, of course. In the UK, Chevrolet is a fine purveyor of weensy hatchbacks, mostly inherited from Korean econobox manufacturer Daewoo way back in time. Anyone can see it’s a bizarre fit. Don MacLean would never have had the same level of iconic glamour driving his Daewoo to the levee in one of these, although he would no

doubt have saved on running costs.

A few years back, some clever marketing chap was sitting in a meeting and clearly thought that all this Chevy glamour would rub right off on whatever tat the company sold, providing that it had a gold bowtie badge on the front.

This did not prove to be the case, and as a result the firm has started to up its game and put a bit more effort into its manufacturing.

The Spark is a nice little car, for instance.

Chevrolet has given it a bit of a tweak for 2013, and it remains well packaged. It offers up

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LIFESTYLE

plenty of space inside; certainly more than you would expect based on similar‐sized competitors. It feels cheap inside, sure, but that’s mainly because it’s a cheap car. The phrase ‘you get what you pay for’ is entirely stupid – because that’s exactly what money is for – but it seems vaguely appropriate here.

The Spark is certainly designed based on price: the plastics are hard, the interiors grey (except where you can see the external paintwork seeping through to the inside) and ergonomics strictly functional. There are no ‘surprise and delight’ features to follow the £9,000 list price. Having said all this, the interior might feel cheap, but it does feel solid.

The perky little 1.2‐litre engine sounds noisy, but it keeps up with the other traffic around town, and the gearbox is designed to work hard.

You can throw it into corners and, crazy lean notwithstanding, it clings on grimly. It’s a mildly entertaining affair, although probably not for the reasons Chevrolet had hoped. If you can get past the body roll it’s a bit of a hoot. You sit high behind the wheel – the one that adjusts for height but not reach.

Someone obviously didn’t get the memo that it’s not 1996 anymore.

The window line is quite low, dropping below the shoulder to add an airy vulnerability. The view out of the back of the car is fairly restricted, but everything else is open and breezy. It’s a great little city car, but an heir to the great American muscle car? Hardly. Such links are limited to the schporty instrument panel, which looks like something you would find on a scooter, and the bold, almost cartoonish design touches, such as the

oversized wheel arches and massive headlights.

Right at the other end of the market is the Captiva, a big, sploshy, seven‐seater SUV aimed at family buyers. Ironically, given that this is the sort of car you imagine to be classically American, it was designed by GM Korea at the firm’s design studio in Incheon.

IT’S A GREAT LITTLE CITY CAR, BUT AN HEIR TO THE GREAT AMERICAN MUSCLE CAR? It’s the perfect SUV: massive and if you get the top‐spec model it comes with comfortable leather seats that provide the sort of buttock‐ searing heated function you could fry an egg on. Heaving the large wheel through corners is like piloting a boat, and what the Captiva lacks in driver engagement (as in totally lacks, it’s not just missing a smidge) it makes up for with its laidback, relaxed demeanour. It’s exactly the sort of thing you might imagine Jack Bauer screeching about Washington DC in before he tortures the next guy with a roll of tape and some mains cabling.

That said, looking at the price of the car, Jack Bauer would have to take your nipples off with a chef’s blowtorch before you contemplated parting with £32,000 for it. In fact, that sort of cash transfer could be considered ‘extraordinary rendition’ or something. Going all‐out American (but designed in Korea) might be a bad move. If

only there was a third way…

In true Goldilocks style, the latest car from Chevrolet is not too small and not too big. It’s just right, in fashion terms at least. Mini‐SUVs are all the rage at the moment, so the company is at least on trend. The Trax isn’t entirely an in‐ house concoction, but rather draws on Chevrolet’s General Motors ownership; the same GM that runs Opel and Vauxhall.

It looks as though Chevrolet has even splashed out on the services of a mildly talented professional whose job it is to consider aesthetics. Design features are used, things that have no earthly function other than to look pretty. It makes for a pleasant change, it has to be said. The Trax might even be considered more pleasant to spend time in than its identical (under the skin) Vauxhall brother, the Mokka.

But don’t tell anyone I said so.

It still drives like a Vauxhall, mind. That bowtie badge counts for nothing on the move.

It’s a mildly diverting stab at a mini‐SUV for a budget manufacturer, say a Kia or a Hyundai.

The hideous instrument binnacle from the Aveo shows that someone has delivered a passing nod to the firm’s continually thwarted attempts at sportiness, but once again you wonder what a firm with badge kudos like Chevrolet is doing with a car such as this. Trying to keep its head above the water, I suppose, because it can’t really win whatever it does. n Perhaps the greatest driver of his generation, Sam Burnett is a London‐based motoring writer, wit and conversationalist.

He has previously worked in politics and the third sector, but definitely prefers flying around the world and testing cars. In his spare time he blogs, tweets and does other faddish things before losing interest.

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SIX OF THE BEST The Great Outdoors

While the words “take a hike” aren’t always ones we want to hear, winter walks are a great way to keep fit, bond with relatives and get some fresh air. And when your wardrobe is stocked with the six items below, you will be looking for any excuse to amble or even ramble in the coming months.

1

2

Bear Survivor Trousers 2012

North Face Genesis Jacket

Primed with all the performance features you could possibly expect and agile enough to keep up when you’re on the move, Bear Grylls’ signature trousers are constructed from tough, sun-protective Supplex with stretch panels for an active fit.

With updated style and shaping, it’ll take more than a week on the trail to get the better of these technical trousers. Get out there and put them to the test!

This North Face fleece jacket is thermally efficient, light and quickdrying enough for all outdoor pursuits. Made from technically advanced Polartec Thermal Pro, this uncomplicated jacket boasts highly efficient thermal retention while keeping the weight of the garment to a minimum. Zipped hand pockets keep small valuables secure. Use the hem cinch cord to vary the waist fit from snug to relaxed.

RRP £70 www.beargryllsstore.com

RRP £56 www.uk.northface.com

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3

Ultra Grip Gloves

Bear Trek Long-Sleeved Shirt

These gloves contain threelayer, seamless technology that makes them 100% waterproof, windproof and breathable. Because the knit layer and waterproof membrane stretch together as one, the gloves are very closefitting and comfortable to wear. The palms and fingers feature large areas of gripper dots, which deliver maximum grip and dexterity, even in wet conditions.

First rule of the trail? Only take what you know you’ll use. Which is where the Bear Grylls Trek Shirt comes in. This long-distance, outdoor shirt is built to go the distance. It is powerfully sun-protective, quick-drying and moisturemanaging thanks to its SolarDry construction with ventilating chest pockets, and the shirt’s stretch panels provide enhanced ease of movement so you can reach up and touch the sky when you hit that peak.

RRP £47 www.beargryllsstore.com RRP £32.50 www.sealskinz.com

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Trekking Socks These super thick, warm socks combine a heavy gauge outer knit and a loop pile Merino wool inner. With an elasticated instep and Achilles ankle panels, they provide extra support, making these the ultimate socks for adventuring in even the coldest and wettest weather.

RRP £35 www.sealskinz.com

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Men’s Champex OutDry Mid Hiking Boot Lightweight and waterproof, the Champex provides comfort, stability and protection during active wilderness adventures that take place over varied terrain. The nubuck leather and metal hardware lend durability, while the Omni-Grip, non-marking rubber outsole provides unbeatable traction.

RRP £120 www.columbiasportswear.co.uk Sorted. Nov/Dec 2013

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LIFESTYLE

TOP GEAR

The greatest gear, gadgets and gizmos we could find Innergie PocketCell Is your smartphone, tablet or gaming device ever low on power when you’re in the middle of nowhere?

Well now even ‘nowhere’ has power, thanks to Innergie’s rechargeable battery banks, which have the ability to store power that will allow you to run your favourite devices for hours, even days, past their normal battery life. Now you really can be ‘on the go’ with a PocketCell from Innergie.

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TOP BUY RRP £70 www.amazon.co.uk

iNotebook At last, a notebook that wirelessly transmits handwritten notes, drawings and sketches to your iPad so that all of your best ideas are easily captured and shared thanks to a Bluetooth-enabled sensor and premium pen. Plus, everything you create is intuitively organised and searchable. They say the pen is mightier than the sword, and with this new gizmo we’d suggest that the pen is definitely mightier than the keyboard.

RRP $179.99 www.targus.com

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Linkee Linkee is a simple, shouty-outy game. Each card contains four questions with a central link, and you can either answer each correctly or go for gold and guess the link outright. There are also trading cards and an all-seeing games master to contend with. Once you’ve collected all the cards you need, leap to your feet hysterically and scream ‘LINKEE!’ It’s perfect to play with a partner or in tournament-style teams, and will test your general knowledge, answering abilities and link-spotting skills. It’s like having a pub quiz in your pocket.

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Scaramouche & Fandango This male grooming and skincare brand is the brainchild of two Londoners and is stocked at a number of high-end retailers including John Lewis, Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason. The complete set includes: body wash, a face scrub, a hydrator, shampoo, conditioner and shave cream; all you could ever need. Make your life even easier by setting up a subscription to ensure that you never run out.

RRP £72 www.scaramoucheandfandango.com

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TobyRich MicroCar This is the first smartphone- and tablet-operated car in XXS! You can drive this car highly accurately, parallel park it and even organise races. With the included checkpoint and traffic cones, build a racecourse and chase behind your friends with flashing lights. MicroCar really is a dream come true. What you once would have pushed by hand, you can now easily control with your smartphone!

RRP £69 www.amazon.co.uk

KitSound Fresh Clock Radio Docking Station This clock radio dock is the perfect antidote to early mornings, allowing you to wake up to a tune from your own music collection, FM radio or the built-in buzzer. As well as featuring sleep and snooze functions, the Fresh has a dual alarm, and as well as charging your device while it’s docked, it automatically syncs the time. What’s more, it boasts unusually big sound for an alarm clock, making it ideal for use in the kitchen or as the main sound system in your bedroom.

RRP £79.99 www.kitsound.co.uk

HiRise Unlike most other docks, HiRise doesn’t block your speakers, mic or headphone ports. This vertical pedestal is small and beautiful enough to use anywhere in your home or office and is the ultimate perch to keep your iPhone 5 or iPad mini fully charged and ready to go.

Surface Pad In recent times, iPhone cases have become so thick and bulky that many users have chosen to let their iPhones run around naked. We completely understand. Most don’t need a case that’s military certified or that works underwater, and SurfacePad for iPhone is designed to guard against the more typical dangers of daily life while allowing the beautiful, modern design of the iPhone to shine through.

RRP £29.49 www.amazon.co.uk

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TruVirtu Oyster Wallet Series Lightweight and incredibly sturdy, this range of aluminium cases holds everything from coins to credit cards, protecting them from dust, dirt and moisture as well as from electromagnetic radiation, illegal RFID-scanning and other outside influences. Available in a range of colours, there’s an Oyster to suit all tastes. So whether you’re a suited and booted business bod or a tech geek in your comfy scruffs, you can enjoy this thoroughly modern twist on a pocket classic. Oh, and it’s your round!

RRP £29.99 www.firebox.com

RRP £34.99 www.amazon.co.uk

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ProMech Racing Cufflinks These classic, racing-themed cufflinks are a fantastic gift for any motor racing enthusiast. The cufflinks are triple-rhodium plated, providing a stunning silver finish and superior wear quality. Detail is added using glass enamelling, a process that produces a beautiful depth of colour.

RRP £14.99 www.promechracing.com Sorted. Nov/Dec 2013

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LIFESTYLE

PETER HORNE

60 Second Life Coach

Huge, Unbelievably Great Goals (HUGGs)

T

his year has been a momentous one for sport in the UK, with England retaining the Ashes, Andy Murray finally winning Wimbledon and that giant of football management, Sir Alex Ferguson, retiring as manager of Manchester United.

Not many of you will know this, but Sir Alex and I have something in common: this year we both left our employment after 27 years of doing the same job. I think the similarities between us probably end there, as I suspect that Sir Alex has a wee bit more profile than me (so far) and has probably earned a few quid more too!

HUGGS ARE YOUR MOST SIGNIFICANT OUTCOMES AND THEY CAN SHAPE YOUR LIFE. I don’t know what prompted Sir Alex to change tack this year, but my decision to move on to something new is the end result of nine years of planning and a lifetime of desire and motivation to move towards work that better reflects the real me and my core values. If you’re interested in doing the same, you need a cunning plan you can keep nibbling away at in bite‐sized chunks.

Business coach Joseph O’Connor coined the acronym HUGGs to describe goals like this: huge, unbelievably great goals. HUGGs are your most significant outcomes and they can shape your life. They are usually creative and personal. They are mid‐ to long‐term goals that are clear, compelling and easy to grasp. They connect with your identity, express your core values and make you feel good when you think about them.

When you first identify these goals, they may seem impossible to achieve, but as time goes by such activities start to become more attainable, perhaps as a result of other changes in your life. O’Connor suggests that because such outcomes are long term and connected with your core values, you will often achieve them in unpredictable, even paradoxical ways.

HUGGs often have an “away from” element; it hurts if you don’t achieve them, which in turn makes them more motivating to pursue.

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O’Connor also suggests that the most powerful HUGGs often involve removing things from your life that are getting in the way of achieving your more important goal.

As I’ve worked towards my life‐changing goal, I’ve tried to identify mini goals to help along the way. I recommend keeping track of these goals and reviewing them regularly.

Remind yourself about your achievements and celebrate them as you make progress, because this will help you to stay motivated for the journey ahead.

Focus your emotional energy on the outcomes you’re seeking rather than on the obstacles you’re encountering. When something goes wrong, do your very best to find a way to laugh about it, because this is a

good way to dissipate emotion, leaving you better equipped to ask more useful questions about the best way to respond to your situation and continue towards your major goal.

Occasionally, take time to vividly imagine yourself having attained your goal and notice what you can see, hear, feel, touch and taste.

All of this will help you to stay strongly motivated as you head towards your end goal.

And tell me when you get there, because I’d love to hear some of your success stories! n Peter Horne is a qualified life coach with a passion for helping people change things in their lives when they feel stuck. He works with individuals and organisations, and can be contacted at enquiries@therealyou.eu. Peter is married with four children and attends St Peter’s Church in Brighton.

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ANDREW YATES/AFP/Getty Images

DAVID MOYES

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DAVID MOYES

The

Chosen One I

t was 2002 when David Moyes took the first in a series of phone calls that would eventually lead him to Old Trafford. Bill Kenwright was on the line and wanted to know if Moyes, then manager of Preston, wanted to become the new Everton boss. The Scot took just seconds to give the Everton chairman his answer: “Yes, when do I start?”

Moyes had achieved his aim of landing a job in the big‐ time – the English Premier League – and he’d done so at the relatively tender age (in football managerial terms) of 38. But it was hardly as if he had been parachuted into the land of wine and roses. Indeed, the Everton he took over on March 15, 2002, in no way resembled the well‐ run, successful club he would bequeath to his successor Roberto Martinez 11 years later.

When Moyes took the Everton job, his first role was that of firefighter. The club was in a precarious position at the wrong end of the Premier League table and faced the very real threat of relegation. And here’s the rub: in the same way Moyes walked into a tough job and worked miracles, so another Scottish manager moulded from the same determined granite stock had taken on a similarly demanding role in 1986.

FERGIE DIDN’T BOTHER ASKING HIM IF HE WOULD LIKE THE JOB. HE SIMPLY TOLD DAVID THAT HE WAS THE NEW MAN IN CHARGE. David Moyes’ arrival at Goodison Park back then mirrored Alex Ferguson’s entry to Old Trafford a full 16 years earlier in many ways. Just as Everton were struggling, so were United. Just as Everton needed an overhaul of playing staff and a new broom to sweep clean the deadwood and the bad pennies, so did United.

Everton had found their very own Fergie in Moyes, so it seems fitting that 11 years after he began working miracles at Everton, Sir Alex himself would come calling for Moyes to take on an arguably greater task: to replace the greatest manager in world football. Ever.

Just as a gauntlet was thrown down for Moyes to emulate Fergie’s clean‐up at Goodison and ultimately to turn failure into success, so he was now being asked to follow his fellow Scot and managerial idol at Old Trafford. It was a job many managers would have walked barefoot on hot coals to take, but also one that could just as easily turn out to be a poisoned chalice.

However, just as Moyes had taken only a few seconds to give his answer to Bill Kenwright that dark March day in 2002, he needed little persuading when Sir Alex explained to him that he was his chosen one in May 2013; that he was to be the new manager of Manchester United. Fergie didn’t bother asking him if he would like the job. He simply told David that he was the new man in charge.

Naturally enough, Moyes was flabbergasted. He explains: “I knew nothing at all until Sir Alex gave me a call and asked me to come to his house. I was expecting

BY FRANK WORRALL

him to say, ‘I’m going to take one of your players’ or something else. I went in and the first thing he said to me was, ‘I’m retiring’.

“I said, ‘When?’, because he was never retiring, and he said ‘next week’. And his next words were, ‘You’re the next Manchester United manager’. So I didn’t get the chance to say yes or no. I was told that I was the next Manchester United manager and that was enough.

“As you can imagine, the blood drained from my face. I was really shocked. More shocked that Sir Alex had chosen to retire. But inside I was incredibly thrilled that I was going to be given the chance to manage Manchester United.”

David made an instant impact when he took on the Everton job. The team won three of their first four matches as he cajoled and encouraged, and eventually ended up safe from relegation. But when Fergie told him he was to be the new United manager, he knew straightaway that this was an altogether different ball park. United were about to win a record 20th top‐flight crown and are recognised worldwide as being one of the biggest clubs on the planet.

Moyes was joining a corporate monster and would need to satisfy fans who had gorged only on success since Fergie brought them his first trophy: the FA Cup in 1990. He knew he would always be compared with the man he had succeeded; the man who had finally retired aged 71 after a 27‐year tenure at Old Trafford that had seen him lead the Red Devils to 38 trophies, including 13 Premier League and two Champions League titles and five FA Cups.

This will be some act to follow, especially when you consider that David’s record at Everton over 11 years includes this statistic: zero trophies. But taking that statistic by itself is harsh as it does not tell the full success story of Moyes at Everton. Despite having limited resources, David notched up four top‐six finishes and took the club to the 2009 FA Cup final, with Everton going down 2‐1 to Chelsea as Frank Lampard hit a wonder goal of a winner.

Moyes was a winner in all but trophies, and given the heights to which he elevated Everton – to the brink of Champions League football from a dismal low when he took the job in 2002 – you could argue that he was eminently successful.

But much of this was forgotten as he embarked upon his greatest ever challenge. He needed to convince Manchester United fans that he was the real deal; that Fergie and the board had been right to plump for him rather than the likes of José Mourinho.

