SORTED magazine : Nov / Dec 2014

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

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£4.00

LIVING IN HUMILITY

CHRIS PRATT ON FILMING GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY STORY BY

KIM FRANCIS

BRAD PITT FAMILY FIRST

“We like to be able to give our kids a feeling of security and privacy.”

STORY BY

VERONICA PARKER

BEAR GRYLLS PACKING FOR SURVIVAL

FALCAO ON LOAN

MAN U SCORE A TOP NEW PLAYER STORY BY STUART WEIR

LIFE BEHIND BARS JOHN LAWSON: “WE RAN OUR OPERATIONS MILITARY STYLE.” STORY BY STACEY HAILES

“I FELT SO DIRTY!”

In partnership with

ONE MAN’S STORY OF SEXUAL ABUSE

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Vol. 8 | No. 6 | Nov/Dec 2014

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58 FEATURES

44 ACTION 7

The Bear Facts with Bear Grylls

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Red Arrows Celebrate 50th Display Season Sorted commemorate by talking to Squadron Leader Ruth Shackleton.

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Diamond Geezer with Ant Delaney

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Your Will, Mott Mine with Alex Willmott

CULTURE

Sing Silent Night this Christmas!

An amazing event to support this Christmas.

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Making a Pitt Stop Brad Pitt on 12 Years A Slave, being a producer and parenthood.

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Can You Be Disabled and Be a Man? Haydon Spenceley looks into what it really means to be a man…

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If a Wicked Man… John Lawson talks about his dark past and bright future.

40 It’s All Greek to Me!

QI researcher, Adam Jacot de Boinod’s, favourite cultural observations.

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Lessons Learnt The Guardians of the Galaxy star, Chris Pratt, talks faith, family and his latest project.

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Don’t Stay Silent The story of a man who was sexually abused.

COLUMNISTS 14

A Weird and Wonderful World Sorted spoke to the founder of “The Weird and Wonderful” to see if his products really live up to their name!

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SPORT 80

Man U Score Falcao The latest football star on loan in the UK.

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Competing with Confidence Paralympic athlete, Fanie van der Merwe, talks about the Paralympic and Commonwealth Games.

BUSINESS 64

We’re in Business with Charles Humphreys

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Relationology with Matt Bird

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Bolder and Boulder with Martin Carter

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Collective Action with Martin Thomas

HEALTH & FITNESS

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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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DVD & Blu Ray with Martin Leggatt

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Books with Mark Anderson

ADVICE

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Music with Sue Rinaldi

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Big Questions with Jonathan Sherwin

HUMOUR

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Money with Jon Cobb

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Family with Richard Hardy

Kneel‐Down Stand‐Up with Paul Kerensa

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In Vino Veritas with Tony Vino

LIFESTYLE

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Fitness with Phil Baines

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Healthy Cooking with Mike Darracott

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Cars with Tim Barnes‐Clay

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Six of the Best… Playing with Fire

OPINION

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Top Gear – Gadgets and gizmos galore

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Faith with Sam Gibb

COMMENT

Sixty Second Life Coach with Peter Horne

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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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Cover pictures: REX/Geoff Moore

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STEVE LEGG

Up Front Founding Editor Steve Legg steve@sorted‐magazine.com Deputy Editor Stacey Hailes stacey@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 Citipost © Sorted Magazine 2014 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.

The ABC combined print distribution for Aug‐Dec 2013:

33,824 A member of the Audited Bureau of Circulations

Contact Sorted Magazine PO Box 3070, Littlehampton, West Sussex, BN17 6WX, UK

Soaking Up the Glory

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make a mean Christmas lunch. The word “lunch” doesn’t really do it justice; it’s a feast. I’m talking a three bird roast, crispy, crunchy potatoes roasted in goose fat, homemade stuffing, sausages sizzling to perfection, an array of vegetables to satisfy every guest and gravy to die for. It’s perfection.

I can say that because it’s true. And when the banquet is over I revel in the glory of another success as once again I make Christmas for the family.

Except that I don’t. I get the glory job and all the oohs and aahs that go with it, but the truth is, that behind the scenes, my wife does most of what makes the Christmas festivities ring out.

“IT’S SO EASY TO TAKE THE GLORY FOR SOMETHING THAT IS REALLY TEAMWORK.”

Tel: 01903 732190 E‐mail: steve@sorted‐magazine.com

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It’s Bekah who orders the turkey and fights with the weather to collect it, she battles with crowds in the supermarket to make sure that we get the freshest vegetables that everyone likes, she researches to find the gluten free options that mean the whole family are included.

Bekah is the one who knows what everyone actually wants, constructs a spreadsheet to keep track and buys the gifts. It’s her who wraps and posts them. She even buys her own presents and hands them to me to wrap. I get my eldest daughter to do that though, because I just get tied up in sticky tape.

I do lift the Christmas tree down from the loft,

but it’s my wife who spends the day with the kids decorating and baking aromatic biscuits to hang from it. She digs out the Christmas music and sits with the girls writing the Christmas cards and it’s Bekah who gets out the games and pulls the family together to play them.

It’s so easy to take the glory for something that is really teamwork.

On our seventh birthday, I’m revelling in the news that Sorted is now being sold in over 20 countries worldwide. We’re reaching more people than ever with the good news that God has an adventure he wants them to join him on. But just like Christmas, I haven’t done this on my own.

I am very proud of how Sorted has not just survived but grown during difficult economic times, but it is thanks to the incredible team of writers and supporters I have around me.

From columnists Lee and Baz, Ant Delaney and Peter Horne, who have been with me from edition one to Andy Ashdown, our designer, Andrew Saunders and team at Halcyon and the unfailing support of legends such as Bear Grylls. Sorted wouldn’t exist without you.

Thank you. n

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

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BEAR GRYLLS

The Bear Facts

What do you really need to carry with you?

In this issue’s excerpt of A Survival Guide, Bear Grylls shares an insight into what we need to take with us on an adventure and more importantly, what can certainly be left behind!

Shedding the Heavy Unnecessary

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o, before we go too much further, now is a good chance to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, we are all a little guilty of sometimes living someone else’s aspirations for us instead of our own. And this is a great time to say “No more!” to living out of fear and other people’s expectations.

It is never an easy time to face some of those old negative feelings, but it is always a good time to change the way we pack and what we choose to carry further down the road of our lives and adventures.

Ultimately, the more “bad” equipment we carry, the slower we go and the less far we travel.

Each of us gets to choose.

But when we shed the bad and travel lighter, a few things happen.

First up, I bet that you will laugh more, you will worry less and you are much more likely to achieve your dream.

Travelling light also keeps us free to adapt our adventures or careers. Free to listen to the calling. How often do great opportunities come to people, but they are too “busy” or maybe too cynical to even notice them, let alone walk through an exciting new doorway.

Winston Churchill (him again!) once said words to the effect that everyone gets the chance to make their fortune once, but not everybody takes it.

If you’re weighed down, head down and bunged up with emotional junk, you might miss that chance.

So look wisely at the “baggage” you carry and your attitudes to the world. They will define you.

Do they enhance your life and increase your chances of reaching your dream, or do they hold you back?

A good packer is a tough packer. So be shrewd and be robust: if it isn’t going to help you, leave it behind, throw it out. Stay light.

We change our beliefs and attitudes inch by inch in the small, everyday things. When you find yourself thinking about someone or something in the same old negative

“TRAVELLING LIGHT ALSO KEEPS US FREE TO ADAPT OUR ADVENTURES OR CAREERS. FREE TO LISTEN TO THE CALLING.”

way, just stop yourself.

Think. Check. Change. Refresh.

Job done. Smile. Move on.

Do this enough times and you will change. For the better; for the stronger.

The Scouts’ motto is simple: Be prepared. So, if you really want to be prepared for whatever life has to offer, pack light, stay nimble, pack the positive, ditch the negative, and seize your chances when they come along.

That is so often how we set ourselves up for great adventures. 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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Red Arrows Celebrate 50th Display Season To commemorate, Sorted talked to Squadron Leader Ruth Shackleton.

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BY STACEY HAILES

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or those of you who have seen the Royal Airforce Aerobatics Team aka the Red Arrows, you would have no doubt been entertained by their spectacular air show that leaves you holding your breath as they fly in close formation. This year marks 50 years since their first exciting air display.

In 1964 the Royal Air Force amalgamated its display team into one premier unit – the Red Arrows. The team represents the United Kingdom and the values of the Royal Air Force. It is the Royal Air Force’s public face as every display shows how talented, motivated and precise the team are.

In the first season of 1965, the team – flying seven aircraft in a display and based at RAF Fairford – performed 65 shows. Their first aircraft flown was the Gnat, which had been used by the Yellowiacks. The first official display was at a media event at RAF Little Rissington on May 6th, with the first public performance in the UK taking place on May 15 at Biggin Hill Air Fair.

“THE TEAM HAS PERFORMED OVER 4,500 TIMES DURING THEIR 50-YEAR HISTORY IN OVER 55 COUNTRIES.” The team permanently increased to a nine display aircraft group in 1968 and the “Diamond Nine” became the Red Arrows’ trademark formation. The BAE Systems Hawk, a modified version of the RAF’s fast jet and weapons trainer for the 1980 season, replaced the Gnat that had flown 1,292 displays. Permission was also given that year for the team to have the motto “Eclat”, meaning excellence.

RAF Scampton, the station famous for its role in the 1943 Dambusters raid, became the team’s new home in 1983, moving from RAF Kemble that had been its base since 1966. Apart from a period at RAF College Cranwell between 1995 and 2000, the Lincolnshire station has been the Red Arrows’ permanent home ever since.

During the team’s world tour from October 1995 to February 1996, the Red Arrows performed to nearly a 10

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million people in Sydney on Australia Day. In 2002, the Red Arrows flew with a British Airways Concorde over London to mark Her Majesty The Queen’s Golden Jubilee. A decade later, the Red Arrows performed another series of fly‐pasts over the capital for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony (seen by a global television audience in excess of one billion people) and the Athlete’s Parade.

The 4,500th Red Arrows display took place at the RAF Waddington International Air Show in July 2013 – in the Team’s 49th season.

What many people do not realise though is that the team is made up of 120 people including pilots, engineers and essential support staff. Behind each show is a large dedicated team. Squadron Leader Ruth Shackleton, who began her career as a flight attendant with Saudi Arabian Airlines, is the team manager for the Red Arrows. She has been in the RAF for 15 years.

What first got you interested in the Red Arrows?

When I was small I remember seeing the Red Arrows on TV. I thought how great it would be to be part of a team as special as that. Never did I imagine that one day I would be the Team Manager! I was the first female cadet in the Combined Cadet Force at Glenalmond College, which gave me exposure to the RAF. My father used to work abroad and I just loved anything to do with airports and aircraft and travel. So it was a mixture of things really.