Moyes was confident that he was up to the job and he had something extra in his armoury that convinced him he could overcome any hurdles at United: a deep faith in God. David Moyes is a Christian and a strong believer in the power of God, although he is not one to push his beliefs down anyone’s throat. As with his work, David lives out his faith quietly and confidently. He is his own man and his Christian beliefs have always shown through in the diligence of his work. Moyes is widely renowned as honest and disciplined; a grafter with a strong work ethic; a man who firmly believes that you get what you put in. f

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DAVID MOYES He generally refuses to talk publicly about his faith, but as I put in the long hours to research his life for a biography (Moyes: The Chosen One, which will be published next year), I repeatedly came across the message that David Moyes privately uses his faith to propel him forward in his work. He attends church regularly and his work is shaped by his faith. The way he acts and the decisions he makes are the natural moves of a decent man of strong faith.

When he was selected as Fergie’s successor, Moyes’ integrity was a major factor. I am told that the final shortlist for the United job contained three names: David Moyes, Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. The latter ruled himself out of the running by taking over at Bayern Munich, which meant that it was a straight battle between Moyes and Mourinho.

And there would only ever be one winner there. Moyes, the man of faith and the man of morals, always had the edge over Mourinho, the absolute master of football’s dark arts. As Fergie himself admitted: “When we discussed the candidates that we felt had the right attributes, we unanimously agreed on David Moyes.

“David is a man of great integrity with a strong work ethic. I’ve admired his work for a long time and approached him as far back as 1998 to discuss the position of assistant manager here. He was a young man then at the start of his career and has since gone on to do a magnificent job at Everton. There is no question he has all the qualities we expect of a manager at this club.”

And United legend Sir Bobby Charlton was quick to reinforce that view: “I have always said that we wanted the next manager to be a genuine Manchester United man.

In David Moyes, we have someone who understands the things that make this such a special club.”

Fergie and Sir Bobby implied that the manager of Manchester United should be someone who could be trusted to keep the good name of the club intact; that it should not be someone who would besmirch the club’s good name with undisciplined rants or underhand manipulation. That, in short, was why José Mourinho lost out to Moyes when it came to the biggest job in world football.

While Moyes could be left alone to simply get on with the football side of things, Mourinho might have rocked the boat and left United to pick up the pieces. While Moyes was a man of faith – and a man of good faith – Mourinho’s past antics told a different story. He is undoubtedly a winner and a genius within the realms of football management, but he wasn’t United’s cup of tea.

He never had been and he never would be, and Sir Bobby in particular had enormous reservations about him.

Mourinho’s career has been tainted by run‐ins with rival fans, referees, rival managers and rival clubs, and Charlton admitted that he was particularly disturbed when José poked then Barcelona assistant manager Toto Vilanova in the eye after a disagreement during the 2011 Spanish Super Cup. “A United manager wouldn’t do that,” Sir Bobby said, with a shake of his head and a roll of the eyes.

“Mourinho is a really good coach, but that’s as far as I would go really. He pontificates too much for my liking.”

Co‐owner of Man United Joel Glazer could also see qualities in Moyes that made him unique. “David’s hardworking style and steely determination are characteristics we value at the club,” he confirmed. “He has impressed as a coach for many years now and we strongly believe he will be able to take up from where Alex is leaving off by continuing this club’s tradition of flair football played by exciting, world‐class players.”

Both Moyes and Fergie hail from Glasgow and both spent time playing for local club Drumchapel Amateurs, where a slogan on the dressing room wall sums up the inbuilt philosophy of both men: “Hard work can beat talent when talent doesn’t work very hard”.

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Like Fergie, Moyes is the first to arrive at Old Trafford in the morning and the last to leave at the end of the day.

He will put in the hours needed to ensure United remain at the very top of the tree.

Like Fergie, he will make it his business to know everything that is going on with his players. Because of his faith, he holds himself responsible for the pastoral care of the men he sends out on the field. He cares deeply about people and is always there if they need help or, alternatively, if they need to shape up a little. Moyes is a man who does not prejudge; he gives everyone an equal chance to prove themselves.

“IN DAVID MOYES, WE HAVE SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS THE THINGS THAT MAKE THIS SUCH A SPECIAL CLUB.” There is the story of a certain 16‐year‐old Wayne Rooney, who needed a helping hand as he came through the ranks at Everton. The story goes that Rooney got angry when a girl pinched his bottom while he was playing table tennis at a Liverpool youth club. Wayne is alleged to have kicked out at the girl, which led to an angry visit to Everton from her father, who demanded that the boy wonder be punished.

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DAVID MOYES Moyes stepped in. He gave the father VIP tickets for the next home game and then gave Rooney a suitable rollicking… followed by a friendly arm around the shoulder. Bad cop, good cop.

David likes to be close to his players and believes in forging close bonds. He was an average centre‐half himself, but was always determined to forge a career in management, exemplified in the fact that he earned his coaching badges when he was just 22. He makes his players feel important and worthy, and always has time for them. But he also expects them to sweat blood for him on match days.

Leon Osman was one of David’s most loyal subjects at Everton and provides an incisive insight into the

Frank Worrall is the author of 15 biographies of sporting superstars – ranging from Roy Keane and Rory McIlroy to Lewis Hamilton and Sir Alex Ferguson. He has written extensively for The Sun, The Sunday Times and the Mail. See Frank on Twitter @frankworrall and www.frankworrall.com.

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Photo by Matthew Peters/Man Utd via Getty Images

workings of his former boss, which are especially pertinent for current Manchester United players. ‘‘New players don’t always understand Moyes’ way of playing,” he said. “You’ve got to give everything you’ve got. Some think, ‘If I score a goal, do a good turn or put a few tackles in’, that’s enough. But you have to come off the pitch having done everything, with nothing left in the tank.”

Moyes is not a man who will stay silent if he believes someone has done something wrong, or if there has been an injustice. In December 2011, he went to see Blackburn Rovers play Bolton on an Everton day off and was shocked and upset at the verbal abuse the Rovers fans dished out to their then manager, Steve Kean, whom they wanted out of the club.

Most fellow managers would have made no comment on the situation as it affected a rival club, but David Moyes is not most managers. He felt compelled to speak out and defend Kean, even if it resulted in opprobrium from those very same Rovers fans or from the club itself.

David said: “I couldn’t believe the criticism they gave their manager. Steve Kean stood on the touchline and took it all. He was brave enough and man enough to do that. If they had supported their team instead they might have got a result. I left at halftime because I was so disgusted.”

This is a man of principle; a man who stands by his beliefs even if they prompt a torrent of negative comments from others. In that sense, he is a mini Fergie but, like Fergie, he doesn’t always get it right and has been criticised for this by some pundits and fellow professionals. Some have even attacked him over his religious beliefs.

When he played for Cambridge United in 1985 he was confronted by teammate Roy McDonough because the latter believed David and fellow Christians Alan Comfort and Graham Daniels were more interested in the workings of God than in beating their rivals on the pitch.

McDonough dubbed them “Cambridge’s Holy Trinity” and wrote in his autobiography: “The three of them sat in the changing room with a little black book discussing their beliefs when they should have been getting psyched up for a relegation scrap. I would cut out a lurid tabloid newspaper story and stick it on the noticeboard in front of them, but they would always turn the other cheek.

“Daniels just smiled and said three words: ‘He will provide.’ I could have baptised him with a can of beer there and then, but I didn’t want to waste it. After that I never bothered saying anything again, and the three of them stuck to their beliefs.”

Even in the face of prejudice, Moyes refuses to buckle and has always remained true to his beliefs. He is an outstanding reference point for young football fans in today’s generally tawdry, cash‐obsessed football industry. Former government health minister Andy Burnham – a staunch Liverpool fan – probably best summed up Moyes’ defining characteristics in 2010 when he said: “Mr David Moyes is probably a fine example to everybody in government of stability and making the right decisions for the long term.”

David himself sums up his footballing beliefs and essential tenets of faith in this way: “There are still core values. There are still standards you want, which are basic at any level of football: discipline, punctuality, level of intensity in a training session. Those things do not change.”

These are characteristics that will stand him in good stead as he attempts to pull off the miracle of successfully replacing Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United. United he stands; divided he would surely fall.

Onward, Christian soldier… n

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WHO LET THE DADS OUT? Of the 30,000 or so parent and toddler groups in operation around the UK today, around 27,000 are church‐based. The majority of these are effective support networks for young mums. They might be called parent and toddler groups to be politically correct, but the reality is that it’s tough for men to fit in. That’s fine, there’s no need to force it.

Instead, it’s a pretty simple innovation to say: “Let’s run a parent and toddler group specifically for dads.” Actually, this innovation has been around for at least ten years: throughout the noughties, many children’s centres up and down the UK ran groups like this for dads. But if 90% of the groups across the UK are church‐based, then that’s where the real potential exists for dad and toddler groups, too. In theory, if men will come to their own parenting support clubs (just as their partners come to theirs), then they can carry these positive experiences back into the home and back into the joint‐parenting experience.

IT’S SURPRISING HOW SAFE YOU FEEL ONCE YOU ARE IMMERSED IN A ROOM WITH 48 OTHER DADS.

Who Let

Who Let The Dads Out? started at a church in Chester in 2003. More than 90 groups now run in the UK and an overseas movement is in its infancy. So what is it about a Who Let The Dads Out? group that makes it work?

Young dads want to spend time with their children A child in a pushchair gives you permission to enter new and scary places Men are unlikely to ask for help, but they will accept help if it’s offered in the right way Who Let The Dads Out? packages a dad and toddler session in a way that men find accessible and acceptable

The Dads Out? 12 An article in which Tony Sharp makes some sweeping generalisations in order to get his message across!

H

ave you noticed just how prevalent childbirth is becoming on our TVs? Maybe it stems from our love for reality TV. You can’t get much more real than the struggle to be born, and of course for the parents this comes with a huge dose of pain, joy, hope (possibly mixed with some trepidation) and expectation. From Call the Midwife to One Born Every Minute we are besieged by a cacophony of panting, screaming and all‐round noisy ‘pushing’.

Of course, we men will do anything to avoid such programming: a quick shimmy and step‐ over to the football on Sky Sports, a nifty shift of tempo to Dave for a rerun of Top Gear or, failing all else, a trip to the pub.

But here’s the real reality: n One in three couples split up within three years of their first child being born. Bang goes the joy! n Moreover, 40% of divorcing dads in the UK lose all contact with their children within two years of the family splitting up. Pop goes the hope!

And it’s small wonder, really. We go into

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parenthood spectacularly underprepared and we often spend those early years on a massive guilt trip. We’re made to feel guilty because we weren’t the ones who had to push (which isn’t our fault) and because we didn’t do our share of the nappies (which is our fault). And the more interesting years of parenthood are still some way off; you can’t take a babe in arms on their first toboggan run, or teach a two‐year‐ old the joys of motorcycle maintenance. The new child gets all of our partner’s attention and we go weeks without sex. And as we’re big kids at heart ourselves, it’s just not fair!

As men we are unlikely to talk about it, certainly not in an ‘in‐depth, support network’ kind of way. Instead, we’ll be ‘strong’ until our tolerance levels are exceeded (actually, when I was in my twenties I’m not sure my tolerance levels were that high!), and then we’ll snap.

And once we snap, it’s: “Mate, I’m out of here.”

Against this backdrop, Who Let The Dads Out? is one project that offers couples hope as they are setting out on their parenting journey and that aims to turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers.

3 4

A Case in Point Chertsey Hub is a centre close to the M25 that operates from a renovated and rejuvenated youth centre. The Hub operates a café that is open every day and runs parent and toddler sessions from Monday to Friday. On the third Saturday of the month it’s the dads’ turn. A typical session is attended by up to 100 adults and children (49 dads/male carers is the record so far). It costs £3 per dad and runs from 9.30am to 11.30am. Once in, there is a plentiful supply of tea, coffee, biscuits and juice, but most importantly there is a steady stream of hot bacon butties to feed these hungry men.

Dads are positively encouraged to play games with their children. It’s easy to forget that something as simple as playing with a toddler involves a degree of learning; learning that he or she won’t break as they get stuck into the soft play. The dads learn by observation and quickly make friends.

It’s surprising how safe you feel once you are immersed in a room with 48 other dads, in the safety of the herd (although the odd newspaper or copy of Sorted can act as a useful

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WHO LET THE DADS OUT? security blanket). The degree of organised activity is at the discretion of the leaders, but a co‐ordinated, high‐quality craft activity is, perhaps surprisingly, popular with older toddlers and dads, and projects can also be taken home as a badge of honour.

As well as playing with and watching over their children (the dads are always responsible for the children they bring), there is plenty of opportunity to talk to other dads and to develop a new network of friends. The leadership team always welcomes newcomers, introduces them to others and looks out for them as they get settled. Building a sense of community is an important element to any Who Let The Dads Out? group.

This sense of community starts with the monthly Saturday morning sessions, but it can be developed through many other activities involving just the dads or the whole family: activities such as curry nights or family outings to the coast.

Where’s the Sell? There’s Got to Be a Sell…

I’m often asked: “Where’s the God spot in a Who Let The Dads Out? session?” The response might sound glib, but I’d argue that it’s both nowhere and everywhere: nowhere in that most groups (quite wisely, in my opinion) don’t try any form of structured talk, but everywhere in that it’s in the one‐to‐one conversations, in the building of community and in the journeying together.

And that journey can take many different routes and endless twists and turns. Back at the Hub, they’ve been handing out promo cards for ‘Movie March’ at the adjacent Jubilee Church, involving church services based around contemporary films such as Bruce Almighty and Cinderella Man. Elsewhere, dads have enrolled on the Daddy Cool! parenting course or are meeting together

midweek to explore faith issues and a meal under the banner of ‘Soul Man?’, or through an Alpha course.

Up in Glasgow, the guys have been getting on their bikes for charity, and in Liverpool they’ve been bag packing at the local ASDA and buying sofas for the church.

All across the country, men are being challenged to think about what values and beliefs they want to pass on to their children, and in the process they are starting to explore their own spirituality.

Single Dads With all this talk about helping to strengthen relationships between couples at this high‐risk stage of the relationship, it would be easy to think that Who Let The Dads Out? has nothing to offer single dads. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. A Saturday morning drop‐in session can be a real godsend for a single‐parent dad or a dad who has access at that time.

Andy has been bringing his son Ashley up alone ever since Ash was one. When he discovered Who Let The Dads Out? in Chester, he became a regular. When Ash reached school age, they transferred to a follow‐up group called School’s Out, Dad’s About! which meets on a Monday night. Ash is now ten, and he and Andy play football with a bunch of dads and lads that emerged out of these groups.

“Who Let The Dads Out? Provided me with time and opportunities to interact with Ashley and other dads, meeting new friends and sharing activities with my son,” says Andy. n Tony Sharp is a dad, an engineer and the national coordinator for Who Let The Dads Out? (www.wholetthedadsout.org.uk), which is a core ministry of the Bible Reading Fellowship, based in Abingdon. A growing number of Who Let The Dads Out? groups run by churches are springing up across the UK.

Ten top tips for setting up a Who Let The Dads Out? group 1 Check out the website (www.wholetthedadsout.org.uk). This will give you more of a feel for the concepts and ideas, and will link you to all the resources that are available

2 Be clear about your vision and strategy. We recommend that you consider running Who Let The Dads Out? within the overall context of men’s and family ministries within your church

3 Register your group with Who Let The Dads Out? There is no cost for this, but doing so will allow you to use the name, logo and related resources, and will link you up with a network of others across the country who share the same vision and passion for this ministry

4 Arrange to visit and see a group in action.

We can put you in contact with a group near you.

We’re also on Facebook and Twitter and run an annual conference

5 Establish your resources and plan accordingly.

We recommend you start by planning to run once a month

6 Plan for a big launch impact. A themed launch can help, for example a first session based around the Mother’s Day weekend to give mum a break or around Father’s Day

7 Use all your community friendship routes to promote the group: parents and toddlers groups, the school gates, social media and so on.

Who Let The Dads Out? works well as an interdenominational ecumenical project in a local community. Think about how you can share this initiative

8 Think about ways of making dads feel at ease.

As we all know, men relate to other men and they communicate in different ways from women.

Have someone on the door to welcome and explain how the basics work, introduce them to someone else as soon as possible, feed them bacon butties and possibly put out some appropriate magazines or papers so they have something to retreat to if they need it

9 Apply a small charge to cover the cost of your consumables for each session: £2-£3 per family is the typical range

10 Stay faithful to your vision

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SAMARITAN’S PURSE

One Small Gift Unlocks the Power of Forgiveness Kneeling on the cool, tiled floor of Kigali City Prison, Alex Nsengimana faced a moment of truth. Could he forgive the man who had killed close members of his family during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide?

BY PETER WOODING

A

s 24‐year‐old Alex prepared to meet the man who had taken the life of those so precious to him, his thoughts returned to a nightmare he had faced 19

years earlier.

“Images from that terrible time continued to crash through my consciousness. Angry men ordering my grandmother outside, raising a nail‐studded club as they began beating her to death,” he recalls.

“My uncle hiding under the bed, finally discovered by a mob of militia; his pleading eyes looking into the faces of his killers, asking them to shoot him quickly. The stick they used to beat him until, finally, he died.

“I was running, always running, with my siblings; through the forests, up and over the red dirt hills around Kigali, through roadblocks and past armed guards. Slipping in a ‘cow pie’ and

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falling to the ground just as a bullet whizzed past the spot [where] my head had been. Bullets clattering to the ground as an armed man tried to load his gun and aim it at us.”

WHY AM I ALIVE TODAY? WHY ME, OUT OF NEARLY ONE MILLION PEOPLE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN A MATTER OF THREE MONTHS?

One in a million However, Alex’s journey to forgive this man was sparked by a simple shoebox he had received as a boy through Operation Christmas Child (OCC), a campaign run by Samaritan’s Purse.

One day in 1995, all of the kids at Alex’s orphanage were asked to line up outside.

Excitement buzzed in the air like electricity as each was handed a colourfully wrapped shoebox.

Alex shares: “Bursting with curiosity, we ripped open the boxes to find toys, school supplies, hygiene items – things we could hardly dream of owning were ours! These gift‐ filled shoeboxes reminded us that someone cared for us. With that tangible reminder, a small flame of hope was ignited in my heart.

“Over the years, I often struggled to understand why my life was spared when nearly a million other lives were not. I never knew my father, and my mother had died of AIDS before the genocide began, leaving my grandmother and uncle as my main carers.

After they were killed, my brother and I ended up in the orphanage.

“Nights at the orphanage were filled with the cries of children – hundreds of them – all lost and alone. Children like me, who had witnessed terrible things happening to their family and friends. After the genocide, I almost began to believe that God did not exist.

“I wondered: ‘If there’s a God who cares for His people, why would He let this happen?

Why am I alive today? Why me, out of nearly one million people who lost their lives in a matter of three months? There were so many times when I could have been killed, but God chose to spare my life. Why?’” But one day, as Alex read Jeremiah 29:11 in the Bible, he began to understand that God had a plan for his life.

“I put my trust in Him, and have watched in awe as His plan has been out over the years,” he says.

In 2003, Alex was adopted by a family from Minnesota. He left Rwanda and moved to the US to be with his new family.

Giving and forgiving Alex’s healing process came full circle when he returned to Rwanda last year to deliver shoebox gifts through Operation Christmas Child. While there, he met the man who had caused him and his family such pain. He rested his hand on his shoulder and prayed: God, I pray that you may continue to protect Rwagakinga and remind him that you love him, and have created him in your own image. God,

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SAMARITAN’S PURSE forgive him, just as you forgave my sins. Father, I forgive him in front of these witnesses, so he can have the peace that he needs. We give glory to you, our God. In Jesus’ name, amen.

As he finished praying, Alex felt a weighty burden lift from his shoulders.

He explains: “For years, I had prayed and dreamed that God would allow me to offer forgiveness, in person, to the men who killed my uncle and grandmother during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Finally, I was face‐ to‐face with one of them, speaking the words in person. I began to feel as though I can see the destination at the end of the road.

“Saying the words ‘I forgive you’ to his face brought to the surface many painful memories, but I have come to believe that if God is able to forgive me of my sins, I can forgive someone who has wronged me. As painful as it was, I am now left with the peace that only Christ can provide, and I will spend my life sharing with others how they can receive His peace and forgiveness.”

If the shoebox fits…

Through the global efforts of Operation Christmas Child, 100 million gift‐filled shoeboxes have been delivered to needy children like Alex in 156 countries around the world over the past 23 years.

Samaritan’s Purse is calling on churches, schools, businesses and individuals across the UK to help bring joy to another million children through Operation Christmas Child this year. To mark the 20th anniversary of the

Rwandan Genocide in 2014, a container filled with gift‐filled shoeboxes from donors in the UK will be sent to Rwanda for the first time.

To make it easier for organisers to get hold of shoeboxes, Operation Christmas Child is now providing decorative gospel opportunity (GO) boxes, available flat‐packed in cases of 100.

These boxes can be used by individuals who are finding it difficult to find shoeboxes and shared with friends, families and work colleagues; anyone who has a heart for children.

Find out how you can be part of this year’s Operation Christmas Child campaign at www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk/sorted. n

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SIMON MAYO

WHAT’S IN A

NAME?

BY CATHERINE LARNER

A

ncient stone churches that punctuate the skylines of towns, cities and villages have proved constant sources of inspiration – not just spiritually, but also creatively – for artists, poets and musicians over the centuries. But for radio presenter Simon Mayo, who is now making a name for himself as a children’s book writer, it was something much more prosaic about churches that fired his imagination: a few names on the noticeboard, to be precise.

The noticeboard in question is located in Suffolk, at a beautiful church called Holy Trinity Blythburgh. This 15th century building is famous as the venue for the annual Aldeburgh Festival and as a landmark for travellers along the main road leading to Norfolk. It is visible for miles around, standing proud and grand above a flat landscape and beneath the huge, empty skies of East Anglia.

“When I have driven past, it has always looked very spectacular,” says Simon. “It is called the Cathedral of the Marshes. It stands out for such a long way, but we had always gone straight past it. One time, I decided to stop and have a look around.”

While he appreciated the stunning architecture, it was a list of past curates that Simon decided to photograph.

Two clergymen, in particular, intrigued him: ‘Itchingham Lofte’ and ‘Mr Nathaniel Flowerdew (intruder)’. Why was one a ‘Mr’ and what was meant by ‘intruder’? Simon quizzed the priest in charge about the history of the men – believed to be linked to Cromwell during the 17th century – then took a photo of the board with his mobile phone and went on to enjoy his holiday.

“IT’S A ROLLERCOASTER AND I’VE NO IDEA WHERE IT’S HEADING, BUT I’VE ENJOYED EVERY MOMENT OF IT. ALL I CAN DO IS CONCENTRATE ON MAKING THE NEXT STORY AS GOOD AS I CAN.”

The first book in the series, Itch, introduces us to Mayo’s accident-prone eponymous hero.

It is available online and at all good book stores.

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But his fascination for these two men and his delight at their bewitching names never left him. Five years later, prompted by a career move and the desire to find a book to interest his 14‐year‐old son, Simon decided to write a story. Lofte and Flowerdew became the central characters, and they turned out to be arch rivals.

“I thought it would be a couple of sides of A4,” he recalls. “It turned out to be slightly longer than that.”

Having written two books so far, Simon is working on a third and believes a fourth book will complete the series.

Each is about a 14‐year‐old boy called Itchingham Lofte who collects elements from the periodic table as a hobby.

When Itch discovers a new element – unearthed from

disused mines in Cornwall – the consequences for him, his family and friends are wide‐reaching and even quite terrifying.

“It was a coming together of a number of different things,” explains Simon. “I had left [Radio] 5 Live and I had more time on my hands. My son was coming home from school really interested in science and I couldn’t find a book which would appeal to him. And then I came across this phrase ‘element hunter’. I thought: ‘If you are a 14‐year‐old, science‐mad kid, why would you not want to be an element hunter?’”

Simon was halfway through the book when he saw Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe singing “The Element’s Song” by Tom Lehrer as his party piece on a chat show.

“It’s very funny and very difficult to sing,” says Simon.

“So here was the biggest boy‐hero on the planet juxtaposed with the periodic table and I thought: ‘Someone is going to put these two together’. So I wrote the second half of the book much faster than the first half because I thought someone was going to do it before me.”

They didn’t, and Simon’s book Itch and the follow‐up Itch Rocks have been a great success. Itch was nominated for the National Book Awards, and Simon now regularly visits schools as well as speaking at book and science festivals. He has even been invited to address the Institute of Physics on the back of it. “[It’s] utterly preposterous!” he exclaims. “It’s a rollercoaster and I’ve no idea where it’s heading, but I’ve enjoyed every moment of it. All I can do is concentrate on making the next story as good as I can.”

The third book is due out next autumn and Simon admits there is a level of pressure when it comes to delivering the goods yet again: “I don’t think anything will be as enjoyable as writing a book that nobody knows about: no deadlines, no comments or analysis. But I wanted people to read it, and the first time someone hands you a copy of your book, which until then has only existed in your head, is quite extraordinary.

“When I started, I was writing for my son Joe,” he continues. “And then I realised I was enjoying it too much and it was going to be much bigger.”

Simon was aware of the broader concerns that boys tend not to read much these days and that girls are underrepresented in science, although these weren’t his main priorities in ensuring that his book was ‘a good read’.

“I wanted to get the gender balance right, for girls to feel empowered by the book as well,” he shares. “[The book] is geeky and blokey, with explosions and farts and vomit and stuff, which boys love. But I wanted to give girls a way into the story as well so Jacqueline (Jack) and Chloe are powerful girls to have around.

“It’s not a book about science; it just happens to be what Itch does. It is an old‐fashioned adventure story.

“I got possessed by the idea. I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking of different bits of the story.

I’d be sitting on trains and writing down ideas. Or at the gym, instead of listening to music, I would be in ‘another place’ thinking of the story.”

He admits: “Finding time to write is more and more difficult. With book one, I would write in the f

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SIMON MAYO

Photo by Jeremy Sutton窶食ibbert/Getty Images

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SIMON MAYO

Itch encounters fresh adventures and mayhem in Itch Rocks, the second book in the series.

Buy your copy today.

Photo by Jeremy Sutton‐Hibbert/Getty Images

element 126 really existed, then this is what would happen to it.

“I’ve included the Gaia theory and James Lovelock.

That’s a weird thing to be in a kids’ book, really. The end of book two is probably the most complicated piece of physics ever to get into a children’s book.”

So was Simon a precocious reader as a child? Well, his father was a head teacher and a lay reader, so Simon acknowledges that there were many books at home.

However, the ones he remembers influencing him most as a child were those by Willard Price: the series that included Amazon Adventure and Safari Adventure, in which two boys collected animals for their father’s zoo.

He says: “I’ve gone back and looked at them again. They were fantastic!”

With a degree in politics and history, and well known for being a committed Christian, Simon is a thoughtful interviewer and his fascination with his subjects is evident in all of the projects he undertakes. He currently co‐presents the weekly Film Review programme every Friday afternoon on Five Live with Mark Kermode. He also presents Radio Two’s Drivetime show, which won the 2011 Sony Award for Best Music Show, each weekday from 5pm.

But listeners to Simon’s radio show will have noticed a difference in his interviews when it comes to the regular Book Club feature since the publication of Itch. He says: “I think the people who have listened to me talk to authors over the years will have noticed a subtle change in the way I ask questions. There is far more about method; about how they write.”

And he is still surprised that he is now considered to be one of them. “They are ‘proper’ writers who have written bestsellers all around the world. Yet they have been told that I have written a couple of books, so they answer me by saying ‘us authors’.”

Despite his humble attitude, Simon is not one to pass up a good opportunity to benefit from his contacts. He found a literary agent through a recommendation from fellow author Ian Rankin, and when American thriller writer Jeffrey Deaver appeared on Drivetime and asked him to recommend a book for his children, Simon was able to promote his own title.

“I hesitated only for a second before shamefacedly saying, well… just downstairs…” he admits. “It ended up with me signing a book for Jeffrey Deaver’s children and him signing a book for me.” n

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morning and do the radio in the afternoon. Now I have to promote, so I am writing at weekends and holidays.”

The familiar and much‐loved radio presenter has been working for the BBC since 1981. He fronted the Radio One Breakfast Show for five years and even took his radio feature ‘Confessions’ to television. For nine years he presented a thoughtful and award‐winning news and talk show on Radio 5 Live, interviewing everyone from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Michael Barrymore.

The show was notable for allowing conversations to run their course, sometimes leaving an exchange to continue for an hour rather than skirting around an issue. It was here that Simon was able to indulge his interest in science. “I thought scientists got a bum deal on the radio because they never got long enough to explain what they do; certainly not outside specialist programmes,” he says. “You can’t explain complex ideas in two or three minutes, so we thought we would give them half an hour.”

These conversations ultimately provided Simon with some of the material for his books. “I wanted to make an adventure story that was set in the real world, where the ‘magic’ is real,” he shares. “I made sure the colour of the flame in an experiment was right – and if

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DAVID BECKHAM

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DAVID BECKHAM

IN DEFENCE OF A

Much Ridiculed Footballer AND A

Decent Man David Beckham: clothes horse with a flashy haircut or world‐class footballer with a heart of gold? Frank Worrall investigates.

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ention the name David Beckham along with the words ‘footballing great’ to many fans and commentators of the beautiful game and often you will be greeted with a shaking of the head, a pursing of the lips and a grimace. Then you’ll probably hear the words: “He had a decent right foot but no pace, and he couldn’t beat a man. He was an average player who worked hard but was hardly naturally gifted.”

And sometimes you’ll get the additional footnote: “Beckham was a clothes horse with a different haircut for every occasion; a king of spin who sold himself brilliantly and created an aura around himself because of his looks and fashion style off the pitch, but who couldn’t hold a light to geniuses like Paul Scholes or Gazza on the field.

He was just an overhyped prima donna.”

And the truth of it? Well, ‘Becks’, as he became known, is a master of spin and self‐promotion; whether it be with his pretty hair, his fancy boots or the pop star trophy wife. And he was never going to be a match for Scholesy, Gazza or Giggsy, for that matter, in pure footballing terms.

But he always did have a sweet right foot. Remember how it saved former England boss Sven‐Göran Eriksson’s bacon in October 2001 when Beckham scored that last‐ gasp free kick against Greece at Old Trafford? The wonder kick that meant England qualified for the following year’s World Cup? And for someone who was apparently a ‘journeyman’, his record of achievement for club and country takes some beating.

Becks made 115 appearances for England – a record for an outfield player – and regularly captained the side

during Eriksson’s tenure. And, during a glittering career that spanned two decades, he had also notched up trophies and records galore by the time he retired last May at the age of 38. He is the only British player to win titles in four different countries: England with Manchester United; Spain with Real Madrid; America with Los Angeles Galaxy and France with Paris Saint‐ Germain. And his trophy cabinet is fit to burst. Among his medals are six Premier League titles, one European Cup and two FA Cups with United, plus three league winner’s medals in those other countries and a Spanish Cup winner’s medal to boot.

BY FRANK WORRALL

“I’M VERY HONOURED BY THE OFFERS I HAD FROM OTHER PREMIER LEAGUE CLUBS, BUT I DIDN’T WANT TO PLAY THERE UNLESS IT WAS FOR MANCHESTER UNITED.” So he can’t have been that bad a player, can he?

Well, other accusations have always been levelled against Becks, who is arguably the most iconic sportsman to hail from these shores in the last 20 years.

That he is money‐mad; that everything he does is aimed at bolstering ‘Brand Beckham’; that he changed after marrying Victoria; that he became obsessed with fame and fortune when he saw her pop star lifestyle.

I can tell you here and now that the accusations f

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DAVID BECKHAM

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do not add up when you meet the man. Back in 2007, I wrote a book called The Magnificent Sevens, which, as the title suggests, was an examination of the five men who wore the Man United shirt with the most distinction. My aim was to find out what made George Best, Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo and David Beckham tick, and to assess their credentials for a permanent place in the Old Trafford hall of fame.

In Becks I discovered a warm, engaging character full of generous spirit, compassion and a general lack of selfishness; a decent guy who was adamant he wanted to be judged on his footballing efforts alone, and who laughed off the idea that he was using the game as a vehicle to enhance his bank balance. In private, he is endearing, easy to talk to, easy to listen to and a man who is polite and kind. There are no edges to him; he has never been on a massive ego trip as many people claim or sought to become the best‐known sportsman on the planet.

That he achieved this anyway says a lot about him. Of course, there is some truth in the claim that his marriage to Victoria and their constant appearances in the news and fashion magazines contributed to their worldwide fame.

But David’s main aim has never been to court that fame.

He is a much more down‐to‐earth, easygoing guy than the tabloids would have you believe. Indeed, he has a compassionate spirit and a good heart that mark him out as a man of solid grounding and strong beliefs.

Is he a man of faith? Well, David refuses to talk about his beliefs in public after he was lampooned following the birth of his first son Brooklyn in 1999 for saying: “I definitely want Brooklyn to be christened, but I don’t know into what religion yet.”

There have been suggestions that he is half‐Christian and half‐Jewish, as his maternal grandfather Joe West was Jewish. But if his tattoos are anything to go by, it would appear that Christianity is his favoured religion.

He has a crucifix on the back of his neck, which is just above the guardian angel between his shoulders. And when his grandfather died in 2010, David opted for another tattoo: a black‐and‐white image of Christ drawn on his right side. This might seem an unusual choice given that Mr West was Jewish, but maybe it is an indication of David’s own privately chosen faith. Becks admits that he regularly went to church as a boy, although he concedes that this was, in part, an attempt to endear himself to the manager of the church youth football team!

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Another of David’s tattoo choices saw the Latin phrase ‘Perfectio In Spiritu’ etched onto his body. Translated as ‘spiritual perfection’, this brings to mind religious imagery once again. Then in 2011 he had another portrait of Jesus done, this time with three cherubs, which some interpret as a powerful force that is looking after his three sons.

While these tattoos do not prove conclusively that David has faith in Christ, this lifestyle suggests a belief in certain moral and spiritual rights and wrongs. Although he is often portrayed as a globetrotting icon now he has officially retired as a player, Becks prefers to spend his spare time with wife Victoria, their three sons – Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz – and his baby daughter Harper. He is undoubtedly a good family man, an excellent provider and a very measured, stable individual.

For all his fame, fortune and obvious allure, only once have the tabloids hacks ever accused David of straying.

In 2004, the ‘red tops’ enjoyed a feeding frenzy when Beckham’s then assistant Rebecca Loos claimed she had had an affair with him in Spain. Loos was hired by Real Madrid to ‘look after’ David and claimed she looked after him a little too well.

David denied the affair and later added: “During the past few months I have become accustomed to reading more and more ludicrous stories about my private life.

The simple truth is that I am very happily married. I have a wonderful wife and two very special kids. There is nothing any third party can do to change these facts.”

And that was that. The hubris died down, and despite further attempts to dig up more salacious incidents, the press never went to town on Becks again in that way. He stayed on a straight and narrow path, which led to greater rewards both on and off the pitch. This meant that as he approached the twilight of his career 12 months ago he was viewed universally as an admirable man; and his ambassadorial efforts during the 2012 London Olympics cemented that perception.

“I’M USED TO THE KNOCKS AND I ROLL WITH THEM NOW. IT HAS BEEN THE STORY OF MY WHOLE CAREER SINCE I FIRST MADE A NAME FOR MYSELF AT MAN UNITED.” Then came something truly exceptional at the club that provided the footballing finale of his career. At the end of January, it was announced that Becks would join Paris Saint‐Germain (PSG). He had received offers to return to the Premier League – I am told Tottenham and West Ham were among the bidders – but endeared himself to Man United fans by admitting that he could not return to play against the club he loved.

Instead he opted for a new challenge, working for the club’s Qatari owners and his old AC Milan boss Carlo Ancelotti, who was at the helm of the famous old club in the French capital at this point. Beckham signed a five‐ month contract, saying: “I’m very lucky. I’m 37 and I got a lot of offers, more now than I’ve probably had in my career. I’m very honoured by that.

“Every club I’ve played for throughout the world I’ve been successful with. I was successful with Manchester United and always said I’d never want to play for another English club. I had a lot of history with Manchester United. It’s the team I support and the team I dreamt of playing for. I’m very honoured by the offers I had from other Premier League clubs, but I didn’t want to play there unless it was for Manchester United.”

But as if his move to Paris wasn’t enough of a surprise, Beckham then made a move that stunned even the most

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DAVID BECKHAM had prompted Alan Hansen’s infamous ‘kids don’t win titles’ jibe. At the time, Fergie liked the way the Cockney boy lived his life. David was the leading light of a new breed of English footballer who didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs, was clean living and lived for his football.

And initially David saw the boss as a second father and came to rely on him for advice and help. It was Fergie who gently eased him back into football after his nightmare experience at the 1998 World Cup, when he was sent off against Argentina and blamed for England’s early exit from the competition. A barrage of abuse and hatred was directed towards him at football grounds all over the country when he finally re‐emerged in a Man United shirt.