What does your role entail?

In short, ensuring that the team is in the right place at the right time, every time. There are 120 people on the team. In order for the team to be successful everyone must do their part. It is teamwork on a grand scale. My role involves all the coordination behind the scenes and representing the team at events and performing TV interviews. I am also responsible for arranging overseas tours. Last year I arranged a 35‐day tour through the Middle East (ten countries, 15 displays). With 11 Hawk aircrafts, a B747 cargo aircraft, an A321 passenger aircraft and 70 people. I oversee PR, Corporate Sponsorship, Marketing, VIP visits and protocol, logistics, administration and photographers… the list is endless. It

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is certainly a job like no other in every respect. One day I may be speaking with an ambassador, the next I may be giving a lecture to a local school. No two days are the same. Some would say I have a dream job.

Do you have some fun facts about the Red Arrows that people wouldn’t normally know?

The team has performed over 4,500 times during their 50‐year history in over 55 countries. The Hawk aircraft that the team uses has been used for over 30 years.

The global audience for the recent Commonwealth Games flypast was estimated at more than one billion.

“WHEN I WAS SMALL I REMEMBER SEEING THE RED ARROWS ON TV. I THOUGHT HOW GREAT IT WOULD BE TO BE PART OF A TEAM AS SPECIAL AS THAT.”

What is it like to fly in a Red Arrow plane?

I have flown on several occasions. It is very thrilling and quite physically demanding. I encountered G forces of around 4G (the pilots reach 8G in a full display). What amazed me was the proximity between the aircraft. On the ground the aircraft look pretty close but it is even closer when you are airborne. Probably one of the most exciting things I have ever done and knowing too that very few people indeed get to fly in a Red Arrow.

What has been a highlight/memorable moment for you since working with the Red Arrows?

There have been so many memorable moments since I became team manager but the day we displayed in Doha, the capital of Qatar, stands out. This was the first display of the 2013 Middle Eastern tour. The display was to occur on the Corniche (seafront) in the presence of many Qatari VIP’s including the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister. Timing was critical and because of the proximity to the International Airport, the Qatari’s shut the airport for one hour to allow us to perform our display (which of course had repercussions for air traffic down the entire Persian Gulf). The display occurred just next to the central business district and the noise of the jets reverberated against the skyscrapers. The display f

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was so immense that traffic came to a standstill and the capital became gridlocked. An amazing experience in every respect but especially since I had coordinated it I felt elated it went so well.

What do you feel has been your biggest achievement to date?

Arranging one of the largest foreign tours in recent Red Arrows history and coordinating the 50th Display Season.

Both I know are once in a life time events and I feel very privileged to have been part of the team for them.

How has the 50th display season been celebrated?

Over 85 displays in around ten countries. Documentary programmes, articles, books, simulator rides, product launches, gala dinners, reunions with old team members, painting commissions, concerts and a Red Arrows Theme Tune composition. Redesigning the aircraft tail fin. Iconic flypasts for the Queens birthday, start of the Tour de France, start of the Great North Run and the Commonwealth Games.

Is there anything else you would like to say?

I feel that I have been lucky and very blessed in life. I have a wonderful family, amazing friends and I have had a very privileged career. Conversely, I’ve encountered dangerous, difficult situations and immense stress. Yet for all the highs and lows of my life I could not have done it had the Lord not been by my side. n 12

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COLUMNISTS

ANTHONY DELANEY

Diamond Geezer

Just This Once?

Just Say No.

C

layton Christensen in his Harvard Business Review article, How Will You Measure Your Life?, recalls when he was at Oxford, playing for the basketball team. His religious convictions meant that at the age of 16 he had made a personal decision that he would never play on Sundays. It was a firm commitment to God and it had never caused any problems before.

You can guess what day the championship game ended up being drawn on.

The coach and all of his teammates lined up – begging him to play: “Can’t you break the rule, just this once?”

What would you do?

I don’t mean to draw any lessons here about what you can or can’t do on particular days, and to do so is missing the point. The tension here was not about the day, but the decision. It wasn’t about whether you should work, it was about whether you would keep your word, or break it, “just this once”.

Clayton prayed and felt an inner confirmation that he should keep the commitment he had made years before, so he didn’t play in the championship game.

What’s your reaction to the story?

“It was just one Sunday out of thousands in his life!”

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“Surely God isn’t so petty anyway?”

“He could have crossed the line once and then never again?”

That’s not how he saw it. The way Christensen describes it, this was not just any Sunday, but a defining moment in his life – one of the most important decisions he ever made, about the kind of man he wanted to be and would go on to become.

He says: “Looking back on it, resisting the temptation whose logic was ‘in this extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s okay’… has proven to be one of the most important decisions [because] my life has been one unending stream of extenuating circumstances. Had I crossed that line that one time, I’d have done it over and over in the years that followed.”

Anyone know what he’s talking about?

We know what he’s saying, though for you the temptation may not be about playing sport on Sunday. It may be playing with fire on any number of days in any number of ways you might be personally vulnerable to.

Here’s an example. If I’m away speaking and get put up in a hotel, I always go to the hotel reception and say: “Is there a porn channel?” (I once had a lady look at me as if I was a complete pervert and said, ‘NO! Certainly not!’). It’s worth the embarrassment to safeguard my integrity. If the answer is yes, I ask them to disable the channel or if they say they can’t do that, remove the TV before I go to the room.

This hard and fast rule is strangely freeing. A decision made ahead of time precludes me from having to make other decisions. I don’t have to decide whether this or that late night film is okay or not, because I don’t have a TV in the room. I rule out the inevitable extenuating circumstances. I don’t weigh the pros and cons of potential exceptions – there are none.

It’s like putting up crash barriers at the side of the road. They’re not

“IT WAS JUST ONE SUNDAY OUT OF THOUSANDS IN HIS LIFE!” there to look pretty, they’re not there so you’ll crash into them. They are put between you and disaster to prevent you from driving off the cliff edge to your doom. What are the safety barriers you have put around your time, your relationships, dating, your expense claims, online habits, spending, your work and family balance?

The marginal cost of doing whatever “it” is “just this once” seems so low, but actually look where your choices are heading and the actual costs involved. “Just this once” puts you on the road to disastrous regret. Without barriers, you’re headed for the crash.

Christensen says: “It’s easier to hold your principles 100% of the time than 98% of the time. You’ve got to define what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.” n Anthony Delaney leads the Ivy Churches in Manchester and New Thing UK, a network to train and deploy apostolic leaders. More at www.anthonydelaney.com @anthonydelaney and @IvyChurchHub

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RUNNING HEAD COLUMNISTS

ALEX WILLMOTT

Your Will, Mott Mine Wouldn’t Be Seen Dead in a Ford Fiesta

I

stood next to a stranger during a fire drill at work this week. As we stood, getting mercilessly savaged by the rain, we saw a senior manager return from an off‐site meeting. He was driving a Bentley.

As he parked his brutish and yet

evidently beautiful machine, the stranger beside me said: “He’s done well for himself, fair play.”

I joked with him and replied: “Yeah, you won’t find him driving a Ford Fiesta.” The stranger was in stitches, laughing so hard I feared for his heart rate. After he coughed and spluttered, he said: “Not a chance. He wouldn’t get in a sh*tbox like that. Who in their right mind would?”

I placed my arm around him briefly and whispered: “Me.” He hasn’t looked at me since.

You see, thousands of years ago, a “successful man” was someone who could hunt and gather the essential elements to survive. Somewhere along the line though, academia, class, cash and employment became

“AMBITION TOOK CENTRE STAGE AND MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS FELL AWAY LIKE DAMP WALLPAPER.”

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the four biggest litmus tests for a man’s apparent success. And I can pretend that this doesn’t bother me, and that I’d be content just living in a box as long as my wife was there, but the truth is that none of us are immune to selfish ambition. For you it may be money, or class, or something far more subtle.

One of my friends doesn’t boast but always needs to have the last word on everything. Another mate of mine oozes humility but holds grudges over those less humble than him. All of us want to stay one step ahead of the rest.

I was thinking about “success” at the pool last weekend when I overheard one of the most mature conversations I’d ever experienced.

A child was play fighting with his father and quite clearly having the best day of his life. During a brief reprise, he shouted: “I want to be like you when I’m older, daddy.” At this stage, the boy’s mother interjected: “Do you even know what daddy does?”

To which the boy replied: “He does silly games with me!”

It got me thinking. How do I rate success? The Bentley driver who wouldn’t be seen dead in a Ford?

The clipped academic? The General Director about as vulnerable as a sawn‐off shotgun? Or the dad, making one kid happy; a kid who doesn’t even know what his father does for a living.

If the private sector has taught me anything, it’s that the slope to false “success” is watered every day for fools like me. You blink, and you’re old; looking back at a life where ambition took centre stage and meaningful relationships fell away like damp wallpaper. And sitting in the golf club with your friends in your retirement, you wonder if there was ever a moment when you decided to put your position before everyone else in your life. And you hope that by some twist of fate you could return to that moment and consider the consequences for a few moments longer. n

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. @alexinboxes

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CULTURE

MOVIES

With Martin Leggatt

Interstellar A new star studded sci‐fi from Christopher Nolan sees Matthew McConaughey continue his transition to serious actor as Cooper – the leader of a group of interstellar space explorers who travel vast distances in space by exploiting the

wormholes that exist in the universe. Cooper is a recent widower who leaves his two children behind to lead the explorers and scientists as they go beyond the limits of human experience and ultimately save the human race. Also starring

Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck and John Lithgow and with a score by Batman composer, Hans Zimmer, this is a great choice for winter IMAX viewing.

Horrible Bosses 2

No Good Deed Director Sam Miller gives us a very uncomfortable ride in this excellent psychological thriller starring Idris Elba as Colin, a particularly nasty escaped convict who proves that no good deed goes unpunished when single mum Terri (Taraji P. Henson) gives him shelter in her home after his car breaks down. Elba makes an exceptionally convincing and terrifying bad guy and once inside the house Colin proceeds to terrorize Terri and her two children.

Sean Anders’ hilarious sequel is certainly not for the sensitive or those easily offended with Dale (Charlie Day), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Nick (Jason Bateman) returning to the big screen. This time they have decided the best way to avoid horrible bosses is to start their own business venture. There is just one minor fault in their plan though – they don’t have the sufficient funds – so they need to attract an investor.

This is where the hilarity for us the

viewer ensues as their benefactor (Christoph Waltz) turns out to be far worse than any of their three previous employers combined.