The golden boy of English football was at his lowest ebb as the tabloids gleefully laid into him and an effigy was strung up on a lamppost outside a pub in his native East London. It was Fergie who came to his emotional rescue when all around he heard only vitriolic criticism and hatred. Like a loyal father to his prodigal son, Fergie told him: “Get yourself back here where people love you and support you. You can have your say back to the rest of them after the season begins.” And with the boss’s support, he did just that, helping United to the treble the following season. f

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hardened cynics among the world’s press corps who were gathered there. It was a move that, for me, best sums up the man and his integrity: Becks disclosed that he would play without a salary at PSG, instead donating what he would have earned to help disadvantaged children.

David explained the altruistic decision in this way: “I won’t receive any salary. My salary will go to a local children’s charity in Paris. It’s something exciting and something I’m not sure has been done before.”

He did not know the exact amount the charity would receive, but conceded that it would be a lot of money.

“I’m very excited about it,” he added. “To be able to give a huge sum to a children’s charity in Paris, it’s very special.”

Even then, some cynics rubbished his decision, claiming it was a move to generate good publicity for the footballer and that the anticipated £2 million windfall was peanuts to a man of Beckham’s wealth. There were also snipes that Beckham would still leave Paris a much richer man because of the money he would bank from commercial deals and merchandising income.

And some financial analysts criticised the move as a ploy to avoid paying tax during his stay in Paris. The latter argument appears nonsensical to me. If he had paid his taxes, he still would have been left with some money in his pocket. As it was, he received no pay because he chose to give it all away.

OK, so he did indeed garner global publicity because of this decision, and he did pocket money from other sources as a result of his successful stint in Paris. But whichever way you look at it, the fact is that David Beckham still volunteered an estimated £2 million to help those in need. Whichever way you look at it, David Beckham carried out a philanthropic act of some depth and weight. And, casting aside any instinctive human defects of envy and cynicism, I for one am willing to stand up and say: “Yeah, I really admire that: it shows what a good guy David really is”.

Becks himself simply shrugged off the criticism when it was levelled at him and made no comment. He smiled, as if to say: “Well, it’s nothing new, I’m used to the knocks and I roll with them now. It has been the story of my whole career since I first made a name for myself at Man United.”

And indeed it has.

Becks was often in the spotlight for non‐footballing issues, frequently falling out with United boss Ferguson over this haircut, that outfit or some situation concerning his celebrity wife. And then there was the issue of England: with Fergie seeming to believe that Becks cared more for the national team than for United.

At other times, David was the butt of press jokes and even criticism from England fans in a career that was never short of controversy. Being David Beckham has never been dull.

David arrived at United as a schoolboy in 1993 and ruled United’s right wing for 11 years until he was cast out to Real Madrid by Fergie. Lampooned as a numbskull, a man ruled by his wife, a man whose main interest was celebrity and money, David Beckham was, in reality, a rather fine footballer – and the best crosser of a ball in the world. He wasn’t as daft as the critics would have it either. He learnt to cope admirably with the demands of 24‐hour press coverage and the fact that he would become the most famous footballer on the planet.

Beckham was always a grafter. He understood that the hours spent perfecting his skills on the training pitch would pay dividends on the actual field of play.

Beckham, who was born in Leytonstone, East London, on May 2, 1975, had always been a United fan and Fergie signed him up on his 13th birthday. When he was 16, the United boss persuaded him to sign as a trainee at Old Trafford despite firm interest from Spurs.

David scored his first Premier League goal in the first match of the 1995‐96 season; a 3‐1 loss at Villa Park that

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DAVID BECKHAM

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But by 2002, rumours that Fergie was tiring of Becks and his celebrity lifestyle were circulating around Old Trafford. The boss watched that year’s World Cup from his villa in the south of France and remained unhappy.

He is reported to have believed that United were suffering at the expense of England and that Becks cared more for the white shirt of his national team than he did the red of Manchester.

David spoke of the situation in this way: “I had the feeling he wasn’t too happy, generally about the extra responsibility – and the extra attention – that came with me captaining England.” And it appears Becks was right: within 12 months he was gone from Old Trafford.

That final season of 2002‐03 started badly and gradually got worse for the golden boy. Fergie had welcomed him back from the World Cup by stressing how important a 100% effort from him would be if the club was to enjoy a successful campaign.

But following an injury early in the season, Becks was unable to regain his place in the United starting line‐up, with the boss preferring to play Ole Gunnar Solskjaer on the right side of midfield. It all came to a head in April 2003 when Fergie left a fit David out of the team’s crucial second‐leg Champions League clash against Real Madrid at Old Trafford.

United had lost the first leg 3‐1, so this was the decider.

It was a key match, one in which a manager fields his strongest eleven. Yet instead of starting with Becks, Fergie sent out Juan Sebastián Verón in his place. Verón had been out injured for the previous seven weeks and was still only half‐fit, so it was an unexpected decision. I remember writing at the time that it seemed to be another chapter in the manager’s doomed campaign to prove that the Argentine was worth the £28.1 million he had splashed out on him.

The facts tell the full story of how the boss’ decision backfired that St George’s Day in 2003. A hat‐trick from the Brazilian Ronaldo meant United were losing 3‐2 on

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the night when Fergie finally relented and took off the ineffective Verón and sent Becks on in his stead. Within 21 minutes, David had scored twice and United won the game 4‐3. However, they lost the tie 6‐5 on aggregate.

Two months later Becks would be on his way to join the team that ended Fergie’s dream of competing at Old Trafford in the Champions League final. In the end, AC Milan would claim the trophy in Manchester after beating their Italian rivals Juventus 3‐2 on penalties after the match ended 0‐0.

In an interview some time later, Fergie went some way to explaining why he decided to sell David to Real Madrid for £25 million, and it was not down to any decline in talent. No, the United manager admitted for the first time in public that Beckham had to go because he had become a celebrity footballer.

Ferguson said: “His life changed when he met his wife.

She’s in pop and David got another image. He’s developed this ‘fashion thing’. I saw his transition to a different person.”

It was the end of their surrogate father/son relationship and an illuminating example of how controversy followed Becks wherever he went. A decent, compassionate man, he is often misunderstood and the target for – in my view – stinging and sometimes vitriolic criticism.

But I believe footballing history, say 50 years from now, will generally look on Becks in an altogether more favourable light given the intrinsic goodness of the man.

And when I look at some of the charlatans and undesirables who have been knighted, I can’t help but wonder why Becks hasn’t already received that honour given his services to football and to humanity.

Arise Sir David Beckham… it has a nice feel about it.

And it would certainly be a richly deserved and fitting accolade. n

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Advertising Sales: Duncan Williams, Tel: 07960 829615

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SHERIDAN VOYSEY

LIFE AFTER DISAPPOINTMENT treatment. But when Sheridan and Merryn decided to try IVF, they agreed that their marriage came before their desire for a child and that they would never let this struggle come between them.

“The pressure of infertility on a couple can be immense, whatever route the couple takes to rectify it. But that commitment to put our marriage first made all the difference in surviving those pressures,” claims Sheridan.

“The constant waiting picks away at the fabric of your being: waiting each month when you’re first trying for a child; waiting for blood test results when you’re doing IVF; waiting for the phone call when you’re waiting to adopt. Your emotions get a battering during this wait, as your hopes are constantly raised then dashed.”

The years of special diets, prayer for healing, numerous rounds of IVF and a two‐year wait on the local adoption list came to nothing. The Voyseys needed a new beginning, and as Merryn had been offered a job at the University of Oxford, the opportunity appeared to be presenting itself.

BY JOY TIBBS

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ou might think writing a series of successful books, racking up more than 2,000 radio interviews and speaking at a host of prestigious events is the definition of ‘living the dream’, but what happens when you discover that the thing you want most just isn’t going to happen?

Despite the great influence he has had on the page and on the stage, Sheridan Voysey hit a major wall when he and wife Merryn discovered they would never have a child. After ten years of hoping, praying and weeping, it was clear that this was a dream that would never come true. There was a sense of bitter disappointment and a feeling that God had failed them as a couple. It felt as though a death had occurred; not quite a physical death, but the death of a precious, lifelong dream.

A Fresh Start Feeling bereft, the couple packed their bags and left their native Australia. They headed to Europe in a bid to wrestle with their faith and to kickstart the healing process. They stopped trying to have a baby and instead hoped to see a new dream come to life. Sheridan explains: “In short, we stopped because we simply couldn’t continue on anymore. Proverbs 13:12 says that hope deferred makes the heart sick. Well, Merryn’s heart was sick.” f

“THE PRESSURE OF INFERTILITY ON A COUPLE CAN BE IMMENSE, WHATEVER ROUTE THE COUPLE TAKES TO RECTIFY IT. BUT THAT COMMITMENT TO PUT OUR MARRIAGE FIRST MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN SURVIVING THOSE PRESSURES.”

Ten Years of Struggle For those who have never faced problems with fertility or a future without children, it is impossible to understand the toll IVF and other fertility treatments can have on a relationship. So many relationships are torn apart by the longing and the disappointment that comes with the

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SHERIDAN VOYSEY

Rawness and Recovery

Their journey from the streets of Rome to the Basilicas of Paris and from the Alps of Switzerland to their new home in Oxford is documented in Sheridan’s latest, and arguably greatest, book Resurrection Year.

“I’d describe a ‘resurrection year’ as a year of new life following the death of a dream. I’d love to take credit for the phrase, but it was the British author Adrian Plass who suggested it to me,” Sheridan says.

“I was talking to Adrian off‐air one day after interviewing him on my former radio show, Open House. We’d gotten to know each other a little over the years and so I told him about the difficult journey my wife Merryn and I had been on, and how we were thinking of starting the new year afresh.

“He listened intently and then said: ‘In the Christian scheme of things, new beginnings come after the death of something, just as Jesus’ resurrection followed his crucifixion. After what you’ve just told me, I think a ‘resurrection year’ is just what you need.’”

Letting Go The decision to travel was a difficult one to make. There was a part of Sheridan that felt it would be too exhausting to move from place to place and potentially settle in another country on the other side of the world.

There was a part of him that blamed himself for his inability to play his part in creating the child he so longed for, and another part that blamed God for failing to come through for them, and for seeming so distant and aloof. Part of him that felt he would be giving up everything that he had worked so hard to establish in Australia, and another part that knew he wanted to help his wife fulfil one of her dreams.

“Having watched Merryn miss out on one dream, I couldn’t watch her miss out on another. So I’ve never really second‐guessed our decision to come to the UK. But I won’t lie, leaving my life and ministry in Australia was hard. I didn’t leave it with the joy of a saint who delights in sacrifice,” he admits.

“In the book I describe our experience of infertility as a ‘wilderness’ journey. To some degree, leaving Australia and coming to the UK plunged me into a second wilderness experience; not knowing who I was or what my purpose was to be. But God has been up to something all along, and this unexpected book is part of it. A whole new season of ministry is beginning, a very surprising one.”

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Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams into New Beginnings (Thomas Nelson) is now available to buy in paperback and ebook formats. For a free sample chapter visit www.sheridanvoysey.com.

Sheridan’s isn’t a glossy account of a triumphant journey from misery to joy, from darkness to light; rather it is an honest and detailed account of struggle. Struggle to communicate a deep sadness; struggle to go on knowing that one of the things the pair had always hoped for would never be; and struggle to pray through the situation when everything seemed so bleak.

In chapter three, he writes: “I feel dead inside,” I say. “Lifeless. Numb. I want to get excited about something again. I want to resurrect my emotions.”

“I want to resurrect my relationship with God,” Merryn says. “He feels like an old friend who no longer returns my calls.”

In the same way that leaving everything they knew behind and starting afresh was difficult, sharing the many lows and occasional highs of doing so brought its own challenges. Sheridan admits that it was hard to risk exposing himself as the ‘infertility guy’ and to share the rawest of emotions with people he knew and many that he didn’t.

So why bother? Well, the Voyseys were aware that they are not the only people to have struggled with infertility.

The latest figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) reveal that more than 60,000 fertility treatments are performed each year in the UK alone.

Sheridan explains: “It’s that rawness that people are thanking us most for, as it has given voice to their own feelings and questions, yet shown a pathway through them to a place of hope, faith and new life.

“Resurrection Year is not a book about infertility; it’s a book about recovering from broken dreams. It’s a book for the girl who longs to be married but is single, the guy whose career dreams haven’t worked out, the friend who has lost a loved one. For anyone who has experienced a broken dream or for anyone who knows someone who has.

“I hope Resurrection Year will breathe new life and hope into these and other readers, helping them to see, through our story, that a broken dream doesn’t have to define one’s life, and that while God is sometimes silent, He is never absent.” n Joy is a freelance editor and writer (www.joyofediting.co.uk), with experience ranging from websites and magazines to dissertations and books. She is an active member of her local church, a staunch Liverpool supporter and a big fan of baked goods.

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HOPE

Festive Fun on the

Football Field

The first football fixture of the season saw AFC Bournemouth take on Charlton Athletic. They went head to head on the pitch, but behind the scenes a more harmonious story was emerging. rooted in their communities. And of course many of the songs sung on the terraces started out as Christian hymns.

“It’s great to see these new links developing between local communities, churches and sports clubs with the stadium carol events.”

Pre-match Prayer Andy Rimmer, who is also vicar of the Lantern Church in Merley, near Bournemouth, has held several carol services with fans and players at the Cherries’ ground. He says: “I enjoy getting to know the lads and occasionally training with them. We have pre‐ match prayer, which a few of them attend.

Sport is a tremendous gift from God and it’s where people are.

BY CATHERINE BUTCHER

Words and Action

harlton’s chaplain Matt Baker, who also serves as pastoral support director in English football at Sports Chaplaincy UK, was busy joining forces with AFC Bournemouth’s chaplain Andy Rimmer and Christian charity HOPE to encourage sports clubs to hold community carol events in their stadiums this Christmas.

Sports chaplains around the country now plan to take part with the support of local churches, so stadiums that are accustomed to the cheers and groans of chanting crowds are set to ring out with the sound of carols as fans and communities gather to celebrate Christmas.

The ultimate goal is that sports stadiums across the country will host carol services for Christmas 2014 with a ‘Silent Night’ theme, linking the community event to the truce observed by troops 100 years earlier in the trenches during World War I, when German and British soldiers sang the famous carol.

This year’s carol services are part of HOPE’s work with churches of all denominations ahead of its year‐long mission of ‘word and action’ in 2014.

The national charity is working with chaplains to equip local clubs, community groups and churches to stage the events, and pilot community carol services have been held for the past two years. In 2011, Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Aldershot Town and Shrewsbury Town’s football clubs held carol services at their stadiums with the help of sports chaplains, local school choirs and Salvation Army bands. In 2012, the idea spread to 15 clubs, and this December more than 50 sports stadiums around the country are expected to host carol events for fans and other members of the public.

Roy Crowne, HOPE’s director, says: “English football began with the Sunday School movement. The churches that started Aston Villa, Barnsley, Birmingham City, Bolton Wanderers and many other football clubs were

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IN A COUNTRY THAT INCREASINGLY CLAIMS TO HAVE LITTLE ALLEGIANCE TO THE CHURCH OR CHRISTIANITY, IT’S AMAZING HOW CHRISTMAS STILL HOLDS SUCH A FASCINATION. “The carol service is a chance to celebrate Jesus’ birth in a completely unique environment. We want these events to have a real community feel as well as being attended by supporters of the clubs. To me it’s a win‐win situation for all involved. The club shows it is involved in the community, the chaplain gets the opportunity to show who he or she is, and the Church has the chance to share the greatest story ever told with an audience consisting mainly of non‐churchgoers.

“In a country that increasingly claims to have little allegiance to the Church or Christianity, it’s amazing how Christmas still holds such a fascination. Even in the often dark world of professional sport there’s an increasing number of sports clubs ready to open their doors to players, staff, supporters and the local community to hear the real heart of Christmas.”

As Christmas is already a busy season in the Christian world, churches are not always keen to add another event to the calendar, so dates for the stadium‐based carol events have

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HOPE deliberately been chosen early in December so that they don’t clash with other church events.

Andy hosted a launch event in June this year to explain the possibilities to Bournemouth churches and they gave the plans an enthusiastic response.

AFC Bournemouth’s carol service is now booked for December 10 and former Premiership player Linvoy Primus, joint founder of Christian charity Faith and Football, is the guest speaker. In the past, an indoor venue at the Cherries’ ground has been used, but this year it will take place on the pitch, with the aim of bringing together 1,000 people.

Bolton’s Passion for Christmas Bolton Wanderers hosted a carol service last year in the stadium’s Premier Suite and more than 1,200 people attended. Called ‘Passion for Christmas’, it was an evening of traditional carols and featured a drama that put an innovative twist on the nativity story.

Bolton chairman Phil Gartside and retired professional footballer Fabrice Muamba both attended the service, which was broadcast via a local commercial radio station on Christmas morning for an hour without any commercial breaks!

Club chaplain Phil Mason explained: “It was a really good evening and we were absolutely delighted that so many fans were able to come along. The Mass Choir and Bolton Junior Youth Choir, which is a mix of local schoolchildren, led us in the carols.

“The drama was very different. It was written as if the birth of Jesus hadn’t happened in the traditional setting, but in a football stadium.

Joseph was a footballer, Mary was a ‘WAG’, the shepherds were the football supporters and the wise men were three football managers from different clubs all looking for the new Messi, or Messiah.”

Phil added: “We had lots of different representatives of faith groups, including Hindus and Muslims as well as Christians. The Bishop of Bolton, along with other church leaders, led the blessing at the end of the evening. The feedback has been overwhelming. It was a great opportunity to witness and share the true message of Christmas in a unique way to the vast majority who attended, who were un‐churched.”

All proceeds from the service were donated to the Hearts & Goals campaign, headed up by Fabrice Muamba and the drama script is available to download from www.hopetogether.org.uk.

children from local schools. (Phone Steve on 07976 733199 for more details and for tickets.)

And it’s not only football clubs that are to hold community carol services this year. On December 11 the Provident Stadium – home to Rugby League’s Bradford Bulls – will host a community carol event for between 3,000 and 5,000 supporters and Bradford residents.

Chaplain Warren Evans, director of rugby league at Sports Chaplaincy UK, said: “We’ll simply tell the Christmas story with carols, drama, 15 school choirs and a brass band.”

Warren hopes that local people from Bradford’s diverse community will be drawn to other Christmas events at local churches as a result.

bands and the club’s players or manager reading some familiar Bible passages related to the nativity story. Often a collection is taken for a local charity.

If Sorted readers would like their local club to stage a carol event, it’s best to make an approach through the club chaplain. The Sports Chaplaincy UK website (www.sportschaplaincy.org.uk) offers a searchable directory of sports chaplains.

HOPE and Sports Chaplaincy UK have published resources for groups of churches to use that will help local stadiums stage community carol services. These can be downloaded at www.hopetogether.org.uk or http://bit.ly/15xg7HK. n

Tried and Tested The tried‐and‐tested formula for these carol services includes a celebrity speaker such as a Christian footballer who can give a punchy, ten‐minute talk, alongside local school choirs,

Birmingham and Bradford Plans are also being made in Birmingham for a community carol service in the 8,000‐seater stand at the Hawthorns, which is home to West Bromwich Albion. Steve Tooth of the Gateway Christian Centre was inspired to organise the event when he heard Roy Crowne speaking about HOPE’s dream for community carol events to take place in every stadium in 2014.

Steve’s church is close to the Hawthorns, and he is working to bring the community together for a huge Christmas celebration in December 2013 featuring bands from local churches, a youth orchestra and a choir comprising

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BUSINESS

CHARLES HUMPHREYS

We’re in Business There are a number of things we can do to become godly leaders:

Be courageous; step up to the plate I don’t know your circumstances. Perhaps you’ve experienced bad leadership or lacked a father figure in your life. Each of us has doubts about our ability to take up leadership, and this uncertainty often arises following the unkind words of others. Remember that Paul the evangelist had to encourage one of his close friends, Timothy, not to allow anyone to look down on him because of his youth (see 1 Timothy 4:12).

Be confident

Step Up to the Plate and Lead!

I

t was T‐minus 24 hours to inspection day and all was not well. Across the office, staff cowered as the CEO took on the appearance of an enraged bull.

At that moment, the anchor that prevented me from floating away on a tide of terror, along with my colleagues, appeared in the form of a wonderful manager and stalwart Christian, who walked around with a smile and a calmness of spirit that defied the bellows of “heads will roll”.

ALL MEN ARE CALLED TO BE LEADERS, WHETHER AT HOME, WORK, SCOUT GROUP OR WHEREVER. What is that quality that allows certain people to keep their heads in a crisis when those around them are losing theirs? The quality we’re talking about prevents circumstances

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from taking over the driving seat of their emotions, thoughts and decisions.

It’s been more than 20 years since that office crisis and I can’t recall the inspection outcome, but the one thing I still try to replicate in my own life is that manager’s ability to stand in peace in the eye of the storm and to provide leadership when it mattered most. I sometimes get there!

What does excellent male leadership look like? It’s a good question to ask, because we live in a world in which leadership models in politics, sport and even the Church often fall way short of our expectations. This summer people around the globe celebrated the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s inspirational “I Have a dream” speech in Washington DC. This is a man whose amazing words and example of leadership continue to inspire whole generations.

Strong, godly male leadership is vital in every arena, and the Bible tells us that: “For lack of guidance a nation falls, but victory is won through many advisers” (Proverbs 11:14).

All men are called to be leaders, whether at home, work, Scout group or wherever else you spend your time. As men, that is our calling: to lead. When Moses and Gideon were called to lead Israel out of crisis, both responded with self‐doubt. Moses even went as far as to say: “O Lord, please send someone else to do it!”

(Exodus 4:13). Thankfully, they didn’t give in to their fears, and neither should we.

Self‐confidence is the fundamental basis from which leadership grows. It allows us to make tough decisions and is something that will give our families and/or employees reassurance. This quality will also enable us to listen to other people’s points of view without feeling that our authority is under threat.

Be resilient A good dose of this is essential for most individuals and business leaders. Churchill once remarked: “If you are going through hell, keep going.”

Be self-aware Self‐awareness has to be one of the most valuable leadership qualities as pretending to know everything when you don’t creates problems. On the other hand, if you take responsibility for what you don’t know – without your ego getting in the way – your family, your organisation or whatever you lead will benefit.

It’s okay to admit that you don’t have all the answers, to make mistakes and, most importantly, to ask for help. Being aware of your strengths and weaknesses can help you to gain the trust of others and to increase your credibility and leadership effectiveness.

When men step up to the plate and lead in a godly fashion, they have a real edge and a sense of purpose that others lack. Have you got what it takes to be a leader in this age? n Charles is an experienced careers coach and founder of Christian‐based careers coaching service Want2get on? (www.want2geton.co.uk), which offers one‐on‐one careers counselling, workshops and seminars. He wrote The Christian Guide to Jobs and Careers (www.hope4acareer.com), is a busy dad of three young boys and husband to an overworked doctor. He also leads the men’s ministry at Oasis Church in Colliers Wood.

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BUSINESS

MARTIN CARTER

Bolder & Boulder

Are You Losing Your Marbles?

successful. Work still demanded early starts, late finishes and trips away, but the marble regularly saved me from doing ‘just one more email’ or making ‘just one more call’ before I left the office. What surprised me was that once I’d realised that the marble represented not just my son’s childhood but also my life and my time, I became more, not less, effective at work. I found myself becoming a lot more selective about how I spent my time and worked hard at not allowing anyone or anything to rob me of it.

So why is this story written in the past tense? Well, after about four years of marble carrying, I found that this way of thinking and behaving had become second nature to me. So now I can leave the marble (or rather marbles, because we now have three kids) at home, which has proved to be a game‐ changing result for me and my family. And my newsagent, come to think of it. I’m not sure he could have coped with a whole pocketful of marbles.

Maybe he thinks I’ve lost them…. n Martin Carter has a wife, three children and a desire to become more like the bloke God made him to be. He starts each day vowing to be bolder in his faith and the rest of it tripping up on all the boulders that get in the way. Writing about it helps him remember where he buried them (the boulders, not the family!).

W

hen our eldest son turned one, I scoured the local toy shops until I had acquired 884 marbles, reflecting the number of weeks – and in particular weekends – until he turned 18. I put them in a jar, marked the top of the stack on one side and put it in our kitchen.

Every Saturday I took one out, put it in my pocket and carried it with me for the week.

The idea was two‐fold. Firstly, the growing space between the original ‘high watermark’ and the top of the stack was a graphic reminder of how time slips away. Secondly, knowing that at the end of the week both the marble I was carrying and the finite period of time it represented would be gone challenged me to make the most of every minute.

The third, unintentional, consequence was that it earned me a puzzled look from the newsagent whenever I pulled the marble out of my pocket with my loose change!

At home, the marble reminded me to increase the quantity (and hence quality) of

time I spent with my son and also made me more aware of my mood. I began to notice how events from my day often spilled over into our time together, resulting in me being distant, distracted or, more commonly, just grumpy. The marble helped me realise I could choose how I turned up and regularly helped me exercise that choice. Believe me, no‐one was more surprised than me to find that grumpiness was a choice!

THE MARBLE REMINDED ME TO INCREASE THE QUANTITY (AND HENCE QUALITY) OF TIME I SPENT WITH MY SON. At work, the marble reminded me of my life beyond the office. This doesn’t mean I shirked my responsibilities or gave up on trying to be Sorted. Nov/Dec 2013

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BUSINESS

MATT BIRD

Relationology

Courageous Relationships ‘unedited self’. It certainly beats dressing up and reciting the words of someone you’re not.

Hesitation

A

s a young person I remember taking part in a production. I was required to dress up as a historical figure and recite journal extracts from memory. This memorising and reciting process was a challenge I relished; however, dressing up was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I can remember.

Fortunately, very few people recognised me afterwards due to the costume.

Most of us are more comfortable being ourselves than acting like someone else, but even being your authentic self requires courage. Being the genuine you is a place of personal vulnerability because you’re taking a risk; you are trusting that other people will accept you for who you really are. I describe this as the ‘unedited self’.

It requires courage to be your ‘unedited self’ and for other people to reciprocate in a way that reveals more of their authentic selves. You invite and invoke greater courage from people when you: n n n n

Ask a penetrating question Provide challenging feedback Make or invite a self‐disclosure Introduce an area of interpersonal conflict

As a professional adviser, this is not limited to business matters. It could be about a career move, family matter or something really personal. I have often heard senior leaders being encouraged to bring their whole selves to work because real people connect with real people, not impersonal beings.

Until we are courageous we can only speculate about whether others are willing to reciprocate and be courageous. If it is not welcome, people will skilfully sidestep into a joke, the project in hand or last night’s TV. If they are open, though, it will lead to a unique, meaningful and valuable interaction that will strengthen the client relationship. Whatever happens, try to be your 66

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So why do you sometimes hesitate to do what could be beneficial to you, your business and your clients? In this situation there is often a self‐destructive thought that plays with your mind and causes you to hold back rather than propelling yourself forward. These negative thoughts that prevent you from believing in yourself and your ability could be a: n n n n n n

Lack of self‐belief Lack of relational confidence Fear of failure Fear of rejection Deep insecurity Desire to play it safe

Sometimes the ‘noise’ that these self‐ destructive thoughts create can drown out your ability to think straight. You have to try to turn down or silence the noise that they create so that you can choose to be courageous.

BEING THE GENUINE YOU IS A PLACE OF PERSONAL VULNERABILITY. There is a risk that you will find a level of comfort in your client relationships rather than courageously breaking through. The other risk is that you are overly confident in the client relationship and come across as arrogant.

Arrogance can come from an attitude of superiority or from putting your confidence in your expertise rather than in yourself. The latter may cause you to over‐prepare for client meetings and potentially talk more than you should.

What is the self‐destructive thought that so often stops you from doing the things that will be beneficial to you, your business and your clients?

Inner Legitimacy Once a year, the community I live in with my family becomes a focal point for the world while it plays host to Wimbledon. The 2013 final between Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic was breathtaking. The skill of the serves, volleys and drop shots was incredible! The physical strength and stamina was outstanding. Spectacular courage was displayed by each player and the world looked on in awe.

How and where do you find the courage to play the game of life? Factors that may contribute to your confidence include: n Position in your field of expertise and in life n Personal and organisational brand n Support of clients, colleagues, coaches, family and friends n Financial freedom and freedom from worry n Education, skills training and preparation n Physical fitness and stamina n Appearance and how you dress n Your world view and belief system Murray and Djokovic certainly drew strength from each of these external resources; however, there was something much deeper going on inside. As W Timothy Gallwey’s infamous book The Inner Game of Tennis explains, non‐external factors largely determine sporting performance.

This is what I describe as your ‘inner legitimacy’; the degree to which you are comfortable, contended and confident with who you are.

Classically, this inner authority is developed by spending time away from the distractions of life.

In this place you can quieten your mind and visualise what success looks like.

Inner legitimacy is tested when the external supports fail you or are not available to you for some reason. It is when this happens that you discover where your real strength comes from: whether from your external props or from your inner authority.

Schedule some time to be with yourself so that you can work on your inner legitimacy and play to win.

Muscles Courage is like a muscle. The more consistently you practise and exercise courage, the stronger, fitter and more courageous you become.

Conversely, the less you exercise courage, the more out of shape and lazy you become and the less courageous you become. As the ‘special gym breed’ say: “Muscles have memories.” Your courage muscles also have memories.

Think about the key people in your life, both professional and personal, and how you could be more courageous in your relationships with them: n Challenge them if they have become stagnant in their jobs n Offer feedback about a way they could improve themselves n Make a self‐disclosure/tell them something personal you’ve never said before n Ask what their greatest work challenges are and how you could help n Cross the boundary of professional and personal life by meeting with partners Becoming more courageous in your relationships throws up an element of risk.

However, when you consider the best and worst that could happen as a result, exercising your courage muscles wins every time.

Remember that what you feed grows, so feed your courage today by doing something bold and brave in a relationship. n Matt Bird is The Relationologist. Get Matt's latest articles delivered to your email inbox and a free copy of his How to Flourish in a Crowded Room e‐book at www.relationology.co.uk.

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ADVICE

SMART TALK

With Richard Scott, Jojo Meadows and Richard Taylor OUR EXPERTS

Richard Scott has worked as a surgeon, GP and evangelist in England, India and parts of Africa. His wife Heather is also a doctor and the couple have three daughters. Sport is a passion for Richard, interspersed more recently with writing, which developed during treatment for bowel cancer. His second book, God – I’ve got Cancer, will be published soon by Terra Nova Publications.

Jojo Meadows is passionate about spreading God’s word in an original way. She trained as a counsellor and helped to run a crisis centre in Solihull before being headhunted

by Connexions to develop courses for senior schools.

Jojo has been through many life-changing experiences including anorexia, teenage pregnancy, rape and cervical cancer. This motivated her to help others who are struggling through difficult circumstances.

Sponsored by Christian Single Mix

Is Variety the Spice of Life?

I’d like to spice things up a bit in the bedroom department, but my wife is quite traditional and thinks that introducing new things is somehow wrong.

Where do we go from here?

If you want to be more adventurous in your sex life, it’s a team effort. Often resistance here may indicate a need to consolidate other areas of your relationship and increase mutual trust. When your wife is ready, you can safely explore your options from a secure foundation and find out where your comfort zone boundaries lie.

RT

RS What’s your motivation? Is it

because of pressure from friends or magazines? It’s important that you don’t make your wife feel guilty or unworthy, as what might seem like a good idea may have severe repercussions. Without appearing too boring, your marriage is worth more than experimentation and, unless you both buy into something new, it’s best to stick with the tried, tested and secure. It’s not wrong to do things differently, but insisting is unwise.

because your love is deeper than your social differences.

BS Founding pastor of Victory Church in Cwmbran, Richard Taylor is a church leader and author. For many years, Richard has been impacting lives with his down-to-earth humour, passion and genuine love for God and people. Along with his wife Jill and their four sons, Richard founded the church in January 2010 and it has since grown into a vibrant congregation.

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No! It’s funny how opposites attract and where my wife Heather and I differ, we usually realise that our strengths greatly outweigh our issues. One practical suggestion Heather has relied on through the years is seeing and going away with likeminded female friends and doing stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily choose but that enlivens her. That way we love each other for what we can provide rather than becoming frustrated by what we can’t.

RS

My husband and I are very different personalities. He is very private and an introvert, whereas I am an outgoing social butterfly. To be honest, I feel a bit scared at the thought of spending the rest of my life with a man I love but who I feel inhibited and held back by. Did I marry the wrong man?

My question is, have you JM married the right man? All relationships are works in progress!

You say that you love him, and love is the key to solution and resolve.

You need to talk through your feelings, expressing your frustration and how you are feeling inhibited.

You being a social butterfly must be hard for him to handle, too, but think positively and work hard,

You knew your husband and were hopefully attracted by his qualities when you chose to marry. I am told a great marriage results from a lifetime of communication and willingness to compromise, trusting that if you put the needs of your partner first they will reciprocate. We need God’s help, plus support from friends and family, to deliver this kind of commitment. Be open about your needs and pray for a good response.

RT

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ADVICE Is it wrong for a man to have lots of female friends?

If you’re married or are with a longstanding girlfriend, I see nothing wrong with this as long as you are fully transparent with your better half. Keep her in the picture and be completely honest with her and with yourself, because without that honesty hormones have a nasty habit of messing up our lives, big time. If your missus presses the ‘no’ button, obey her. She’s probably right!

RS

It’s not wrong, but it may be telling. The question of balance and propriety in relationships comes to mind.

We are shaped by natural tendencies and past experiences.

Some men connect easily with women but lack male friendships for historical reasons. It’s worth exploring whether there are any challenging relationship issues from childhood or the past to work through to help form a more balanced friendship group. It’s always helpful for men to be accountable to Christian brothers.

RT

JM Honestly? If you are single

and intending to find a relationship, it could be very daunting for the prospective lady. If you are married, you have to consider your wife and make sure she is happy. Women love to have men they can confer and confide in. Just be aware that women’s emotions are very different from men’s, and once you are engaging on a regular basis, women can easily start becoming emotionally attached. Personally, I see no problem.

CONTACT US: Got a problem and need an answer?

Email: jo@sorted-magazine.com or write to: Smart Talk, Sorted Magazine, PO Box 3070, Littlehampton, West Sussex BN17 6WX

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Advertising Sales: Duncan Williams, Tel: 07960 829615

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ADVICE

JONATHAN SHERWIN

Big Questions

Why Did God Have to Die?

H

ave you ever thought: ‘Why the cross? Why not some other way? After all God, being God, can do what He wants. Why bother with death and all that?’ You wouldn’t be alone in contemplating these questions. Many have.

Had to? Chose to…

One of the best‐known Bible verses starts this way: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” (John 3:16).

Love is a choice, it has to be. Coerced love is no love at all. You could spend years of your life studying robotics and then create the perfect machine to meet your every need, but you wouldn’t have created something to love you; it would merely exist to serve you.

Other religions – not to mention a few cults – detest the idea of God dying. The idea of the most holy God suffering and dying as a human is repulsive to them, because it appears to bring shame on their God. God would have to be less than God to suffer a human death.

And I would agree, if God were not a God of love. But what greater act of love could someone perform than to willingly exchange their life for yours? If love were of immense

value, surely the greatest person (God) would be capable of the greatest act of it?

To Pay the Price The problem of sin runs deep. The Bible speaks of Jesus coming to earth and dying to pay the price for our sins and offer us forgiveness. But why, we may ask, did God not just ‘click his fingers’ and be done with sin?

Richard Dawkins asks it this way: “If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment?”

This seems like an easy out, but doing so would have cheapened the character of God to someone who is unworthy of worship.

People choose to steal the most valuable things. For example, during the recent $137 million Cannes diamond theft it was diamonds, not sand, that were taken. The perfect love of God is of immense value, and when it is stolen – through sin – the cost incurred is incredibly high.

HIS CRIME RESULTED IN A PUNISHMENT THAT HAD TO BE PAID. When people are found guilty of a crime, we hold them personally responsible for the ‘cost’ of that crime. When my computer was stolen after a break‐in at my house, the thief, who was caught later that night, was ordered by the court to pay me back in full. His crime resulted in a punishment that had to be paid.

I chose to forgive him for breaking into my house while I slept, to let it go and not hold it against him. At the same time, justice was done through the courts that day. If I had chosen to forgive the thief and the court had not passed that sentence, the crime would not have been properly addressed.

Likewise, if God were to choose to just forget and ignore the cost of our sin, our sin would be valueless, which would dissolve morality and cheapen God’s love. If the French police turned around and said: “Ahh, they’re just diamonds – no big deal”, there would be an outcry.

God’s perfection calls for sin to be dealt with and God’s patience gives us the chance, through His own sacrifice, to make amends.

First He forgives and then His death pays the price. It is total love and total justice.

To Show Us His Love What is the most loving thing you could envisage? The greatest loving act imaginable?