Their master plan to seek revenge and solve their financial woes is to kidnap his son and hold him to ransom. There are also some reprised roles from the original with Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Anniston), Dean Jones (Jamie Foxx) and Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey) adding to the chaos. f

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CULTURE

Stations of the Cross This German film directed by Dietrich Bruggermann won the Silver Bear Award for Best Script at the 64th Berlin Film Festival. The cast for me was a complete unknown and I pride myself on a love of foreign film. The story is about 14‐year‐old Martha and her quest to find Jesus against the control of the strict fundamentalist Catholic community in which she lives. She becomes committed in her pursuit of sainthood and the ultimate destination of going to heaven. In order to achieve this she must follow in Jesus’ footsteps and pass through the 14 Stations of the Cross. The film

is shot in a style as radical as the challenging subject matter through a corresponding 14 fixed angle shots,

engaging the viewer in a dramatic and original fashion.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Peter Jackson’s juggernaut of a trilogy finally comes to an end, probably seven hours of screen time too late for me, but for the truly dedicated fan worth every bum numbing minute. I loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but must admit that I struggled to remain conscious during the first film. All the familiar cast are here with Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Gandalf (Ian McKellan) and all those dwarves. The story was stretched a little too long and by the third film, was a little played out for me.

Exodus: Gods and Kings Director Ridley Scott can do no wrong in my eyes and looks set to keep his record of making exciting films secure with this biblical extravaganza of Moses leading his people out of slavery in Egypt.

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There is an interesting cast with John Turturro as Seti, Joel Edgerton as Ramesses, and Christian Bale makes an interesting Moses with Aaron Paul as Joshua and a supporting cast of

Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley. This is a very different biblical adaptation to Noah and should be far more pleasing to the more conservative viewer.

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CULTURE A worthy mention to a trio of documentary films that are still showing and are well worth tracking down:

Filmed in Supermarionation is a must for anyone of my generation who enjoyed any of the adventures of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90 or Stingray. This has some great revelations as to the amazing ground breaking special effects that creator Gerry Anderson introduced into his works that became influential across live footage filming. A big surprise was the fact that Anderson deeply resented working with puppets and it was this that drove his perfectionism and need to make them as realistic as possible.

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb I love all these films, the wonderful whimsy and sentimentality of them appeals to my inner child and this latest instalment will have an added poignancy as being the last museum film to star the supremely talented Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt before his tragic and untimely death.

Larry (Ben Stiller) is still patrolling the nocturnal adventures of the museum and is joined in this latest adventure

by Sir Lancelot played by Dan Stevens (Mr Crawley from Downton Abbey). All the old favourites are here, Jedediah (Owen Wilson) and Octavius (Steve Coogan), Dr. McPhee (Ricky Gervais), and Ahkmenrah (Rami Malek) as they try to track down a way of prolonging the waning magic of the Tablet of Ahkmenrah, making sure that the nocturnal adventures continue.

A Tale of Two Robbers is an investigation into claims by the one surviving Train Robber Gordon Goody, that an inside man, the mysterious Ulsterman, was the true mastermind behind the notorious and spectacular 1960s heist. Whilst all the other members of the gang were quickly arrested, the Ulsterman went unidentified and uncaptured. This is a compelling investigation comprised of archive footage, interviews with Goody himself and recreations with actors entwined with the work of two private detectives who eventually reveal the identity of the Ulsterman.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 The original film, for the uninitiated, is something of a guilty pleasure of mine; the unlikely juvenile, schoolboy misadventures of Lou, Jacob and Nick are of Airplane proportions. If, like me, you enjoyed that first film of time travelling shenanigans in the most unlikely of craft – a hot tub – then this second is set to make you laugh like a drain.

At the end of the first film Lou had manipulated time so that he had become incredibly wealthy and famous as the man who invented

the internet. However, in doing so he had invariably attracted the wrong sort of envy and attention and had been shot and killed. In order to rectify this heinous crime, and reverse their friend’s death, the guys fire up the hot tub one more time to travel back and save him.

Chevy Chase reprises his cameo role as the mysterious repairman. My only lament is that John Cusack, an immensely talented and always watchable actor, has not been called upon for the sequel.

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. @martylegg

Still the Enemy Within is a documentary that proves the devastating effects the Miner’s Strike of 1984 had on not only those whose lives it immediately affected but also how it changed the face of politics in this country forever. I must admit I was a little ignorant of it all, despite living through it and having a father who as a policeman was away for much of the year. This tells the individual stories of many of the striking miners of the time, the people that Margaret Thatcher had dubbed the enemy within.

Through the narrative, archive footage and clever recreation, I realised that for them the wounds are still very raw and they are still the enemy within.

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TELEVISION With Emily Russell

Keeping it Real

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uspects is a British police drama with a difference. While its trappings are familiar – each week police officers take on a criminal case, trying to work out what happened and who’s guilty – the actors improvise their dialogue based on detailed plot descriptions, giving the whole thing a believably raw quality. It’s a new spin on an old genre and it’s very compelling.

The police team is led by Detective Inspector Martha Bellamy (Fay Ripley), assisted by Detective Sergeant Jack Weston (Damien Molony) and Detective Constable Charlie Steele (Clare‐Hope Ashitey).

It’s not always a harmonious team; Martha has to rein Jack in because he often opts for a gut‐instinct aggressive interrogation style, which can mean people don’t always want to fully cooperate afterwards. Just because they’re on the same side doesn’t mean that the team always gets along or completely agrees with each other’s methods, attitudes or theories.

Everyone on the team wants to see justice done but they sometimes have different opinions of how to achieve that.

The show is full of clever visual touches; it frequently uses hand‐held cameras and in the interrogation rooms, the positioning and angling of shots often makes it seem as though the audience is viewing security camera footage. At times it feels like a

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“I REALLY DO RECOMMEND SUSPECTS FOR ITS AFFECTING STYLE AND BITING GRIPPING REALNESS.” documentary. We often see the three leads up on the roof of the police headquarters, escaping work, sneaking a cigarette and revealing how draining the job can be. During these scenes the camera peers around corners, giving the moments a more intimate private feel as though we’re getting a glimpse under the characters’ skin. It’s the only glimpse we get – uniquely for a police drama; the cops’ personal lives remain unexplored. Visual touches like these make everything that happens on‐ screen seem more real, even claustrophobic at times. It also reminds the audience of what a toll the work takes on the characters – digging through evidence, trying to make sense of what they’ve seen and been told, talking to people who’ve done terrible things. It’s exhausting, often demoralising work, even when a suspect is arrested, because the crime has still happened and the victims have still suffered. Suspects allows the audience to see this in an un‐showy but powerful manner.

Every week, the audience learns how apparently ordinary people often do awful things and how innocent people’s lives are shattered as a result.

Suspects shows that the police frequently do their best to catch those

responsible and therefore give the victims some sort of closure. It demonstrates that it’s often difficult, wearying work – that it can make the officers hard and cynical and that sometimes, despite all the effort the police put in, it just isn’t enough. But it also shows that they don’t stop trying anyway. The television schedules are full of crime shows from all over the world but I really do recommend Suspects for its affecting style and biting gripping realness.

There’s nothing else on television quite like it. n Emily Russell has a degree in Media and Film Studies. She wrote Culturewatch articles for the Damaris Trust website for eight years and watches far too much science‐fiction and fantasy, crime shows, and wrestling. She is married to Anthony. Her articles about films can be found at www.emilyrussellwrites.wordpress.com/ @funkyinfishnet

Series Two of Suspects recently aired on Channel 5. Series One is available on DVD.

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GAMING With Jim Lockey

Ouya Review

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he OUYA was released in the middle of 2013 and has struggled to find its place. Classified as a micro‐console, the OUYA is forging its own path in a market dominated by titanic corporations. Inside the metal cube is an operating system based on Android, that’s been retooled for controller and TV.

OUYA offers console gaming that is affordable to the consumer and friendly to developers. Uniquely, development kits for OUYA are open source; meaning that all anyone needs to make games for the OUYA is the console and the know‐how.

With license fees removed OUYA has tried to position itself as a destination platform for “Indies”.

There are currently over 800 games

for OUYA, that’s as many as most traditional consoles can achieve in their entire life span.

But does this quantity come at the expense of quality? Does the OUYA’s low barrier to entry hinder it? The console and controller are really impressive, but if the games don’t live up to the hardware then the OUYA is just an expensive paperweight. So let’s take a look at some of the games.

The store is mostly populated by games that have been ported from android on tablet. So if you’ve always wanted to play BIG ACTION MEGA FIGHT using real buttons, OUYA can help. But with so many of these titles existing on plain old Android, I begin to wonder just who OUYA is for. Many tablets can be connected to a TV, and support external controllers via Bluetooth. If you have a tablet already then the OUYA doesn’t really have much to offer you. So, filtering out the bog standard android games, lets look at some games that have been built specifically for OUYA.

The Amazing Frog? is a quirky sandbox game not unlike Goat Simulator. You control a little frog guy as he waddles around Swindon.

You have to try and launch as high as you can by making use of various objects in the environment; jump on trampolines and bouncy castles; run into the blades of a giant fan or leap head-first into oncoming traffic; make use of the cannons and exploding barrels inexplicably littered around – whatever it takes to get airborne. The Amazing Frog? is weird, wonderful and it’s exclusive to OUYA.

Duck Game is a local multiplayer game that is essentially 2D Quake… with ducks. Or if you prefer its Smash Bros with guns… and ducks. Couch combat is where OUYA really shines; it’s an inexpensive and fun platform on which to rekindle the lost art of local multiplayer.

There are some great games on OUYA, and the open platform allows varied, original, and experimental content to thrive along more traditional games. Finding the gems amongst the glut of shovelware can

As its title suggests That Dragon, Cancer, is a portentous and somber game. It is a first person interactive narrative about raising a child with cancer. The game is based on the real life experiences of the creators Ryan and Amy Green. This beautiful and heartfelt tale of love in hardship is still in development and will be coming out first on OUYA.

be tough, and it remains to be seen if consumers will embrace the console and drive demand that will attract further dedicated development. The OUYA is a great little console, still in its infancy. 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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DVD & BLU RAY With Martin Leggatt

REX/Courtesy Everett Collection

f you’re like me, you get fed up with the constant bombardment of saccharine sweet, happy ever after, lovey dovey Christmas movies that appear on the television from mid‐ November onwards. There are even two satellite channels dedicated to Christmas films. As an antidote I have compiled a list of 12 manly movies to keep you going in the countdown to the big day when at least one channel will air either a Bond film or The Great Escape to rescue and revive us blokes. As a caveat I would like to point out that most of these films either occur or have at least one scene depicting Christmas in the sense of the celebration of the large, bearded jolly man in a red suit.

REX/Moviestore Collection

Must Watch Christmas Films

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Let’s start by kicking off with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. I know what you’re thinking; a tale of gangsters, crime and violence – what has that got to do with the season? Well the Christmas of 1945 forms the backdrop for at least two attempts on the life of Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando at his mumbling best) and several other Mafia killings.

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You might be starting to flag by now, so it’s time to crank up the humour with the plight of many of us modern working men; the non arrival of a long awaited Christmas bonus. This is the final straw for hard working Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) in National Lampoon’s

Christmas Vacation. Clark’s plans for a perfect Christmas go hilariously awry as he battles unwanted family guests, a redneck brother‐in‐law, a giant Christmas tree and thousands of decorative lights.

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Next up, we’ll move to the other side of the crime business with the greatest superhero there is (well in my book anyway) – Tony Stark in Iron Man 3. In this our sharp suited wise cracking former playboy, with a nuclear reactor for a heart, does battle with the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley). The link: it all happens in December.

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Lethal Weapon is up next. Before the franchise descended into a crass comedy, Christmas provides a backdrop to one of the best buddy cop movies ever made. Detective Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is a loose cannon with severe psychological problems who is teamed up

with veteran, by the book Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover). The original cut is beginning to end action and spawned a bucket load of one‐liners and one of Gary Busey’s best performances.

REX/Moviestore Collection

Spending the yuletide In Bruges there’s not much room for a ho‐ho‐ho in this fantastic tale of two hit men, Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and the recriminations after a job gone wrong when Ray kills the wrong man. The fantastic dialogue abounds as the two await orders from their boss in Bruge. In this great man film, with Farrell at his very best, Belgium is definitely not the place to spend Christmas.

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Scrooged is a hilariously dark and modern take on Charles Dickens’ tale of yuletide redemption brought into the modern corporate world.

Frank Cross (Bill Murray) is a ruthless television executive who has sacrificed friendships and relationships in his ambition to be the top player in his chosen profession. Along the way he encounters three ghosts who show him the error of his ways before it is all too late.

There is a fantastically hilarious impersonation of Richard Burton that more than compensates for the slightly weak and overly‐sweet ending.

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L.A. Confidential is one of my favourite films and features a plethora of fantastic actors putting in powerhouse performances as incredibly well conceived characters.

At the centre of the action of Christmas 1951 are Lt Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), Bud White (Russell Crowe) and Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) as three very different cops united in solving a particularly heinous and convoluted crime from the book of the same name by James Ellroy.

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Just two days to go and it’s now time for some lost detonators, a hijacked skyscraper and a lot of Eurotrash terrorists being thwarted by a barefoot Bruce Willis in a white vest. Die Hard was a surprise hit when it first came out with its simple premise of “the wrong cop, in the wrong place, at the wrong time” and established Willis as a true

film star in his role as New York cop John McClane. McClane travels to LA for a Christmas Eve reunion with his estranged wife and thwarts the plans of master criminal Hans Gruber (a superlatively serpentine Alan Rickman).

The film spawned some memorable lines, chief among them, “where are my detonators?” and “Ho Ho Ho, now I have a machine gun”.

REX/c.20thC.Fox/Everett TM & copyright 20th Century Fox

Bad Santa takes us back to the laughs with Billy Bob Thornton on very convincing form as Willie T. Stokes, a seedy low life criminal who is an alcoholic, sex addict who is increasingly rude to children. Every Christmas he disguises himself as a shopping mall Santa in order rob the shops and the storyline sees him go through a process of redemption where he emerges as a very unlikely hero.

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This next choice is a strange one and seemingly at odds with a list of movies supposedly for manly men, but yes, I’ve included Love Actually.

Not as my wife will suspect because of Martine McCutcheon, but for the fantastic performances by Bill Nighy as over the hill rock star Billy Mack. The rest of the cast put in good performances in a well written film, but Nighy stands head and shoulders above all, including a pre Taken Liam Neeson.

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I was in a dilemma for my final film and had considered Die Hard as my choice but have opted instead for John Landis’ comedy Trading Places. Dan Aykroyd stars as upper class broker Louis Winthorpe III who undergoes a “prince and the pauper” style swap with street hustler Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy). Hollywood legends Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche star

as the scheming Duke Brothers who instigate the change in fortunes as a $1 bet.

Jamie Lee Curtis and Denholm Elliott also feature in award winning performances as a prostitute with a heart of gold and a long suffering man servant in the Dukes’ employment respectively.

REX/Moviestore Collection

It’s now day ten and we need to get back on track with our next hit of machismo in the form of crime comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Crook Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr) evades arrest by posing as an actor at an audition. There he meets private investigator Perry Van Shrike (Val Kilmer) who has been hired as a technical advisor for the role that Harry inadvertently gets after being mistaken for a method actor. Harry and Perry then team up to solve a real life crime and at the end of the film Harry gets a job working with Perry after losing his role to Colin Farrell.

I’ll leave you with my season’s greetings and to quote Billy Ray: “Happy Christmas and Merry New Year!” n

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BOOKS

With Mark Anderson

Gripping Winter Reads The Boys in the Boat

JJJJJ

Field of Prey

by John Sanford

Nightmare inducing, graphic but terribly addictive.

JJJJJ

Field of Prey had me hooked from the start. I picked it up when I was on holiday and nearly came to blows with my wife as I was stuck to it.

You first read about the killer straight away, brilliant, no flirting with shadows, breezes in the trees or creaky floors. I like this aspect of Sanford’s writing.

You are just thrown straight into the mix, feeling as if you are either implicated in the murders or helpless to relay the correct information to the good guys in the coming pages.

Without giving too much away, a serial killer has used an old well near an

The Boys in the Boat

by Daniel James Brown I love history, especially the Second World War period. However, it is hard to find stories about ordinary people who lived during this time.

This book is that gem. It is thoroughly researched and goes into great detail about eight young blokes that go from being just stringy lads to gladiators.

The Boys in the Boat is a tale that allows us to see how a group of regular joes from the States, rowed against the superhuman men in the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.

The Bad Christian’s Manifesto

by Dave Tomlinson I liked Tomlinson’s last book How to be a Bad Christian, so I had to give this one a bash. Dave wants to throw

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abandoned farm to discard bodies of young blonde females over the past 20 years. You are right to think that it is gruesome, twisted and horrifying.

What would make someone do this? Why would they go to the trouble of returning to the same site to get rid of the bodies?

How would someone go about such a thing? Enter Lucas Davenport, a cop who is called upon to solve the most difficult of crimes.

You may be forgiven for thinking that this is just another typical murder mystery. However, this is a plot that twists and a subplot of hunting drug and gun smugglers as Lucas

out the “religion” in people’s mind yet keep our notion of faith.

Interesting read and typically controversial. Dave suggests that all pleasure is not bad and we need to focus on our personal relationship with God. It is billed as changing the way you think – maybe not, but it is something to mull over.

Killing Lions

by John and Sam Eldredge Killing lions is a book about discovery. As a young man, what defines you? What is life about?

Life takes twists and turns.

Relationships are key in the book, especially between God and man.

has other cases that he has to solve.

This is the only negative of the book – Lucas seemingly is the only intelligent cop in the county!

The serial killer is dubbed as “the black hole murderer” and the sheer number of casualties makes the reader truly want the killing to stop.

Urgency makes your pulse race throughout, thinking every passer-by could be a psychotic killer. Next time I might skip the serial killer book and move on to an autobiography of a footballer to review!

The connection between a father and son can be the most pivotal in a guy’s life. I loved this book. You listen into the conversations between John and his son and it benefits you with every page turn.

JJJJJ

Killing Lions

JJJJJ

Indescribable

by Louie Giglio So if you look up at night, what can you see? If you’re like me and live in the city, you probably don’t see much! Enter Louie Giglio who is the pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta. In this book, Louie’s teaching makes you feel so small and yet feel so special. Louie sees creation in everything, from Earth to massive galaxies! 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. @Marky_MarkA

The Bad Christian’s Manifesto

Indescribable Pick up now to be inspired and intrigued!

JJJJJ

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MUSIC

more melodic “Timepiece”, the heart‐bending “Broken” and hip‐pop amalgam “Messengers”. Lyrically, he unites reality and poetry and skilfully deciphers his faith, aspirations and observations into everyday code.

With Sue Rinaldi

Hillsong

Royal Releases

Royal Blood Royal Blood

Lecrae Anomaly

No Other Name Response to Hillsong’s latest album is as dazzling as the digital billboards in New York’s Times Square that illuminated the words “No Other Name” and “Jesus” onto the atmospheric streets for one hour prior to release.

Their twenty‐third live album is an appealing synthesis of assorted singers, writers and contemporary worship songs. Whether vaulting the heights in big mighty anthems such as “This I Believe” or diving the depths of impassioned refrains like “Broken Vessels”, Hillsong remain a front‐runner and No Other Name will keep their flag flying high for many years to come.

Arthur Beatrice Hillsong No Other Name

Royal Blood Royal Blood British music is once again stirring up a hurricane with the arrival of a dynamic duo from Worthing. Power-rock has never sounded so glorious as Royal Blood deliver mesmeric grooves, conquering melodies and head-banging breakouts, all within an atmospheric energy, destined to flatten anyone who enters the eye of the storm.

Listening to the roaring urgency of “Out Of The Black”, the Zeppelinesque “Little Monster” and the gutsy “Figure It Out”, it is ear-piercingly obvious why they have scored the fastest-selling British rock debut in three years with their self-titled number one album. They are not just good, they are bracingly brilliant… and in an amazingly short time they have amassed serious support from fans and industry alike – nominated for the BBC “Sound of 2014”, A-listed by Radio 1, the talk of music festivals and magazines and visibly championed by established rock bands with the stature of Arctic Monkeys.

Royal Blood is bassist and singer Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher, and in terms of sound, the two become five. This miracle of multiplication is achieved through Kerr playing bass with all the aplomb of a lead guitarist, aided and abetted by numerous effects, and Thatcher drumming as if his very life depended on it. Vocally Kerr flexes the melody with great tone and expression.

Destined for huge things, I predict royal blood will be flowing through our veins for a very long time.

Arthur Beatrice Working Out

Working Out Preferring a slow and steady journey, this English indie four‐piece has escaped widespread recognition and yet, once their well‐crafted and atmospheric music is discovered, the wonder of why they are so hidden is quite the mystery.

Intelligent production, infectious songs and lush duetting between lead vocalists Orlando Sheppard and Ella Giradot combine to deliver a great pop‐chilled experience. n

Lecrae Anomaly Sharing stages with top hip‐hop acts including Wu Tang Clan and Rakim, receiving knockout reviews for latest album Anomaly and a possible collaboration with Kanye West are all significant strikes for Lecrae. But the biggest punch of all

is the man himself.