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga says that the cross of Christ is not only the most loving act that has happened, but also that it is the most loving act that could ever happen.

If God exists and is all loving, and we are in sin, then the greatest act would be to make His existence known to us, to reveal that He loves us and then redeem us from sin.

In Jesus’ incarnation (coming to earth as a man) and His atonement (dying to forgive us) we have the greatest possible act of love conceivable.

Just pause for a moment. If Jesus really was God and Jesus really did die to forgive your sins, forget about the other objections you may have for a moment. If that were true, what would you say to Jesus if you met Him? What would you feel, and what would you think about Him? The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is compelling and well documented. There are other difficult issues to wrap our minds around and we continue to think about these, but if Christ rose from the dead, that changes everything! What this reveals when we piece it all together is the greatest act of a perfect, loving and just God who offers full forgiveness to all. n Jonathan lives in Oxford where he runs Latimers, a place for people to challenge and investigate the Christian faith. He graduated from the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and now works as an itinerant evangelist, which involves co‐leading CVM’s Demolition Squad. Join the conversation online: www.jonathansherwin.net.

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OPINION

JON COBB

Money

having to learn about the capital cities of obscure European countries or the chemical formula for hydrochloric acid in favour of learning about the dangers of a Pot noodle!

However, all this got me thinking about my line of work, and where our kids go to learn about money management. This is way too important to be left to chance. Somehow we have moved from a generation where you saved before you purchased to a generation that is taught: “Don’t put it off! Put it on (your credit card)!”

So, parents, it’s up to us (if we can’t rely on schools) to educate our kids on how to be responsible with their pocket money. Here are some simple challenges we should encourage them to embrace: n Set a weekly budget for their pocket money.

Let them develop an understanding of what the Bank of Mum and Dad covers, and the things for which they are responsible n Get them to write a list of priorities. Does this match with how they are spending their money? (Parents, you should do this too!) n Encourage them to spend less when they get their money and to save for a particular treat. With interest rates so low, you could encourage them by matching the money they save in their piggy banks; anything that helps them to get into the habit of saving

Old Enough to Know Better

I

went to visit a delightful elderly client up north last week. I spend a far longer time on the train than in his house just outside the Lake District, but spending time with him and his wife is such a joy that I would do it for free (as opposed to doing it for a fee!).

This client has just spent three weeks in a hospital in a very large city following a pretty major operation. He was delighted with the care that was bestowed upon him by all the staff, but the experience that opened his eyes most was the interaction he had with his fellow patients. Ill health can affect anyone (I lost a 50‐year‐old millionaire friend to cancer this week), but you don’t have to look far to see a link between poverty, poor education and poor health.

Being an educated sort of chap, my client had assumed that other people were similarly well read, so it came as a complete shock that in the whole three weeks he was in hospital he never saw anyone read a book (and they had plenty of time to kill).

But the issue of diet also came as a shock.

One middle‐aged daughter brought her dad a treat in the form of a Pot Noodle! Many kept to

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the circular routine of bed, toilet and smoke, despite the fact they were in hospital with heart problems. Food was liberally showered with salt and five spoonfuls of sugar was the norm in a cuppa.

ENCOURAGE THEM TO SPEND LESS WHEN THEY GET THEIR MONEY AND TO SAVE FOR A PARTICULAR TREAT. My client wasn’t being judgemental, but I think we agreed that each respective government needs to look at what it is doing to educate people with regards to health and lifestyle. But while I believe some progress is being made on the food front with the help of certain celebrity chefs, it may be a step too far to expect everyone to appreciate the benefits of a Dostoyevsky, so we’ll forget the books for the time being!

It’s been a long time since I was at school, but a lot of time could have been saved by not

n Inspire them to give. Perhaps you could sponsor a child in a developing country and the whole family could chip in each week.

This will help them to think about others and counter the constant materialistic attacks with which they are bombarded on a daily basis This is not exhaustive by any means, but I’m convinced that if we teach our children how to be responsible with money, we might not end up with a repeat of the mess we find ourselves in now! n Jon Cobb runs financial advisory business Trinity Wealth Management. He is a keen runner, ex‐white‐collar boxer, passionate Portsmouth supporter, speaker and writer.

Check out Jon’s blog: cobbiescollectivecontemplations.blogspot.co.uk and follow him on Twitter: @CobbyJon.

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OPINION

RICHARD HARDY

Family

Life in Lumps

H

ave you ever noticed how life seems to come in lumps?

Nothing out of the ordinary happens for months or sometimes years; life just trundles on. It’s same old, same old; comfortable, predictable and familiar.

Then all of a sudden an avalanche of life hits when you least expect it. I suppose in a way, during what seems like downtime, when nothing obvious is happening, the momentum is actually building. All that is to happen has been slowly incubating. Well that’s how it feels to me, anyway!

ALL OF A SUDDEN AN AVALANCHE OF LIFE HITS WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT. I guess by now you’re wondering what lumps I’m talking about. Well it all started with my only daughter, my firstborn and the apple of my eye. Lump one: she brings a boy home!

There’s nothing unusual about that, I guess.

It has happened before. Except this time he sits us, the parents, down and says he is serious about our daughter and that he thinks this might, just might, be heading towards marriage. (Eek!) Then all is quiet, nothing happens and I calm down. It’s not that he isn’t a really nice

boy, you understand, it’s just that life has sped up and I’m not ready for it! That was last Christmas. It was almost as if I was being told to prepare for life to get lumpy.

Then in May the boy returns (his name’s Simon, by the way) and he asks if we, the parents, mind if he asks our daughter to marry him. (Oh boy! Lump two!) We give them our blessing. I mean, what else can you do? Say no?

I have to say at this point that we were very pleased and delighted. He’s lovely and we greatly admire their desire to do the right things and to do things right. And I suppose I had had five months to get used to the idea that my little girl is all grown up and that I’m not the most important man in her life anymore.

Things went quiet again for a while, but then came lumps three and four.

Joanna (said daughter) gets engaged and graduates from university, all in the space of a couple of weeks. The lumps, like waves breaking on the shore of my life, aren’t spaced out any more. They’re coming thick and fast!

I don’t know what you do at times like this, but I hold a conversation with myself. Not on the outside, you understand, because that would look crazy! On the inside, I start giving myself little pep talks. This one went something like this: “Keep calm. It’s OK. The worst is behind you! The engagement will give you the space you need to get used to everything that’s going on. You’re not losing a daughter… blah, blah, blah.”

Then they announce that they don’t believe

in long engagements and before I know it they’ve set a date (lump five), sorted the church (lump six), booked the reception (lump seven), ordered the dress and even settled on what I’m going to wear! Before we knew it we were up to lump nine, at least – all in the space of a fortnight.

In the middle of all this, my son started quietly producing lumps of his own. He got his A‐levels, secured a place at university and prepared to leave home (lumps 11 through 13).

And we, who had wished life was less monochrome at the beginning of the year, were now coping with full ‘Technicolor’!

So here we were facing another Christmas and getting used to lump 14: being empty‐nesters!

Then, in the lead up to Christmas, I started thinking. For 400 hundred years prior to the birth of Jesus there was nothing: heaven was silent! It almost felt as though God had abandoned his ancient people. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, an angel visits an elderly couple followed by a virgin and a carpenter, before the two respective couples discover they are pregnant (lumps one and two, literally!).

Then there is silence again for nine months – time to get used to the idea – but before they knew it, things started to speed up. There are two births, a host of wise men, a sprinkling of shepherds, more angels than you know what to do with, prophecies, refugees, asylum seekers and settlers in a foreign land.

Before they knew it they were up to lump ten at least and nothing would ever be the same again: either for them or for us. But the reality is, it’s actually better.

As the angel said: “I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10‐11).

So here’s to life’s lumps, here’s to a meaningful Christmas and here’s to the wedding. I can’t wait! n Richard Hardy is a Baptist minister and director of the Entheos Trust, which encourages leaders and enables churches to engage with their communities. Richard has spoken on community engagement, marriage and parenting at many national conferences. He has also written extensively on community and family issues (www.theentheostrust.org).

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OPINION

SAM GIBB

Faith

Building Castles in the Sky

W

e are fresh out of the festival season and the most talked‐about band this summer was Mumford & Sons. Last year the boys from West London released an album called Babel and the title track has blasted from practically every sound system across the UK ever since.

But “Babel” is far from being just a song; it’s also an epic story.

This story takes place over just nine verses in the Bible, but I’m going to put my cards on the table from the off and say that I think this little story speaks as much into our world right now than any other story that has ever been written. Forget Breaking Bad for cutting realism, Babel is where it’s at.

The story can be found in Genesis 11, and it goes a little like this: a bunch of chaps meet up and – worried that the world will forget them or that their names will be scribbled out of the pages of history; that they will never be awarded a Nobel peace prize or a manager of the month award – they plan to construct a tower that is so tall they will never be

forgotten. So they begin to build.

But God peers down from heaven and sees these little boys building towers and recognises that man has started to get too big for his sandals; that soon people will forget about Him completely and try to live life on their own. And He knows that this would be a disaster, for man and for the world. So God pops down, stops the building by confusing their languages and adds a little touch of instant enforced relocation as the fellas are scattered across the world (Genesis 11:1‐9, heavily paraphrased!). It’s an odd story by any account, but all the best ones are!

The first important lesson we can learn from Babel is that people are created to worship, not to be worshipped. However, much like these biblical builders we spend most of our lives trying to make a name for ourselves, to get on the front pages or the back pages (or sadly on the third pages). But fellas, our lives should be dedicated to making God famous, to giving Him the glory. You see, we were created to point to the Creator! It seems that the big problem at Babel is the same as the big problem now: man’s project is to be God and

to render God redundant.

The second lesson to learn from our hard‐ hatted friends is that we are not the answer to the world’s problems. In fact, we are not even the answer to our own (just ask your wife!). At this point in the big Bible story, the world was a mess. God had a plan to fix it, but the builders at Babel didn’t want to wait for that, so they planned to fix it themselves. Their answer was a better city, bigger buildings, more money and most of all ‘progression’.

THE SECOND LESSON TO LEARN FROM OUR HARD-HATTED FRIENDS IS THAT WE ARE NOT THE ANSWER TO THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS. These chaps thought that man was the answer to all the world’s problems; that given enough time and resources people could fix this broken world. But man is not the answer, God is. He was then and He is now.

The Bible tells us that even before the world got itself in a mess, God had an action plan in place to fix it (check out 2 Timothy 1:9) – now that’s forward planning! And the plan wasn’t just a bit of sticky tape that God hoped would hold, His plan was to remake the whole world and bring it together under the rule of His Son, Jesus Christ. Now that’s an ending! n

Sam Gibb is a twenty‐something currently living in London and working at All Souls, Langham Place. His passion is to present the message and teachings of Jesus to men in a way that makes sense to them. He has written a series of Bible studies aimed at lads on topics such as comedy, war and sport. Sam’s heroes are the apostle Paul, Alan Shearer and Garfield, though not necessarily in that order. You can follow him on Twitter at @samggibb.

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OPINION

LYNDON BOWRING

Politics

For Better or for Worse?

O

utside the House of Lords, a one‐metre‐high, rainbow‐ coloured wedding cake was cut as the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 was granted Royal Assent on July 17.

The first same‐sex weddings in the UK will take place in summer 2014, despite the fact that the concept of redefined marriage failed to appear in any Party manifesto, nor was it mentioned in the Coalition Agreement or in the Queen’s Speech. Even so, marriage between two people of the same sex is now the law of the land – England and Wales that is – and the Scottish Parliament is in the process of enacting similar legislation.

addressed. But it is hardly surprising that the movement to give equality to gay people, spearheaded by gay equality organisation Stonewall, has quickly grown to the point where same‐sex marriage is now legal.

From the start, CARE and its partners in the Coalition for Marriage have opposed this legislation. This was never an equality issue, as civil partnerships already allowed same‐sex couples who love each other to enjoy the same benefits as those that are married. The Bible teaches that marriage is between one man and one woman for their mutual protection and companionship, and for the procreation of children. It is the building block upon which society is built. We cannot be sure what the consequences of this redefinition will be, but already in Canada there have been moves to legalise marriage between more than two people.

There are major implications here for Christian clergy, organisations and individuals. The content of school curriculums, what is allowed to be said and written about marriage and how people are counselled – all of these will change. Clergy may be called upon, against their beliefs and consciences, to perform weddings they cannot personally sanction. So how can we respond to the facts that are before us?

It will be important to monitor any

unfortunate spinoff effects of the new law, try to minimise the ‘damage’ and support people who are adversely affected. Inevitably, cases will be brought against those who do not agree with it. Although the government drew back from making such opinions a ‘hate crime’ and promised protection, these cases may be difficult to win under European equality law.

But perhaps it’s time for those of us who believe in it to celebrate traditional marriage afresh. I am greatly encouraged by Steve Clifford, general director of the Evangelical Alliance, who says: “Although the historic, social institution of marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman will effectively be dead, there may be an opportunity for the Christian Church to breathe new life into its own God‐given form of marriage.

“Perhaps with a sadness of heart, a God‐ given opportunity will emerge, whereby we as the Church demonstrate with fresh faith and clarity what marriage as God intended it is really meant to be.” n Lyndon Bowring was born in Wales and studied at London Bible College. He is an associate minister at Kensington Temple, and has been executive chairman of CARE for more than 25 years. His hobbies include watching rugby, exploring London’s restaurants and developing friendships.

He lives in London with his wife Celia, and they have three children.

PERHAPS IT’S TIME FOR THOSE OF US WHO BELIEVE IN IT TO CELEBRATE TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE AFRESH. It has been a long struggle for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

Back in 1680, Arabella Hunt wed “James Howard”. The marriage was annulled two years later because Howard was in fact Amy Poulter, a “perfect woman in all her parts”, and two women could not validly marry. In a polygamy case 200 years later, Lord Penzance judged that: “Marriage as understood in Christendom is the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.”

Until the 1960s, homosexual acts were considered to be very serious criminal offences, and there are many tragic examples of how heartless persecution – not least from the Church – has ruined the lives of those who admit to same‐sex attraction.

Homophobic bullying is a real problem in schools and online, and one that needs to be Sorted. Nov/Dec 2013

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OPINION

LEE AND BAZ

Cut to the Chase

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

BY LEE JACKSON

H

ave you ever waited years for something to happen? One of those big moments occurred in our house the other day.

Something that has taken years to come to fruition.

It was groundbreaking stuff. A real sign of hope and the start of a new season after seven years of waiting…

The cat sat on my lap!

No, really, this is BIG news!

Marriages (and big relationships) are often about little compromises, as they should be; they’re a partnership. The biggest compromise I’ve ever made relates to pets, because my childhood was a doggy affair. We had Sach (a scruffy dog of unknown origin) followed by Count, Barney and Meg, a varied selection of nice and very hairy Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.

But when I married Clare, she was a cat person (not literally – that would be weird!) and, after our dog Meg was shipped out to my mum’s house when we had our twins, I agreed in a moment of weakness to get a cat. Then one day Jazzy arrived.

Jazzy was very friendly as a kitten, but it turned out she wasn’t the forgiving type. She was very little when I bought my first shiny aluminium Mac and she jumped up onto the keyboard and started to paw at the screen, chasing the cursor.

Seeing my new posh computer screen about to be shredded to ribbons, I didn’t know what to do, and as I had a hot cup of tea in my other hand, all I could do was move the cat off my computer with my arm. I caught her off balance and she fell to the floor on her back.

Gulp. I was in trouble. BIG trouble.

To cut a long story short, she never forgave me. Clare forgave me, but the cat didn’t! From that day forward, Jazzy has avoided me and often gives me ‘the look’: the one that only grumpy cats can give you. Apart from the

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occasional time when Clare is away and she’s hungry, she never speaks to me.

But over the last few months there has been a thawing of this catty cold war and occasionally she has deigned to walk over me on the way to somewhere else. Then the other night, I was relaxing and watching TV. Clare had dropped off on the sofa (it’s very exciting in the Jackson house after 10pm!), and without warning the cat edged her way onto my lap, sat down and stayed there for an hour. A whole hour! She, too, eventually fell asleep.

I was dying to tell Clare, but I couldn’t wake her without the risk of freaking out the cat, so I just enjoyed the moment. My legs even went slightly numb as I didn’t dare move them. Since that big day, she has looked at me differently, and I hope that further thawing will ensue.

There are many quick fixes in the world that can turn us and our world around very quickly.

Our thought processes are one great example, for example if you’ve told yourself for 20 years that you’re not a good public speaker then, guess what, you’ll never be a good speaker… unless you are willing to change the way you

think. It’s simple but true. I recently worked with someone who turned that mindset around in just a couple of hours. It can and does happen.

But some things that we dream about and wish for take time. Sometimes we have to wait. ‘Wait’ is not a very fashionable word these days, especially when it’s misunderstood. Waiting isn’t always doing nothing, vegetating on the sofa and watching Jeremy Kyle. Waiting can be active, a way of keeping going.

DON’T FORGET THE BIG DREAMS AND VISIONS YOU HAVE THAT MAY JUST TAKE TIME. I really believe in seasons, and sometimes things just line up and a season suddenly seems right, whether it’s a big dream, a grand vision, a new client or a grumpy black cat!

Waiting, or keeping on going, may just get you there, because it works. If you wait in the right way, talk to the big G and recognise seasons, the things you have longed for can happen, even if takes seven years!

Bill Gates once said: “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

In your day‐to‐day life, don’t forget the big dreams and visions you have that may just take time. Keep chipping away and #keepongoing. n Lee is a professional speaker, PowerPoint surgeon and presentation coach, and he can be reached at leejackson.biz.

He is also one half of Lee and Baz. Together with his mate Baz Gascoyne, he writes down‐to‐earth men’s books and speaks at a host of men’s conferences. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and twin girls.

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SPORT

SAVING FOR THE FUTURE

BY STUART WEIR

L

ast season was a tough one for Aston Villa as they battled relegation for much of the season. They finally finished 15th, just a few points above the drop. One of the reasons for the young team’s survival was the excellent form of American goalkeeper Brad Guzan.

While Guzan has been a Villa player since 2008, it was only last season that he finally ousted Shay Given to establish himself as the club’s number one goalkeeper.

The 29‐year‐old served a long apprenticeship before establishing himself at the top level.

Born in Illinois and of Polish‐American ancestry, Brad played his youth football at the Chicago Magic Soccer Club before signing for Chicago Fire, where he mainly played in the reserves before making his Major League Soccer (MLS) breakthrough with Chivas, for whom he was named MLS Goalkeeper of the Year in 2007.