He is a heavyweight of beats, an effective connector between the motion of his music and the rhyme of his voice. Never resting for too long in familiar hip‐hop territory, Lecrae colours the mood with the

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). @suerinaldimedia

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LIFESTYLE

TIM BARNES-CLAY

Cars

Feel Like a Star Bentley Flying Spur

B

entley Motors firmly reinforced its position as the leading manufacturer of luxury vehicles in the world after announcing a large increase in global deliveries in 2013.

Over 10,000 cars were delivered to customers, the highest figure in the British automaker’s 95‐year history.

Fresh models were critical to this success, and last year Bentley launched the new Flying Spur, the

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fastest road‐going luxury saloon in the world.

In the final four months of 2013, with full availability of the new model, Bentley managed to sell over 2,000 Flying Spurs – an astonishing reception.

So, let’s look a little closer at why the latest Flying Spur is so admired.

With its unparalleled blend of easy driveability, pulse‐raising pace, and exacting craftsmanship, it’s already surpassing the success of its iconic forerunner, the Continental

PROS ‘N’ CONS

3 3 3 3 7

• Luxury • Power • Kit • Space • Cost

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LIFESTYLE Flying Spur.

Powering the new Flying Spur is Bentley’s legendry 6.0 litre, twin turbo, 12 cylinder engine, coupled to an eight‐speed automatic transmission. Developing eyeball popping pulling power the car features more thrust than any other Bentley four‐door vehicle in history.

The motor sprints from 0‐62mph in a breath‐taking 4.6 seconds and is capable of an eye‐watering top‐ speed of 200mph. However, this rate of knots is harnessed well. You see, power is delivered to the road via all‐ wheel drive. This gives you a sure‐ footed, engaging driving experience in all road and weather conditions.

In the looks department, the venerable vehicle is far more muscular than the outgoing Flying Spur and features enhanced cabin technology, as well as even higher levels of comfort and refinement. Bentley’s styling team has developed an athletic design for the new Flying Spur that brings together time‐honoured Bentley icons, such as the celebrated winged

“B” badge and up to date details such as monumentally large twin exhaust tailpipes.

The extraordinarily potent motor has a sexy stance and sharp feature lines complement beefy rear haunches, while LED daytime running lights, dipped headlights and tail‐lights characterise the front and rear profiles of the car.

Step inside the cavernous cabin and it’s immediately apparent Bentley’s interior designers have gone to town on ensuring a lavish, yet hi‐tech environment. Advanced acoustic and electronic technologies are seamlessly harmonized with hand‐crafted leather hides and wood veneers.

The Bentley has a touch‐screen infotainment system that includes mobile phone connectivity and Wi‐ Fi. However, as the car has been made as much for discerning passengers as for the person behind the wheel, rear seat leisure is where it really counts.

There’s an entertainment suite and a custom‐built hand‐held touch

FAST FACTS Max speed: 200 mph 0-62 mph: 4.6 secs Combined mpg: 19 Engine: 5998 cc 12 cylinder 48 valve turbo-petrol Max. power (bhp): 616 at 6000 rpm Max. torque (lb.ft): 590 at 2000 rpm CO2: 343 g/km Price: £140,900 on the road

screen remote which allows anyone sitting in the back to control an extensive range of features from the comfort of their seat.

What’s more, an eight‐channel, eight‐speaker audio system provides high quality sound clarity. It’s so good that it would give any hardcore home music setup a run for its money.

The Bentley Flying Spur has got to be the choice of car for anyone who appreciates exquisitely appointed cars. Needless to say, it is also the perfect car to be chauffeured in and makes you a star just by sitting in it.

Unfortunately, the car costs the same as a modest house. And don’t get me started on how much it’ll cost to run… n

Tim is an experienced motoring writer with a background in radio and TV journalism. He puts his pedal to the metal each issue with his must‐read car reviews. Tweet Tim Barnes‐Clay @carwriteups www.carwriteups.co.uk. @carwriteups

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LIFESTYLE

SIX OF THE BEST Playing with Fire

We really want you to get hold of the best snaps, crackles and pops (we’re taking fireworks, not Coco Pops) out there, so we’ve ‘fused’ together our top six. These little beauties will really put the bang in your bangers and the spark in your sparklers, so get ready to light up the sky!

3 Thunderous Finale This is the one to save for last: a display that would make even Gandalf’s eyes water. It lasts around 60 seconds and launches 80 shots – four at a time – into the air. These shots break into huge coloured palms like exploding shells to a background symphony of electrifying crackles.

1 Earth Shaker Find something to hold onto and hold on tight, cos this is the Earth Shaker!

This one is going to make the very ground tremble with high decibel action from start to finish and lasting a whopping 2 minutes. With 72 massive shots delivering very loud bangs, whistles, hummers, huge red peonies, crackling comets, silver strobing stars and a HUGE multi shot finale of a giant cloud of crackling stars. This is going to upset the neighbours, guaranteed.

RRP £129.99 (Epic price £64.95)

5 Predator 500 The Predator isn’t likely to start feeding on you, but it will certainly hold your attention.

With a fast-firing array of effects including peonies, bangs, crackles, whistles and an intense finale of large glitter storms, this little beast is a real family favourite.

RRP £79.99 (Epic price £39.95)

RRP – £169.99 (Epic Price – £84.95)

2 Smiley Face Rocket Your adoring crowd will mirror this extraordinary firework when it hits the sky. The purple ring of twin stars surrounding two large green eyes and a red starred smile will evoke happy faces all round. Emoticons will never hold the same charm again, and costing less than £15 it offers a pretty cheap laugh.

RRP £29.99 (Epic price £14.95) All these fireworks and many more are available from Epic Fireworks epicfireworks.com

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4 Momentum This amazingly timed piece of sky art offers golden red palms that explode with blue stars and falling strands of red and white glitter, five shots at a time. It’s sure to get things moving along nicely.

RRP £99.99 (Epic price £49.95)

6 Heavyweight The massive Heavyweight barrage by Epic Fireworks delivers super loud bangs and very pretty effects. This maximum calibre consumer firework has huge breaks that throw out vibrant multi colours in every direction. Sunshine yellows, bright greens, sea blues and cherry reds are just some of the fantastic rich colours of glitter that spread across the sky and twinkle and flash as they descend. This is a superb addition to any firework display.

RRP – £249.99 (Epic Price – £124.92)

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LIFESTYLE

TOP GEAR

The greatest gear, gadgets and gizmos we could find

LEGO® Technic Cargo Plane This is so much more than just a model, as it has a range of real-world functions to help it do its job. Move the joystick and watch the flaps, elevators and ailerons move, then activate the LEGO® Power Functions motors to open the front and rear cargo bay, retract the landing gear and spin the propellers. Not only that, it also rebuilds into a Transport Hovercraft. Perfect for big boys everywhere.

www.argos.co.uk £110

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TOP BUY

Goodwin Smith shoes Goodwin Smith specialises in classic men’s shoes with contemporary designs and already have a number of celebrities wearing and tweeting about their products. After their recent Dragons Den appearance we had to get ourselves a pair and most certainly weren’t disappointed. Their care to detail means each pair of shoes takes up to a month to manufacture and it’s that personalised, attention to detail that makes their shoes look the business.

www.goodwinsmith.co.uk around £100

CAT iPhone5 Active Urban Case This rugged case is engineered using clever anodised metal sides and impact resistant SAIF™ material offering ultimate protection for your phone. Boffins tell us SAIF™ is an “active” material, offering a change in shock absorption and impact protection performance. This impact resistant case helps protect your phone from drops of up to 1.8 metres in height, utilising the same shock absorbent properties used in motorbike protective equipment.

www.amazon.co.uk £19.99

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Jabra Streamer

Smartphones, tablets and laptops can now have WiFi reception anywhere in your home without any problems and be even faster and more versatile than ever before. The dLAN® 650 triple+ gives your home a multimedia home network. Now experience entertainment at the highest level, thanks to the fastest transfer rate at speeds up to 600 Mbps. Connecting even more terminal devices together is as easy as a child’s play with the three integrated Gigabit connections.

At last, one neat little, easyto-use, cost-effective gadget that makes music and call streaming to your car stereo really simple. It’s great being able to take your music collection with you, especially when you’re driving to work or on a long journey, but it’s a real hassle having to fiddle with it when you’re driving. Now you can leave your smartphone in your pocket or bag and use a Jabra Streamer to enjoy your music or take a call – for a safer journey.

www.amazon.co.uk £170

www.amazon.co.uk £59.99

dLAN® 650 triple+ Starter Kit

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LIFESTYLE

Bowshaw Jacket Perfectly suited to take you from the hill to the pub in style without compromising on technicality, the Bowshaw takes the heritage-inspired look of tweed and combines it with sturdy and reliable AquaDry water-resistant and Windshield windproof technology. The result is a water-repellent and windproof layer that performs exceptionally well and never looks out of place wherever you’re headed.

UKick

www.craghoppers.com £100

Fusing elements of badminton, street football and freestyle, the aim of the game is to keep the UKick up in the air with your feet and other parts of your body without it hitting the ground. It can be played alone or with friends indoor or out. It’s fun, social, healthy and totally addictive.

Sorted.

www.ukick.co.uk

TOP BUY

£8

KitSound Audio Beanies With summer a dim and distant memory, audio brand KitSound have designed a new range of Audio Earmuffs, Audio Headbands and Audio Beanies so you can keep warm while you’re listening to your tunes this autumn and winter. Made to fit most head sizes, the Audio Earmuffs have an adjustable headband and the Audio Headbands and Audio Beanies have adjustable speakers that can also be removed for washing.

www.kitsound.co.uk from £17.99

EasyLock A revolutionary new invention created by a British Grandad worried about the safety of his grandchildren as they went off travelling. This lock, the lightest of its kind in the world, will completely secure any type of door that opens inwards, anywhere on the globe. The lock provides a brilliant security solution for everyone, providing extra security for students, holidaymakers, business travelers or simply those wanting further security in their home.

www.the-easy-lock.com £24.95

Rock Jaw Alfa Genus Headphones

Leef Bridge 3.0

These nifty buds feature a hybrid construction of Aluminium and Ebony and also interchangeable tuning filters, allowing you to change between enhanced bass and monitor class sound. Each set comes with three sizes of ear tips for the best comfort and sound delivery. For users who demand the best audio quality from their portable devices.

Let us introduce to you the first USB 3.0 flash drive for moving pictures, movies and documents from Android smartphones and tablets to Windows PCs, MACs or other Android devices. Sleek and stylish, it features normal-sized and micro USB connectors on either end which access the same memory, encased in a nifty slide-and-lock tray and available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities.

www.rockjawaudio.com

www.amazon.co.uk

£49.99

from £19.99 Sorted. Nov/Dec 2014

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LIFESTYLE

PETER HORNE

60 Second Life Coach

Collaborate To Innovate

I

t’s nearly a year since I took a leap of faith when I left my 27‐ year long career in financial services and went to... nothing, at least to start with! The eleven months since then seem to have flown by and it feels as though the real me is starting to come to the fore and find his feet. I realised that I’d waited long enough to do something more meaningful with my time so I made the decision that it was now or never as far as pursuing my biggest, music‐making dreams were concerned.

Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to review which parts of my cunning plan are working and which need tweaking a little or even drastically. And here’s where it gets interesting. For the last 11 months I’ve mostly been working on my own and it’s very safe, but ultimately flawed.

Business guru Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice at London Business School, has influenced my thinking. In her YouTube TED talk entitled “how to be ready for

the future now”, Professor Gratton suggests that if we’re not careful we can walk into the future blindfolded. She suggests three shifts are necessary to avoid this:

1

Seek to do work that you love doing and which brings out the best in you

2

You need to build mastery, preferably in two disciplines

3

It’s easier to achieve mastery through collaboration and connections

Leaving my previous career means that I’m now doing what I love, but the attainment of mastery is still a work in progress.

Clearly I need to speed up the process by developing some more collaborative connections.

Reasons for involving other people in our activities can neatly be summarised using the helpful acronym “APES”. Picture a cartoon simian if it helps (or a hairy friend if you have one).

“I’VE MOSTLY BEEN WORKING ON MY OWN AND IT’S VERY SAFE, BUT ULTIMATELY FLAWED.”

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A

ccountability – In simple terms, if we tell someone else that we plan to do something, they can check up on us. There is no doubt that such potential scrutiny can act as an incentive towards completion.

P

erspective – Nobody else’s will be exactly the same as yours. If you get stuck, it may be because you have a blind spot.

Someone else can bring light to a situation, which could give you exactly the revelation you need.

E

ncouragement – My belief is that we are designed to operate in community. Find yourself someone with this gift and give them permission to speak into your life.

S

kills – Although each of us may have a variety of different and useful skills, it’s rare that any of us are so self‐sufficient that we have everything we need to achieve a desired outcome. In my own case, I’m not a natural completer/ finisher, so involving other people is almost essential if I ever plan to finish anything!

To sum up using Professor Gratton’s excellent book The Shift, seek to become more of an innovative connector and less of an isolated, competitive employee. In other words Collaborate To Innovate – go on, you know it makes sense! 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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WEIRD & WONDERFUL

A Weird and Wonderful World

After an unsuccessful attempt on Dragon’s Den but rapid growth since 2012, Luke Taylor spoke to Norman Wright, the founder of “The Weird and Wonderful”, to see if his products really live up to their name.

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THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL

T

he feeling of walking through large doors of a museum, with pieces catching your eye left, right and centre; is now one you can have at home. History can be preserved and presented within your walls whether it is two centred boxes – each containing different skulls, a fossil or even an open history book resembling Leonardo da Vinci’s book on the human anatomy. The words “Interiors for the Adventurer” come to mind and aptly describe this unique business.

So how do you describe such a niche business? Norman describes it as a “Natural History Store specialising in the highest quality taxidermy, osteology and entomology from around the world”. If, like me, those last two, potentially three, words threw you then do not fear as the manifesto provided more confusion than clarity for me too. The store contains a vast collection of stuffed and mounted animal skins, fossils, skeletons, to name but a few items, all of which are available to be purchased within the store or website. The website, acting as an addition to the store situated in Accrington, was a product of the need to meet increasing demand. As I continue to delve into various sections of the collection I am greeted by: Antlers; Horns; Entomology; Skulls & Bones; Taxidermy; Curiosities; Wet Specimens; Fossils; Stones & Minerals; Glass Domes; Furniture and Natural History Books. The extensive nature of the store is very impressive. Butterflies are one of the store's most popular items but although they sell out quickly there is a weekly release of them.

“I WANTED PEOPLE TO BE ABLE TO FIND ITEMS THAT COULD BE USED TO EDUCATE THEM AND OWN THEIR OWN PIECE OF HISTORY.” Customers can access and form their own mini parts of museums and collections of artefacts within their home.

When I first heard the concept of the natural history store I was slightly scared, but I was drawn into the items I discovered. The great thing about the business is that you can buy pieces, which some may describe as collectable but I have to disagree. They’re above collectable, many of them are unique pieces of history, and thus the term “collectable” seems almost an insult to Thomas Boreman’s “A Description of Three Hundred Animals”.

What I love about Norman’s work is its purpose. From talking to him it is clear that he wishes to provide an education through his pieces and to encourage a fascination with history and its possessions. The taxidermy, for example, adheres to a high ethical practice, the animals are not hunted, and instead the pieces are sourced from antique collections or occasionally road accidents. People are encouraged to learn about the origins of their pieces. In addition to this, the company reinvests part of the profit back into nature through supporting the WWF. f Sorted. Nov/Dec 2014

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THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL

As I talked to Norman about his business, it quickly became clear where and how his interest in antiques was sparked. He said: “As a child I used to go to auctions with both my parents and grandparents in order to find unique pieces and artefacts within the antique world. The idea for the business was simply an expansion of this, I wanted people to be able to find items that could be used to educate them and own their own piece of history.”

This interest in preserving history and interest in the past, steadily grew from his childhood. “I was always fascinated with early modern history, though I never pursued it as a subject, the history of objects and the stories they tell captivated me.” Norman studied art and design at university as is apparent through the visually soft and simplistic aesthetics of his website. This design creates a lovely homemade warmth, something that Norman himself emanates.

I was intrigued to hear about the diversity of Norman’s clientele. “To be honest, we have a wide variety of customers; some people have huge collections and seem to know the antique world inside out. Others are complete novices and are just interested in the sourcing of some pieces but dislike others. My favourite customers are those that come in and are quite passionately disturbed by the collection. I get to talk to them about the ethics of the store. Once we have discussed the sourcing, more often than not, their interest in the collection grows and they become quite fascinated.” He emphasised the idea that “the store is not about hunting; it’s about educating people and allowing customers to have their own pieces of nature that would 38

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otherwise be discarded or forgotten.”

Throughout the interview I found myself becoming more and more drawn into the forgotten world Norman has resurrected. His company advocates preserving, educating and collecting, portraying a love of history.

We then moved on to talk about the company’s success, which has recently seen him feature on Dragon’s Den. However, when I asked about his time on the Den he replied that the business wasn’t properly understood. He explained: “They simply didn’t get the purpose of it and the ethical side, which is fair enough; they wanted something they could mass produce and rapidly expand.

What I offer is the opposite of that – each piece is different and needs to be treated independently which they interpreted as more of a negative than a positive. It was a great experience, though standing in the elevator made me so nervous, luckily my pitch went much better than expected. Everyone who has watched the show has been complementary, so it could have been much worse.”

The future looks bright for the business and Norman wants to focus on growing the website and the overall collection. “We aren’t really looking to move yet; another store is always being discussed, but we aren’t in a rush to change too much.”

Trying to find something as unique as The Weird and Wonderful, which captivates and also works as a profitable business, is very difficult. Much of the business’ success rests on the founder Norman Wright.

His passion for preserving history, and using it as an aid for education, successfully creates a method of accessing a forgotten Weird and Wonderful world. n

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CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

It’s All Greek to Me! Here at Sorted we would love to welcome all of our international readers from around the world. We are now in 20 countries and to celebrate QI researcher, Adam Jacot de Boinod, has shared with us his favourite cultural observations.

A

dam worked as a researcher for Stephen Fry’s BBC television series QI. This led to him developing an interest in foreign words that in turn led to him having a fascination with the diversity of cultural behaviours.

Here are some of his much‐loved ones from around the globe:

Say it with Flowers Don’t give red flowers in Hungary unless you are in love with the lady and want to compete for her, and certainly not red roses. White and yellow roses are ok. Giving red roses in West Germany signals that you have strong romantic interests. Throughout history, the rose has signified secrecy.

Japanese Bowing For the Japanese, bowing is a sign of respect. Ojigi is the act of bowing; eshaku describes a slight bow (of about 15 degrees); keirei, a full bow (of about 45 degrees); while saikeirei is a very low, worshipful type of bow that involves the nose nearly touching the hands. When one meets someone extremely important, one might even consider pekopeko, bowing one’s head repeatedly in a fawning or groveling manner.

Whistling On the tiny, mountainous Canary Island of La Gomera there is a language called Silbo Gomero that uses a variety of whistles instead of words (in Spanish silbar means to whistle). There are four “vowels” and four “consonants”, which can be strung together to form more

Gift Swapping The Kiriwina of the Trobriand Islands in the Pacific have an elaborate gift exchange system called the Kula. The islanders set off around the islands in large, ocean‐going canoes and trade red shell necklaces (veigun) in a clockwise direction, and white shell bracelets (mwali) in an anti‐ clockwise direction. The round trip is several hundred miles.

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than four thousand “words”. This birdlike means of communication is thought to have come over with early African settlers over 2,500 years ago. Able to be heard at distances up to two miles, silbadors were until recently a dying breed.

However, Silbo has been a required language in La Gomera schools since 1999.

The Mazateco Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico are frequently seen whistling back and forth, exchanging greetings or buying and selling goods with no risk of misunderstanding. The whistling is not really a language or even a code; it simply uses the rhythms and pitch of ordinary speech without the words.

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CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Atishoo!

Thumbs Up Gestures should be used carefully when abroad for fear of misunderstanding. The cheery thumbs‐up used by the English or Americans means, “sit on this” in Sardinia. In France, pressing a thumb against the fingertips means something is ooh‐la‐la, parfait or just right.

An American’s sign for OK, made by touching the tip of the thumb to the tip of the forefinger, and used internationally by scuba divers, is an insult in Brazil. In some countries, the V sign can be negative, in others positive; in Italy, reversed, it approximates to “to hell with you”. In some countries, flicking your thumb across the teeth tells the other person he’s a cheapskate.

Grabbing the crook of your elbow and raising your fist is rude in just about everywhere.

In Japan, one sneeze signifies praise (ichi home); two sneezes, criticism (ni‐kusashi); three sneezes, disparagement (san‐kenashi) while four or more sneezes is taken to mean, quite reasonably, that a cold is on its way (yottsu‐ijo wa kaze no moto). Meanwhile, in Mexico, one sneeze is answered with the word salud (health); two sneezes with dinero (money); three sneezes with amor (love); four or more sneezes with alergías (allergies). Laughter often accompanies four sneezes,

because health, money and love are obviously more desirable than allergies. In response to someone sneezing, the Germans say Gesundheit, “health to you”, and the French à tes souhaits, literally “to your wishes”. In Sierre Leone, Mende speakers say biseh, or “thank you”; in Malagasy, the language of Madagascar, they say velona, “alive”, while the Bembe speakers of the Congo say kuma, “be well”. In Tonga a sneeze is often taken to be a sign that your loved one is missing you.