Growing up with two older brothers who played football and an uncle who was the director of the local American Youth Soccer League (AYSL), it was almost inevitable that Brad would play football. He recalls starting to play when he was three: “I think you are supposed to be four years old, but because I was always a big kid they let me sneak in and run around and enjoy it.”

“MY EXPERIENCE WAS DEFINITELY SOME LOWS AND SOME HIGHS. BUT THAT THAT IS WHAT MADE ME THE GOALKEEPER I AM TODAY. IT MADE ME A STRONGER PERSON.”

Photo by Neville Williams/Aston Villa FC via Getty Images

Perhaps surprisingly, the keeper’s first sporting hero represented a different sport. “Being from Chicago, you watch a guy like Michael Jordan, who obviously played basketball, and that time was the best years of the Chicago Bulls. So for me I really wanted to experience the professional athlete lifestyle.”

Faith in God is also an important part of Brad’s life; something he traces back to childhood. “We would always go to church on a Sunday,” he explains. “That was very important. I wouldn’t necessarily say that there was a point when I started following Christ. I think it was always in me and I want to make sure that I stay on that path and continue to follow Him. I think that is important throughout one’s life.”

Being MLS goalkeeper of the year was something of a breakthrough for Brad, and he describes 2007 as a year in which he “really improved” and “made strides, mentally and physically”, which enabled him to really help his team. “That felt good to be part of a successful team; and then to be honoured by your peers, coaches and media gave me a boast of confidence for sure,” he says.

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SPORT

OLLY GREENWOOD/AFP/Getty Images

It also inspired a belief within him that he was good enough to play in Europe. “Within myself that was that extra bit of confidence I needed to say, ‘You know what?

I am ready. I want to give it a go. If the opportunity arises, I definitely want to take it.’”

His move to Europe was not straightforward, however.

In January 2008 Guzan had a trial at Celtic, then on the last day of the January transfer window (January 31), he received a call from his agent saying that Aston Villa were interested in signing him. Excitement soon turned to disappointment when he was denied a work permit, but later that year the relevant paperwork was filed and he signed for Villa.

During the 2008‐09 season, Aston Villa had a great American goalkeeper called Brad in goal for all 38 league games; but unfortunately for Guzan it was Brad Friedel.

Curiously, Martin O’Neill had signed two American goalkeepers that summer, and both were named Brad.

For Guzan it was a season of sitting on the bench, although he was occasionally called up for less prestigious games.

The next four seasons followed the same pattern: “It was a trying period for me. It was difficult because you would play a game, do well and the next week you would find yourself on the bench. So it was inconsistent football that I was experiencing and I was looking for the consistency.

“So my experience was definitely some lows and some highs. But that that is what made me the goalkeeper I am today. It made me a stronger person.”

Faith played an important part during these difficult times. “How I get through my personal life, how I get through my professional life is following Christ,” Brad shares. “He helps me through the tough times. It hasn’t always been a rosy road to success.

“There are always going to be bumps along the way, and through those difficulties Jesus helped me get through all of those struggles. Every day I strive to be a better person and use His guidance to help me to do it.

“In the last few years I have been able to keep that relationship between Jesus and success – maybe not so much success – on an even keel and I think that is part of me maturing as a person, as a man, and growing up.

“God has a plan for all of us, and sometimes you go through the difficult times and it makes you stronger.

You can’t question the ultimate plan; you just have to accept it, learn from it and try to be better from it.”

In 2010, Aston Villa reached the final of the Carling Cup (now the League Cup). Friedel was rested at this point and Guzan played in the League Cup run. The fourth‐round tie with Sunderland was particularly memorable, with Brad Guzan saving a penalty to help Villa achieve a 0‐0 final score. In the penalty shootout he made three more penalty saves to see Villa win 3‐1.

“The Sunderland game is always going to hold a special place in my heart,” Brad recalls. “It was a time when I wasn’t playing consistently and it was a cup game. For me I knew every cup tie, every victory, was another chance for me to play. It ended up going to penalties and it was my day. I was a lucky goalie, able to guess the right way for a few penalties and save a few.”

Brad pulled off four penalty saves in midweek, but then found himself back on the bench by the following Saturday. He played in every round of the League Cup, including both legs of the semi‐final win over Blackburn Rovers, but then Friedel was chosen for the Wembley final, which Villa lost 2‐1 to Manchester United.

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SPORT The toughest game of the season for Villa was an 8‐0 defeat at Chelsea. Ironically, Brad played well, making several excellent stops and even saving Oscar’s penalty.

Following the game, he made a decision to bounce back as quickly as possible and to keep things in perspective: “I think for me after the Chelsea game, after the 0‐8 loss, it was a sense of ‘It wasn’t our best game’, but you can’t let it affect you the next week.

“You have to put it behind you and move on from it.

We tried to learn as much as we could from that. When things are going well for you, you can’t get too high; when things aren’t going your way, you can’t get too low.

You have to keep on an even keel, keep fighting and trying to get better.”

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whether he had a future at the club. Then Paul Lambert was appointed manager of Aston Villa at the start of the 2013‐14 season.

Brad comments: “Paul Lambert was honest with me… not that he promised anything. It was an open conversation, an honest conversation: ‘Everyone starts fresh. Everyone will have a fair chance at things and have to earn their spot.’ And for me, that is what I wanted. I wanted to be given an opportunity to fight for the number one spot.”

Brad Guzan finally got his wish and played in 36 of the club’s 38 league games during the 2012‐13 season. It was a totally different experience: “When you hear your name called on the team sheet, on a match day – the excitement, the energy that goes through your body – this is what it is all about for me.

“And to play well that first game, to play well the second game, and to know that I was starting to have the confidence and belief from my teammates and the coaches made me just want to get better and continue to work hard.”

But it was a hard season for Villa, who won only 10 of their 38 games and were constantly under relegation pressure. A game at home to fellow strugglers QPR in March was a critical game – the proverbial six‐pointer – and Villa won it 3‐2.

“Obviously, it was a big win for us,” says Guzan. “For me there wasn’t really pressure. It was more about excitement because as a kid, and then as a professional footballer, these are the games you want to be a part of; the big games that mean a lot that you have to fight for.

“This is what I had worked for so long: to be playing consistent football, week in, week out. This was just another game when I knew I wanted to help my team, hopefully get three points and fortunately we were able to do that.”

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Having established himself as a first‐choice Premier League goalkeeper and with more than 20 appearances for the USA under his belt – pushing Tim Howard hard for the nation’s top goalkeeping spot – Brad now finds himself in a strong position.

But while he is ambitious in his football, he still strives to keep everything in perspective. “I think everyone needs Christ in their life,” he concludes. “Money, fame, etc, they don’t mean anything if you don’t have Jesus in your life, because He’s the one who sets this path for us.

“As professional footballers, we are very privileged to do what we do and to be in the public eye and to be a role model to kids and adults, and kind of show them what it is all about.” n Stuart Weir is passionate about Jesus Christ and about sport, and he spends his life trying to help people make the connection. He has written several books about sport and Christianity and has worked as a sports writer at Olympic, Paralympic and World Championship events.

He has been to three football World Cups and was Togo’s Olympic attaché at the 2012 Olympics. Married to Lynne, he has two grown‐up children. He is a member of Kidlington Baptist Church and Frilford Heath Golf Club.

Photo by Neville Williams/Aston Villa FC via Getty Images

Photo by Neville Williams/Aston Villa FC via Getty Images

“WE ARE VERY PRIVILEGED TO DO WHAT WE DO AND TO BE IN THE PUBLIC EYE AND TO BE A ROLE MODEL TO KIDS AND ADULTS, AND KIND OF SHOW THEM WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT.”

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SPORT

IPC Athletics World Championships 2013

A

Running Battle

BY STUART WEIR

A

THE DOCTORS SAID IT WAS NOT A CASE OF ‘IF YOU LOSE YOUR LEG, BUT WHEN’.

With a talent for sport, he reached a point during high school at which he had to choose between tennis and running. He decided on running, becoming a successful middle‐distance runner. However, his progress was hindered by constant injuries; stress fractures in particular. It was extremely frustrating as he went from doctor to doctor without feeling that he was getting a satisfactory answer.

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IPC Athletics World Championships 2013

t the age of 19, Jarryd Wallace made a decision that demonstrated immense courage: he decided to have his right leg amputated. Less than five years later he broke the 200‐metre sprint world record in his Paralympic class…

But let’s go back to the beginning.

Jarryd grew up in a sporty family in the US. His father Jeff was a tennis coach, while his mother Sabina was a talented runner, so weekends in the Wallace household often involved a 5K family run. Not surprisingly, Jeff and Sabina encouraged Jarryd and his sister Brittany to play sport: t‐ball (based on baseball), football, tennis, basketball and so on. Sabina enjoyed going for a run when she finished work and Jarryd often joined her, so running became an important part of his life.

Being raised by two Christian parents, church and faith were always part of Jarryd’s life. He recalls understanding the good news of Jesus dying for him as quite a young child and he was baptised as a public expression of his faith at the age of 12.

Jarryd explains: “Then I got tested for compartment syndrome [a condition where the muscle swells and is constricted by the connective tissue around it, causing an increase in pressure, which cuts off the blood supply to the muscle] and we established that was what I had.

“I decided to have the surgery between the winter cross‐country and summer track seasons. I had the surgery and there were complications that caused me to lose about 60% of the muscle from my knee down.

“I had ten reconstruction surgeries over a two‐and‐a‐ half‐year period and it got to a point where the doctors had done everything they could with my leg. The only options were to live in pain with what I had or make the decision to have my leg amputated.”

With characteristic understatement, Jarryd adds: “That was a tough decision to go through, but the alternative was a life of pain. And the doctors said it was not a case of ‘if you lose your leg, but when’. In the end I gave up my leg in faith, trusting the Lord that He was going to provide.”

The prolonged period of unsuccessful surgery after unsuccessful surgery prior to the amputation was hard to bear and it tested Jarryd’s faith greatly. “I never doubted God’s existence or that He was ever real,” he claims. “I just did not like Him! I did not like His plan. I didn’t like what He was allowing me to go through, all the issues with my leg. I did not like the circumstances.

“I thought my plan would have worked out a lot better for me. I spent a year and a half running from God and angry with God, frustrated with the circumstances and them not panning out the way I envisioned them happening.”

Jarryd gradually regained his faith in God and took strength from Him as he learnt to deal with the situation.

“I came to realise that my purpose on this earth was not for my satisfaction, but for God’s glory,” he explains.

According to Jarryd, God allowed him to go through the multiple surgeries to change his focus, bringing him “to a point of recognising how much I need Him and to recognise my purpose, and to get me to a point to make one of the hardest decisions that one could realistically have to make: to give up a part of their body”.

He continues: “And He gave me the strength to do that without even blinking. God has given me the courage and the knowledge that it is about Him. My life and my

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SPORT IPC Athletics World Championships 2013

purpose on this earth is not to lift my name higher, but to make His name greater. Going into the amputation I had just such an amazing peace about the decision I had made and God had led me to. All I felt was the love of Christ and His power on me.”

Jarryd was the calmest person in the room as the amputation surgery approached. Sensing his parents’ anxiety, he prayed the following prayer with and for them: “Lord, I am about to go to sleep. There is nothing I can do from here. It is in Your hands and I wholly trust You as my mind goes to rest for the next seven hours.

“And it is all going to be in Your hands, Lord. My parents are going to be sitting in the waiting room. Give them the peace I have right now, the peace that You have given me over the last four months and let them know this is right.”

The surgeon got a double shock: first when he found the patient wide awake as the medication hadn’t knocked him out, and second when Jarryd said: “I am just waiting to pray over all you guys”, before praying a blessing over the doctors and nurses that were present.

There was a four‐month gap between making the decision to have the leg amputated and the actual operation. Jarryd used this time to research prosthetics, meet doctors and plan his Paralympic career. He even

IPC Athletics World Championships 2013

emailed the US Paralympic Committee to find out what he needed to do to make the US Paralympic team for London 2012.

I HAD SET MYSELF THE GOAL OF MAKING THE TEAM FOR LONDON. I KNEW THAT WITH THE STRENGTH OF THE LORD I COULD ACHIEVE IT. Just 12 weeks after the amputation he started running again. He made such good progress that he decided to take a break from his studies and train full time. “My first competitive race was a week before the year anniversary of my amputation,” he recalls. “I actually won the 100 and the 200 running 11.9 seconds and 24.01, which qualified me for nationals the next weekend.

“So a year after the amputation I went to the nationals.

I finished up getting third place in the 100 and fourth in the 200, which qualified me for the Pan American Games in Mexico in November 2011, where I won the gold medal and ran the fastest time in the world in 2011 in the 100‐metre dash – 15 months after my amputation.”

He made the US Paralympic team for London, running in the T44 (‘T’ for ‘track’ and ‘44’ referring to Jarryd’s ‘single, below‐knee amputation’) category. He reached the final in the 400 metres, coming sixth in 53.90. He also ran in the 4 x 100 metres relay, in which the US finished third, only to be disqualified and denied the bronze medal because of a faulty changeover. f

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Photo by Hannah Johnston/Getty Images

SPORT Nonetheless, London was a great experience. “It was surreal, it really was,” says Jarryd. “It was an amazing opportunity; just the opportunity to race on the biggest stage ever in front of 80,000 people and feel the love and support that GB delivered to the Paralympic movement.

On top of that, to be able to race against some of the best athletes in the world: Oscar Pistorius, Alan Oliveira [and] teammates Blake Leeper and David Prince.

“Two‐and‐a‐bit years earlier, when I made the decision to have my leg amputated, I had set myself the goal of making the team for London. I knew that with the strength of the Lord I could achieve it.

“So just to be there was just unbelievable, and for the Lord to have worked in my life in teaching me the invaluable lesson that His will and His way is far greater than my will and my way, and to recognise that He does have the best plan for my life. Everything happened so fast. Just to make the US Paralympic team was an unbelievable honour.”

If London 2012 came a little too early, the 2013 IPC World Championships in Lyon came at just the right time. Jarryd won gold in the 200 metres in 22.08, breaking the world record in successive races. He also took gold in the 4 x 100 metres relay, breaking the world record in that race, too!

The 100‐metre race at Lyon was described by some as the 100 metres race of the year, bar none. It lived up to expectations, with Britain’s Jonnie Peacock beating Richard Browne in a time of 10.99. Jarryd came fourth in 11.27, the same time as bronze medal winner Jerome Singleton.

Just pause for a moment to reflect on those times: just a second or so slower than the times run by ‘able‐bodied’ athletes. This is a pretty good indication that Paralympians are serious athletes.

Jarryd said of his achievements in Lyon: “It is unbelievable; humbling is the only way I can describe it.

From the day I decided to have my leg amputated I was just trusting the Lord. I didn’t know what the outcome would look like, but world champion and world record…

God’s timing is perfect! I never imagined this.”

Jarryd Wallace sees himself as an ordinary guy serving an extraordinary God. The loss of a leg as a teenager would seem to be a terrible human tragedy, but to quote Joseph’s words in Genesis 50:20, “God meant it for good”.

Jarryd is a world champion and a world record holder, and he knows God hasn’t finished with him yet. n

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HEALTH & FITNESS

FITNESS With Phil Baines

Enjoy, Endure, Enjoy to warm up gradually with a light run or jog and, while doing this, incorporate some dynamic stretching. Following on from this, I recommend that people work out intensely for a minute or two, then rest for a minute.

When you finish your workout, it’s good to carry out a really good static stretch of all your main muscle groups. Finally, the cool down session should finish with a really good shower. If your gym has a sauna, steam room or jacuzzi it makes sense to use these if you have time, as this is all part of your fitness session. I realise that time and money are real considerations, but doing these things means you are not rushing in, rushing the workout and then rushing out.

The same can be said for your outside exercise, for example running and cycling. With autumn now in full swing and a few frosty mornings coming our way, these activities can be really exhilarating. Take advantage of these conditions as there will be added physical benefits in doing so. They can be good for you mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

If you are going for a long, slow run or cycle, you will have time to think while seeing the sights: the changing colours and the dropping leaves. You can enjoy the experience. When you finish, make sure you stretch well and have a decent shower or bath.

If you mix this up with two or three shorter, more intense sessions, you will end up with a more balanced and hopefully a more enjoyable fitness regime. Ultimately, if you’re not enjoying your fitness at all, it is unlikely that you will continue. So try to find exercises you

A

reasonably new way of thinking about getting fit suggests that you can do so in either three lots of five minutes a week or three lots of seven minutes a week. The idea is to work very intensively for five minutes and then rest. To get and stay reasonably fit you need only do this three times a week.

However, while I don’t question the science of this new thinking, I do think that it misses some important factors regarding fitness. I believe exercise is best when it is enjoyed and savoured rather than rushed. I think you need 88

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can enjoy and that will benefit you more.

Having mentioned the enjoyment of exercise, we’re going to finish by looking at something very few people enjoy, other than when it’s finished: interval runs. However, the benefits of these are huge.

With the 10k and half marathon season about to get busy again in the New Year, now is the time to start building up the speed work.

The great thing about intervals is that everyone can do them, because the only person you’re racing against is yourself.

Find a relatively flat bit of pavement with no road crossings and decide on a distance for your intervals. Let’s take one‐mile intervals as an example. Run the first mile at race pace or your usual pace and then rest for three or four minutes. Then race the second mile flat out.

Try to maintain your speed and remember that it will hurt. Time this mile.

WITH AUTUMN NOW IN FULL SWING AND A FEW FROSTY MORNINGS COMING OUR WAY, THESE ACTIVITIES CAN BE REALLY EXHILARATING. Rest for another three or four minutes and then run the third mile at race pace. Again, rest for three or four minutes. Run the last mile flat out and try to beat your time for mile two. Finish with a good five‐minute, cool down run. Once you have been doing this for a few weeks, increase the number of fast miles.

You may not enjoy these sessions, but you will certainly enjoy the benefits! n Phil Baines is passionate about fitness and sport. He recently began a venture called Fit 4 The Challenge (www.f4tc.co.uk), which offers a range of physical challenges for diverse abilities. Phil organises each challenge and trains individuals and teams to complete them, either for charity or for personal achievement or both. Phil is married with two teenage sons.

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Advertising Sales: Duncan Williams, Tel: 07960 829615

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HEALTH & FITNESS

NUTRITION With Caroline Gerrie

P is for Prostate

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n increasing number of men start to sprout hair beneath their noses each November.

They then proceed to ‘train up’ all types and shapes of moustaches for the 30 days of November in support of the charity Movember, which raises awareness about prostate and testicular cancers. The idea is that by changing one’s appearance and becoming a MoBro, the face of men’s health itself could eventually change.