Sneezing Protocol In Brazil, they say saúde (health) and the sneezer answers Amen. In Arabic, the sneezer says alhumdullilah (“Praise be to God”) first, to which the other person responds yarhamukumu Allah (“May God have mercy on you”). The sneezer then replies to that with athabakumu Allah (“May God reward you”). While in Iran, things are more complex. They say afiyat bashe (“I wish you good health”) and

Sorted Around the World the sneezer replies elahi shokr (“Thank God for my health”). After the first sneeze Iranians are then supposed to stop whatever they were doing for a few minutes before continuing. If the sneeze interrupts a decision it is taken as an indication not to go ahead. Ignoring the single sneeze means risking bad luck.

However, a second sneeze clears the slate – then they can do whatever they like.

New York, Dubai, Sydney and London.

Shouting the Distance

Across the Spectrum As with colours, so it is with the rainbow. The Bassa people of Liberia see only two colours: ziza (red/orange/yellow) and hui (green/blue/purple) in their spectrum. The Shona of Zimbabwe see four: cipsuka (red/orange), cicena (yellow and yellow‐green), citema (green‐ blue) and cipsuka again (the word is also used to describe the purple end of the spectrum). It is only Europeans and the Japanese who see seven colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

Krosa is Sanskrit for a cry, and thus has come to mean the distance over which a man’s call can be heard, roughly two miles.

In the central forests of Sri Lanka calculations of distance are also made by sound: a dog’s bark indicates a quarter of a mile; a cock’s crow something more; and a hoo is the space over which a man can be heard when shouting the word at the pitch of his voice.

In the Yakut language of Siberia, kiosses represents a specific distance calculated in terms of the time it takes to cook a piece of meat.

Time of Day Around the world different cultures have created highly specific non‐clock related vocabulary that divides up the day.

The Zarma people of Western Africa use wete to cover mid‐ morning (between nine and ten); the Chinese wushi is from eleven to one; and the Hausa (of Nigeria) azahar takes in the period from one‐thirty to around three. The Samoans’ word afiafi covers both late afternoon and evening, from about 5pm till dark. They call the period right after sunset afiafi po; this is then followed after a couple of hours by po, the dead of night.

Of the various French expressions for dusk, perhaps the most evocative is entre chien et loup – literally, between the dog and the wolf. f Sorted. Nov/Dec 2014

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CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

National Anthems The title of a country’s officially chosen anthem can be very revealing about its history: the Czech Kde domov můj (Where is my home?) reflects many years of shifting borders and invasions.

Other interesting titles include: n Burkina Faso: Une seule nuit (Just one night) n Kurdistan: Ey Reqîb (Hey Enemy or Hey Guardian) n Netherlands: Het Wilhemus (The William) n Norway: Ja, vi elsker dette landet (Yes, we love this country) n Tuva: Tooruktug Dolgay Tangdym (The Forest is Full of Pine Nuts)

Wedding Lists Female relatives of the Swahili groom perform a ritual called kupeka begi (Send a Bag) in which they bring the bride gifts from her husband. In response, the bride’s female relations perform kupeka mswaki (Bring the Toothbrush or Chewsticks), whereby they deliver to the groom a tray of toiletries.

This is particularly important because the bride and groom are forbidden to meet before marriage; their only communication is through secret messages conveyed by homosexual men, known as shoga.

Hats Off In Great Britain Lord Kingsale is the only person who doesn’t have to take his hat off to the Queen.

His lordship is Premier Baron of Ireland; he has the privilege (granted by King John to De Courcy, Earl of Ulster) of wearing his hat in the royal presence, which was asserted by the late John, Baron Kingsale, at Dublin castle, before his late Majesty George IV on his visit to Ireland in Aug. 1821. He also has the privilege of having a cover laid for him at the royal table at coronations, and on all other state occasions.

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Double Valentine In Japan, Valentine’s Day is celebrated on two different dates: February 14th, known as White Day, when girls are allowed to express their love to boys by presenting chocolate; and March 14th when the male has to return the gift he

received. The chocolates given sincerely in this way are “honmei choko” – “true feeling chocolates”.

However, women are also obliged to give chocolates to all the men in their lives, meaning large numbers of co‐workers, bosses, etc. These are known as “giri‐choko” – obligatory chocolates.

Paternity Leave In some African tribes the men will take to their beds for the entire duration of their wives’ pregnancy, while the women continue to work as usual until a few hours before giving birth. This is called couvade (from the French, meaning literally, “brooding” or “hatching”). The men believe that they are cleverer and stronger than women and so are better able to defend unborn children against evil spirits. Prone in his bed, the husband simulates the pains that the wife actually undergoes. Following the birth of the child, he keeps to his bed and receives all the attention that, in other societies, are bestowed upon the mother.

Maltese Toddlers In Malta, the baby’s first year is regarded as dangerous, so the first birthday – Il‐Quccija – is a happy event. On this day the child’s future is suggested when a tray of small objects is carried in and placed on the floor. The baby is then put down and allowed to crawl in any direction it wants. What it picks up from the tray signifies its future. The traditional objects include: an egg

(bajda) for an abundance of happiness; a pen (pinna) for a desk job; some coins (muniti) for wealth; a ball (ballun) for sport; rosary beads (kuruna) for the Church; and scissors (mqass) for tailoring; a book (ktieb) for a lawyer; a hammer (martell) for a carpenter; and these days other items such as a stethoscope (a doctor) or a CD (a disc jockey).

Unlawful

Unutterable

It is illegal to sell bat’s blood in New York. In Ethiopia, hang‐ gliders are banned in national parks, because antelopes mistake them for giant vultures and stampede in panic. It is illegal in American Samoa to beg with the aid of a public address system. It is illegal in India to kill any wild animal apart from rats, mice and crows.

In Masai the name of a dead child, woman or warrior is not spoken again and, if their name is also a word used every day, then it is no longer used by the bereaved family. The Sakalavas of Madagascar do not tell their own name or that of their village to strangers to prevent any mischievous use. The Todas of Southern India dislike uttering their own name and, if asked for it, will get someone else to tell it.

Prodigal Son In Fiji, they observe the custom of vasu which gives a son certain powers over his mother’s native place. He may take anything he covets from the houses, tear down the fruit trees, and behave generally in such a way that if he were a stranger he would be clubbed to death.

Adam Jacot de Boinod is the author of The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from around the World, published

by Penguin Books and creator of the iPhone App Tingo, a quiz about unusual words.

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CHRIS PRATT

Lessons Learnt Sorted caught up with Guardians of the Galaxy star, Chris Pratt, to discuss faith, family and the making of his latest ďŹ lm.

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CHRIS PRATT

BY KIM FRANCIS

P

ratt by name, the Guardians of the Galaxy star certainly isn’t one by nature. Although, according to the oracle of all knowledge that is the internet, the word “pratt” has archaic origins – and for a sustained period throughout history it meant “cunning”.

That’s much closer to the truth. Charming, intelligent and successful, having made a string of sound career choices, this amiable star of screens both big and small is so far removed from any unflattering and – let’s face it, puerile – interpretation of his surname, it begs to be emphasised. So there you have it.

In fact, Chris Pratt is looking set to become that rare beast – a true A‐lister putting bums on seats in movie theatres. With his character Peter Quill – aka Star‐Lord – in Marvel adaptation Guardians of the Galaxy, the 35‐ year‐old actor has created a modern Han Solo. A blend of charisma, arrogance and vulnerability, like Harrison Ford’s swaggering Star Wars character, he’s roguish, yet fallible and lovable.

But that’s not his only claim to brilliance. Pratt has also, over the past few years, proved himself with roles in three Oscar‐nominated films – Moneyball, Zero Dark Thirty, Her – and gained critical acclaim as well as a loyal fan base through his role in US television comedy series Parks and Recreation. Quite something from a former small‐town boy born and raised in Washington State who once made money as a stripper and was homeless for a time – albeit in Maui.

Married since 2009 to the actress star of comedies including Scary Movie, The Dictator and Lost in Translation, Anna Faris, the couple seem to have the kind of relationship that’s built to last. Could it be laughter that keeps the wheels turning in this marriage?

The star team have a two‐year‐old son, Jack.

“THERE WERE MOMENTS ON THE MAKING OF THIS WHERE I WAS, LIKE, DANCING IN FRONT OF 200 ALIEN ACTORS AND THEY’RE ALL LOOKING AT ME, LIKE,‘OH MY GOD, THIS IS THE MOVIE THEY’RE MAKING?’” Action figures played a big part in the childhood of Chris Pratt and it’s something he anticipates his own son taking an interest in – possibly sparked by his own dad’s involvement in a blockbusting space fantasy.

“I had some Star Wars toys,” says Chris. “When I was playing in the back yard we’d play lightsabers and I’d be Luke Skywalker, or Darth Vader and my brother was Luke Skywalker. And I had Chewbacca toys… that was a big part of my childhood.”

It’s not the first time during the interview that Chris refers to his childhood, aligning himself frequently with his Guardians of the Galaxy character, who was nine years old when he was abducted from Earth and launched into a space adventure. Both he and the fictional Peter were born in the 1970s and have similar reference points – Star Wars being one, another being Footloose, which makes its way into the film’s dialogue.

You get the feeling he looks back fondly on his youth, and looks forward to creating happy memories for his own son. The couple had a scare in 2012 when Jack was born nine weeks premature, and it was at this point when Chris’s faith in God was strengthened. He’s spoken previously about praying every day for his son during this difficult time, while he and Anna watched him battle for survival.

Chris’s faith means he looks to do what he can for others where he’s able, and when asked how he feels about being immortalised in a role that will be copied by

dress‐up loving cos‐players at conventions like Comic Con for ever more, he calls the preciousness of childhood to mind once again. He says: “The thing that I’ve always felt would be the coolest thing [to come of this role]… I could have Peter Quill’s wardrobe at home and, like, once a month – this is something that Russell Wilson, quarterback from the Seattle Seahawks does – every Tuesday he goes to the Seattle children’s hospital and he hangs out with these kids.

“You see these pictures on Twitter, and there are these kids that are in various stages of terminal illness or are really burnt or had something amputated, or whatever, and they have this huge smile on their face. They feel so special that the winner of the Super Bowl is coming to their room just to say hi just to them. And I’ve thought about it – there’s a possibility that this character [of Peter Quill] could be so iconic that all I’d have to do is throw on this wardrobe, drive down to this hospital and I could go and give a kid a memory they would never forget.”