DIET PLAYS AN IMPORTANT PART WHEN IT COMES TO MEN’S HEALTH At this point, I mention that you should never – and I repeat, never – while gazing upon a female colleague or friend allow the words:

“Oh. Are you supporting Movember?” to escape your lips. You may end up endangering your own health if you do so.

Prostate cancer is often seen as an older man’s disease, so it is often ignored or pushed to one side by younger men. But in 2010, some 41,000 men in the UK were diagnosed with prostate cancer! It’s the most common cancer in men, with 112 cases discovered each day. So whatever age you are, your prostate gland plays a vital part in producing tiptop sperm, and whether you are 20 or 80, prevention is better than cure. So start to look afresh at what you eat and do your bit to keep your man jewels in fine fettle.

Diet plays an important part when it comes to men’s health, with foods such as processed meats and saturated fats considered to be contributory risk factors. So put down that late night kebab and listen up! Recent studies appear to

show that an antioxidant called lycopene (found in red, orange and yellow fruit and vegetables) could help to inhibit cancer cell growth.

Further studies have linked eating a less carbohydrate‐based diet and increasing the intake of healthy vegetable fats with a reduced risk in the development of prostate cancer.

There is no evidence to suggest that growing a moustache will improve your health – although Hercule Poirot would probably disagree – but we do know that eating foods that are rich in vitamins and minerals can help in the overall prevention of disease. So take a look at the foods below and try adding them into your daily diet and you will be giving your prostate the best possible chance in the fight against cancer. n

Did you know that the UK’s favourite Christmas kissing plant, mistletoe, is used in cancer treatment? Mistletoe therapy works by reducing the adverse effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, reducing the risk of cancer spread and boosting the immune system.

According to reports, former international cricketer John Edrich was given injections containing extracts of the medieval plant to successfully aid his fight against cancer.

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Tomatoes (cooked tomatoes produce higher levels) Watermelon Apricots Pink grapefruit Papaya Red, yellow and orange peppers Guavas Red Cabbage

Caroline Gerrie is a registered nutritional therapist and runs a clinic in West Sussex. She is also a founder of Trade Aid International. In a world of pressure, both in the workplace and at home, Caroline has a passion to see people ‘fit for purpose’, not only spiritually but physically, too. Caroline is married to David and they have three children.

FESTIVE FACTOID

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Lycopene-rich Foods

Healthy Oils and seeds Olive oil Canola oil Avocado Nuts Seeds (for example sunflower, pumpkin, flax and sesame)

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HEALTH & FITNESS

HEALTHY COOKING With Chef Mike Darracott

Turkey Stuffing and Cranberry Pies Serves six

INGREDIENTS 200g of turkey or chicken breast sliced into bite-sized chunks 1 vegetable or chicken stock cube in 300ml of water 10g of peas 1 small onion, diced 3 tsp of cornflour Enough water to cover ingredients in the saucepan 12 tsp of cranberry jelly 1 pack of sage and onion stuffing 500g shortcrust pastry brought readymade from a supermarket and kept in the fridge until needed Salt and pepper to taste 1 beaten egg to glaze pies with before baking 2 six-holed, deep pie baking tins that have been greased and dusted with flour

METHOD 1 Set oven to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6 2 Put the stock into a saucepan and add the chicken, onions and peas.

Cook until tender, adding salt and pepper to taste.

3 Add the cornflour a little at a time until the stock becomes a thick sauce.

4 Make up your stuffing according to the instructions on the packet.

5 Take out your pastry and, using a cutter that is big enough for your baking tins’ holes, cut out 12 circles for tops and 12 circles for the cases. (I use an 8cm ring.)

6 Place 2 tsp of stuffing, followed by 2 tsp of turkey mixture and top with two tsp of cranberry jelly. Then place the top on and repeat for the other 11.

7 Finally, glaze the tops with the egg and bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Michael J Darracott has been an executive chef at various large establishments. He has cooked for more than 200 people at a time, including a number of celebrities, and has published several books. For more information, visit www.chefmikedarracott.com.

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HUMOUR

PAUL KERENSA

Kneel-Down Stand-Up As for “White Christmas”, well with every Christmas card he writes, he’d better be singing before December 19th or he’ll have missed the last post. Unless Bing’s delivering by hand; he doesn’t clarify. Plus we’ve only had a snow covering four times since 1960, so he might have been better off calling it “White Easter”. Equally, “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow” is now a song for February thanks to climate change.

Oh, and take Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody” (please!). They ask if I’m “hoping that the snow will start to fall”, but also if I “ride on down the hillside” in a buggy I have made. Well, no I don’t – not if I’m still only hoping for snow.

Otherwise I’m just some idiot in a self‐made golf cart trundling over some grass.

“LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW” IS NOW A SONG FOR FEBRUARY THANKS TO CLIMATE CHANGE.

Do They Know… It’s Too Early for Christmas Songs?

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t’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” belted the in‐store stereo with mixer levels clearly stuck on ‘good darts player who’s forgotten his stringed instrument’ (ie all treble, no bass). The shoppers tutted, it was barely October. Far too early for Christmas songs!

Yet you couldn’t fault the logic of the lyric.

Whether it actually was Christmas or not (it wasn’t), it was beginning to look an awful lot like it “ev’rywhere you go”. It made me think: this Christmas song fits early autumn far more than Christmas itself. If (or when) you’re shopping on December 24th because you’ve forgotten a relative, this song would rankle on Shop FM just as much as Abba’s “Happy New Year” final track on most store‐owned Christmas CDs. If on Christmas Eve you’re thinking: ‘You know what? It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas’, you’ve probably spent the last three months with your head stuck in a shrunk‐in‐wash reindeer jumper.

I guess not all Christmas songs are for Christmas. “Good King Wenceslas” is a song for Boxing Day, aka the feast of Stephen (Stephen clearly mistimed his turkey). The Pogues, of course, must be played on “Christmas Eve, babe” – that’s a given. The same with Kermit’s “One More Sleep ’til Christmas” and Chris Rea’s driving home experience, as he gazes upon the driver next to him who is “just the same”. (I hope it’s a dual

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carriageway, otherwise Rea is glaring at a neighbouring driver while overtaking in potentially hazardous winter conditions.)

But other songs don’t fit. “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”? Well it is, but the lyrics aren’t strictly Christmassy. With its “marshmallows for toasting” and “scary ghost stories”, I reckon it’s a song for Bonfire Night and Halloween as much as for Yule.

With a long queue in that shop, I endured tinny versions of several of these ditties, and I realised four things: 1) I’m a little pedantic; 2) I’m a bit bah humbug about the commercialisation of Christmas; 3) I can now justify playing a few festive hits before and beyond December; 4) and perhaps it’s time to leave behind my nitpickery and enjoy the music.

Then they played “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, and all I could picture was a mass of pipers, gold rings and bird mess… n Paul Kerensa is an award‐winning stand‐up comic and author of the book So a Comedian Walks Into a Church. He co‐won a British Comedy Award for writing on the BBC’s Miranda, and the Royal Television Society (RTS) Award for Not Going Out, as well as working on other shows that history has thankfully forgotten. Visit www.paulkerensa.com or follow Paul on Twitter @paulkerensa to find out more.

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HUMOUR

TONY VINO

In Vino Veritas

Better Latte than Never (the answer, of course, is blueberry).

The cultural ascendancy of coffee can only be a good thing. Unlike wine, coffee is legally consumable for all ages and more socially acceptable to drink at 7am. Also, coffee addiction side‐effects are mainly irritableness rather than liver damage and loss of house (which itself can lead to severe irritableness).

After drinking alcohol, many people can become obnoxious, angry and even violent. I am all three of these things before drinking coffee.

IF SOMEONE OFFERS YOU MELLOW BIRDS, BECOME AN ANGRY BIRD AND KILL A GREEN PIG.

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eveloping a fine wine pallet after drinking a pallet of fine wines was once considered the benchmark of middle‐class sophistication. The ability to distinguish between a fruity merlot, a full‐ bodied Shiraz and Lambrini became an essential quality for the refined masses.

However, this elitist, wine‐quaffing fraternity is now a thing of the past. Coffee connoisseurism is taking over. Now I don’t say this lightly. My surname is Vino and I technically own a wine cellar, having stashed a case of Blue Nun in my basement several years back. But it’s true. Try starting a conversation at a house party about what cheese complements a particular wine and you evoke glazed looks all round. Mention which muffin variety you think goes best with a double shot Americano and watch the fun times commence

As a proud coffee snob, visiting friends can lead to tense situations: “Tony, would you like a coffee?”

“Is it real coffee?”

“No, it’s instant.”

“I’m leaving now. You are dead to me.”

The idea that cheap instant coffee is an acceptable drink offering in the 21st century is simply ludicrous. It’s like offering a guest a glass of fresh orange and serving up Sunny Delight.

Instant coffee needs to be banned with immediate effect. We sometimes feel impotent in the face of declining moral standards… well this is something we can all do to raise the bar when it comes to decency and good taste.

From now on, if someone offers you Mellow Birds, become an Angry Bird and kill a green pig. If after church they serve up Tesco Value instant in a Styrofoam cup, whisper to the minister “I’m leaving now, you are dead to me.”

And on your way out, like Jesus in the temple,

knock over a couple of tables in disgust.

If you are new to the world of acceptable‐ tasting coffee, there is a place for grace and forgiveness, but it’s time to stop.

First things first. Find a local coffee shop; preferably an independent with free WiFi (coffee tastes better when there’s internet access). If this isn’t possible, here’s a quick rundown of the big three:

Starbucks The least good coffee, but the most affordable of the three for a long stay. Purchase a small filter coffee for £1.19 (they call it tall, but it’s not tall – it’s actually small, but you have to let it go) and you can have as many refills as you like all day. When you develop a nervous twitch and start feeling paranoid, it’s time to leave.

Caffè Nero By far the best tasting coffee.

Costa Coffee Controversially, this is my favourite of the three because its furniture is the most comfortable, which I know is a bit like going to IKEA for the meatballs, but I play by my own rules.

It will take time to rid the world of cheap, nasty, instant coffee, but unlike the Nescafé couple, we will eventually get it together. If not, then I’ll see you in my basement for some Blue Nun fun. n Tony Vino is a professional stand‐up comedian who straddles the worlds of comedy clubs, corporate entertainment, churches and festivals. He co‐hosts a weekly podcast for men with Alex Willmott, which is available on iTunes.

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COMMENT

JEFF LUCAS

Lucas Aid

Old Treasures

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atching people is one of my favourite hobbies. Give me a spare ten minutes and I’ll happily park myself on a bench somewhere and just watch the teeming world go by. Fear not, it’s not voyeurism; but I enjoy wondering about the lives of those nameless people as they drift by. Who are they? What are their hopes and their histories? What are their dreams and their stories? I look at the lines etched deep on their faces and wonder what circumstances drew those indentations. What laugh‐out‐loud moments of joy have been theirs? What jet black days of hopelessness and despair have they navigated?

And what are they doing now? As they stroll by in silence, I know that their brains are most likely buzzing with tangible thoughts and must‐do lists. Mushy, shapeless feelings unquantified by words are crackling around inside these strangers’ heads and sometimes their eyes betray just a hint of what is playing on the screen of their inner selves; the slightest wisp of pain, fear, pleasure, wistful thinking or wishful thinking. Did I read them correctly, I wonder? I will never know.

Just lately, I’ve been noticing older people.

I’ve looked into the faces of hunched over old ladies, their red‐veined faces gouged deep where they have frowned, smiled or wept.

Some are bright‐eyed, young in heart and face; the adventure still in progress. And some have been greatly betrayed by their bodies, hunched over by bowing spines, their walks have become laboured crawls, their watery blue eyes glazed against the cold.

Sprightly old gents pass me, all smart and blue

blazered, regimental badges worn with pride on their pockets; some with cloth caps, clip‐on ties and walking sticks with rubber ends. There are blue‐rinsed ladies with head scarves and wicker shopping baskets and great, thick coats…

And I’ve wondered what on earth these seniors think about today’s world, and my generation in particular. Just yesterday a couple who looked as though they’d been married a lifetime crept slowly past my observatory bench. Just then a gaggle of twelve‐year‐olds brushed passed them roughly as they strode by, their loud ‘effing this’ and ‘effing that’ banter staining the air.

SO LOOK AGAIN AT THAT OLD BOY WHOSE NOSE AND EARS REFUSED TO STOP GROWING, AND WHOSE EYES ARE MISTY WITH MEMORIES. I saw the sad look in the old man’s eyes as he sensed their disdain and total lack of respect.

He shook his head in defeat and resignation, and a fear that should never be permitted was written across his wife’s face. Perhaps they have already known more than enough terror, as they were old enough to have walked through a world war, or maybe even two.

What must these veterans think of us? My generation has never known what it is to go to the railway station to wave goodbye to a uniformed husband or father and wonder whether we will ever see him again. We have

never known the endless grinding struggle of economic depression, and peering fearfully through our fingers during the bloody opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan is the closest we have come to the searing butchery of war. We have never seen the death of hope and sanity that comes when people are forced to hack the lives out of each other on a battlefield.

Yet mine is the generation of the ‘great escape’. We have dulled our relatively insignificant pressures with substance abuse or on the soft padding of the psychotherapist’s couch. We have far more than they ever had, and we take it for granted too: we feel our toys are our right. What do they think – those who marched to defend what rights they had, many of whom lost great chunks of their youth or their friends – what do they think of us?

My father was a prisoner of war for four years, his youth swallowed up when he was captured early on in the war in the North African desert.

Those years that were supposed to be footloose and fancy‐free were spent caged behind rolls of barbed wire for my dad. There was no Friday night laughter with mates at McDonald’s; in fact he became pale and gaunt on a near‐ starvation diet.

But he would never tell me much about the wartime years. I used to think that his was a generation that was unable to speak. They could tell you what they had done, but not what they felt. I think I was wrong. His was a generation that had glimpsed the unspeakable, and perhaps some could never fully feel anything again. To open the door to their innermost feelings would be too dangerous, so they locked and bolted it and got on with the job of trying to be sane again, just by existing another day.

Sometimes older people feel estranged in our churches. For them, the music is too loud. The hymns we have discarded were anthems of strength and hope for their journeys, yet we dismiss these songs with a sneer and insist that they embrace our choices. Some are not so much stuck in the mud, they are simply wearied by our change‐is‐here‐to‐stay obsessions; and in some cases they have seen all our brilliant “new” ideas before, wrapped in other packaging, and they are not impressed.

So look again at that old boy whose nose and ears refused to stop growing, and whose eyes are misty with memories. Tread gently around the widow who has lost her friend, companion and lover of 60 years. Do not slap her with “he had a good innings”, as for her the game ended far too quickly. Put the word “codger” away and stifle your giggles when Doris asks if we can please sing that hymn, just once, next Sunday.

Week in, week out, she tries her best to get in step with our rhythm, hideous though it sounds to her.

Are there irritating, crotchety and stubborn seniors about? To be sure. But look once again past fluffy hats and flowery frocks; past well‐ worn checked jackets and dribbling noses; past silvery hair and ties worn for shopping. There are treasures to be found in old vessels, and they won’t be here forever. n Jeff Lucas is an international speaker, broadcaster and author of 22 books. He loves to communicate using humour and storytelling. He is a monthly contributor to Christianity magazine and writes daily Bible reading notes, Life Every Day. Jeff holds a teaching position at Timberline Church in Colorado and is married to Kay.

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COMMENT

CARL BEECH

The Last Word

No Pain, No Gain I know why I’m doing it, but it doesn’t take the pain away…

that it’s a mountain range. A marathon and a mountain range is not a match made in heaven! In fact, it’s been billed as the toughest marathon in Europe. Add to that the fact that I’ll be running it around the time you are reading this (ie, winter in North Wales), it all starts to sound a bit bonkers. So, back to the opening line: I know why I’m doing it, but it doesn’t take the pain away.

Let me tell you what my training entails. It consists of running for hours at a time and up as many hills as possible. It means running round and round the town I live in using the least flat route possible. It means permanently aching and limping down stairs after yet another “longest run so far”.

GETTING FITTER BIT

BY BIT AND HAVING TO FIGHT FOR IT HAS ALSO TAUGHT ME LOADS OF LESSONS.

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was leading a sports holiday in Lanzarote in early 2007 in a somewhat more portly physical state than I’m in now. Cycling up a small slope, I happened to remark to my mate (who looked like a Peperami in Lycra) that cycling was a bit tough. He instantly replied that it was because I was fat and unfit.

That led me down the path of a radically different lifestyle. In fact, that very night, over a Diet Coke in the bar, he challenged me to get fit and take up a challenge or two. Once home, I sold my motorbike and bought a dog and a bicycle. I started running with the dog and cycling a road bike for the first time since I was about 14. Following on from this, I’ve cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats, from Calais to Nice over the Alps (I didn’t realise I would have to cycle uphill for three to four hours at a time) and from Nice to Naples. Each of these

cycle rides was done in nine days. I also ran the London marathon.

After that marathon I vowed that I would never do another one. I wanted to nail one before I was 40, so it was job done. Or so I thought! You see, the Lanzarote “fat and unfit” comment haunts me. Every time I look in the mirror and see that the double chin is coming back, I get this kind of restlessness.

My biggest mistake this time was recruiting a mate as operations director at Christian Vision for Men (CVM) who runs marathons for a laugh. Why did I do that? An emerging double chin and a marathon running whippet of a mate is a dangerous combination! And that, my friends, is why I’m running the Snowdonia marathon.

Yes, you read that right. I did say Snowdonia. For those of you who can’t see the significance of that, I shall just remind you

Strangely, though, marathon training is a beautiful thing, despite the pain. The long runs have given me time to think about the universe and everything in it. I’ve had long chats with God about my life, my family and the work that I do. It has also brought a new sense of discipline. On holiday in Cyprus I was getting up early as the family slept to run up into the hills and look over the bay where we were staying. It was awesome! I’ve had some amazing moments of clarity and discovered a new sense of purpose (and it’s also given me an excuse to buy a new gadget watch). Seeing yourself getting fitter bit by bit and having to fight for it has also taught me loads of lessons about vision and seeing a task through to the end.

Anyway, I get that we can’t all train for marathons (if you can, do it), but my advice to you is this: do something. Get out there and do something, even if it’s a regular walk. I guarantee that you’ll notice a profound difference in yourself.

Having said all that, the way my legs are feeling right now I’ll probably make this marathon my last! n Carl is married with two daughters. He heads up Christian Vision for Men (CVM) and founded Codelife. You can follow him on Twitter @carlfbeech and on Facebook.

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Sorted. Nov/Dec 2013

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Sorted Issue 37 Nov_Dec 13 v3_Layout 1 04/10/2013 15:32 Page 100