The film is adapted from one of Marvel’s less popular comics. Standing apart from the successful Avengers franchise, there was never any guarantee that a film version of Guardians of the Galaxy would pay off. On top of that, director James Gunn took plenty of risks with the script, working in so many gags and quips which at first glance seem out of place in a Marvel movie that it’s a surprise to see the box office smash it’s become. The secret to its success though, is that it’s basically just really good.

Aligning it with Star Wars may seem grandiose but there’s more than just the character of Peter Quill and its space fantasy premise that has echoes of George Lucas’s epic space saga. As has been documented with the Star Wars cast, there were moments on the set of Guardians of the Galaxy when Pratt and the rest of the cast doubted their involvement in the project.

“I understand now,” Chris says, referencing everything he’s ever read in books or seen in documentaries about the making of Star Wars. “There’s all this mythology around it, like how the actors had seen an early test screening of it and kind of thought it sucked and even when they were making it, they were like, ‘What are we doing?’ Then they saw it after George had put in the big symphony and the score that accompanied it and actually added the effects and the lasers and all this stuff…”

It was at this point that they all caught on and realised what they were a part of.”

Chris continues: “There were moments on the making of this where I was, like, dancing in front of 200 alien actors and they’re all looking at me, like, ‘Oh my God, this is the movie they’re making?’ There were moments where I wasn’t able to see James Gunn’s vision. Just like all those guys weren’t able to see George Lucas’s vision.

And like Star Wars, at that point nothing like it had ever come out. It had pushed technology to its absolute limits. It was an epic space adventure with really fabulous music. I mean there are a lot of similarities and I think kids are going to walk away from this and this is going to be something that will [endure].”

With Chris’s smart career moves coupled with the astonishing reaction to Guardians of the Galaxy, it must feel like now is his time to shine.

“Yes, it does,” Chris answers with characteristic honesty. “I have the benefit of not overthinking much in my life. I’m just along for the ride. Also, I learned at a very early stage in my career to always lower my expectations no matter what – because if you don’t, you get your heart broken. So I’m sort of expecting that something’s going to go horribly wrong!”

That, of course, means – in theory – that Chris Pratt will never be disappointed and that he’ll always be grateful for whatever comes his way. At the same time, it frees him up to just enjoy life, the present and his career.

Chris certainly isn’t putting himself under any f

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CHRIS PRATT pressure to achieve. Aside from gruelling physical transformations, you won’t find him beating himself up going to extreme lengths to get into character. He says that for Peter Quill, his spirit happened to be just right for the role and his performance was instinctive.

“I didn’t have to change all that much,” he explains.

“If anyone else had done the movie it would be a different movie. But because I did it, it was right. I didn’t pull a Daniel Day Lewis or anything like that. I just threw on a space jacket and pretended it was me.

And it works, I think.”

He’s right. It does work. But he’d be lying if he said it didn’t take a certain amount of blood, sweat and tears for director James Gunn to tease the performance he needed out of him.

“I think on the set, James develops techniques for working with different actors,” he says. “He had to learn how to wear me out. He would just beat me down and wear me out. Two thirds of the way through the movie, I was really easy to direct because I was tired and he just told me exactly what to do and I did it. I remember telling him at one point, ‘Guess what? I’m not going to do that. It doesn’t make any sense to me’. And he said, ‘I don’t give a s***. It doesn’t matter what you think or what you feel. This is mine, it’s not yours.’”

You can’t imagine there are many who would accept being spoken to in such a way, particularly when you consider the size of the ego of the average Hollywood star. Other actors have come to blows with their directors for less. But Chris is philosophical, with an understanding of what it is to be an actor and a tool of the director – and a deep‐seated knowledge and acceptance of himself and his own shortcomings.

“I understand that I get neurotic; I get in my own head – and I don’t have the experience on films like James does,” he says, displaying a humility unseen in many of his peers. “He was right. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what I feel. He has a grand scheme of exactly what the thing is going to look like. I, as an actor, [am programmed to] assume that the entire movie lives or dies on this moment that I’m creating, when in fact that moment is maybe three per cent of what’s happening.

“You’ve got everything leading up to that moment, you’ve got all of the music surrounding it you’ve got the action sequences, you’ve got the camera units, you’ve got the visual spectacle of it all and then you’ve got this guy… I realised about two thirds of the way through watching the animatic [a pre‐recorded animated version of the film James showed during filming] that all I had to do was speak as clearly as the words were written at the bottom of the cartoon and it would work. The only way I could screw it up was by not speaking clearly. But you wouldn’t believe how hard it was sometimes to speak clearly, because as an actor you don’t want to just speak clearly. You want to be…”

He breaks off to get into joke‐thespian mode before adopting a Shakespearean‐style voice and continuing, “’…but I have to take a moment to act and I have to take a moment to process.’”

Chris learned a lot from working on this film, not least about himself, but perhaps the best piece of advice he picked up came directly from the mouth of James Gunn. “I can’t tell you how many times he said, ‘Dude, just stop. Just say it louder and faster,’” explains Chris. “I was like, ‘You know that’s not an actionable direction.’ He was like, ‘Shut up. Say it louder, say it faster.’ And it made me so mad, I’d get so furious! And then I watched the movie and I was like, ‘I wish I would have said it louder and faster…’.”

Chris Pratt is certainly set to go far. n

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CHRIS PRATT

“IF ANYONE ELSE HAD DONE THE MOVIE IT WOULD BE A DIFFERENT MOVIE. BUT BECAUSE I DID IT, IT WAS RIGHT. I DIDN’T PULL A DANIEL DAY LEWIS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. I JUST THREW ON A SPACE JACKET AND PRETENDED IT WAS ME. AND IT WORKS, I THINK.”

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ABUSE

Don’t Stay Silent One man’s honest story about the abuse that kept him silent and the freedom of finally speaking out… rdering a pint at the pub I looked up to see the TV and caught a glimpse of the news surrounding another abuse scandal. “I don’t know,” said the guy serving me, “why don’t these victims come forward sooner, they leave it years!”

I smiled wryly. “Perhaps the damage is so traumatic to the core of their person, it takes years to come out,” I replied.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe they’re just chasing the cash!” My mind briefly questioned why he was reacting like this.

I responded: “There are easier ways to make money.” I sat down with my pint.

He wasn’t to know my story, and perhaps for many people the recent revolution in seeking justice for those who have been abused is becoming tiresome. Week after week our newspaper headlines are filled with fresh haunting revelations of the misuse of power and of people who were once placed on a national pedestal, who are now locked up in prison. Behind these headlines though are people who are suffering. People whose lives have been wrecked, people whose struggle since childhood has been just to live in the present because they have been kept in the past by cruel acts of another’s twisted self‐gratification. For me the headlines, however repetitive, stand for a time in history where there is a chance for victims of the most traumatic crimes, who have been purposely silenced, to have their voices heard, their traumas and stories validated, and have the opportunity to take power over that which took power over them. I believe God is working in all this. I believe He loves to equip and help people take power over what has taken power over them. Let me tell you my story…

O

“EVERYTHING WITHIN ME SCREAMED BUT NO NOISE CAME OUT.” I was introduced to Paul by a friend. Paul owned a local business and employed a number of my peer group; he was a friendly charismatic guy who showed a real interest in me getting to know him. But Paul was actually a sexual predator. His intent was to abuse my friends and I. No one else would have known, why would they? He was a respected member of the local community, a family man, a person of presumed integrity; he was trusted. But Paul commanded enormous power, not just across his victims but also across their families, a power stronghold that was to last for many years, but which eventually would fall through an incredible set of circumstances. And those circumstances surrounded me.

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I remember my world changing the first time it happened. I remember the room, the smell of his aftershave, the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the gas fire, the sofa, most of all I remember what he said to me.

“You are the only one who has ever let me do this to them… thank you.” But I wasn’t. Everything within me screamed but no noise came out. Then he did it again. I walked home that night having been dragged into a world I was not old enough to understand, or equipped to deal with. I was 12 years old.

I thought I was going to die with emotional pain. It was like someone was physically twisting my soul. I thought people must be able to see what had happened just by looking at me; I felt so dirty. Night after night I lay awake not knowing what to do. If I stayed away from him then he would know something was up and tell my friends, or worse my parents, so I went to see him again. And so the trauma bond began. Now I was his and he could do as he pleased, and he did, forcibly.

The abuse escalated. He would abuse me in public without anyone seeing, in the back of his shop whilst it was open, in his house and eventually alongside others too. He even offered me to others. As the years progressed, hundreds of occasions of abuse left me believing I was gay and in a relationship with him, with the memories and truth of how things started completely suppressed. Those years I lived with the guilt of two lives and under the silence and power of the abuser. It’s a journey that many endure. The day in day out fixation in one’s mind of worrying what is going to happen the next time and the struggle within to appear normal when absolutely everything is far from normal.

But at 17 years old I started to have flashbacks, and through some counselling realised that the reality was that I was a victim, and that I had never wanted the abuse to happen in the first place. I was on a journey to discovering who I really was. And so, still feeling as if I had the biggest secret inside me, I started to separate myself from him. I was scared. How would he react? But over a relatively short time I managed to make excuses and distance myself, and I saw him no more.

By 19 years old I had been baptised and dedicated my life to working for the protection of children. I was a “victim rescuer” who worked with young people with behavioural and emotional difficulties in a whole number of ways and places. In my early twenties I moved to work for a national charity that specifically trained pastoral workers in schools and I worked for some years in the midlands before God called me back to work in my old secondary school. I say God called me back because I can’t explain it any other way. I had been invited to advise a church back in my home area on what kind of youth worker they required. In the process the minister there said that they thought I should come back and work for them. I shuddered within. Under no circumstances did I want to return to the area that held such painful memories for me. I was convinced that I would live in silence about my own story till my death.

But the minister kept on ringing me, the church even prayed and then invited me, and after the fifth request, we – myself and my fiancé, decided it was right.

Walking through the corridors of my hometown secondary school felt strange. These were the corridors I had wandered through as an abused anxious child and yet here I was involved in caring for and helping protect 1600 children now under my pastoral charge.

A year or so passed by and then one Thursday lunch time two boys were chatting in my office and I overheard one say: “Are you going round Paul’s later?” The other boy replied: “Yeah I reckon!” I asked who Paul was and they said he was an older guy who lived close‐by. He had invited them into his flat and they went there regularly now to “smoke and stuff”. Any victim of abuse who has gone forward will recognise what the trigger was to that step.

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ABUSE Sometimes inner torment, sometimes being pushed too far by the abuser, sometimes hearing about other victims and their stories, sometimes protecting others. This was my trigger. If Paul was still operating and abusing and I knew of it, then I could no longer keep silent.

That evening I sat down with my wife. She knew all about my past before marrying me and had always felt that moving back to my home area was about my healing in some way. But this had caught both of us by surprise, at the very least it was the worst fear and yet best thing moulded mysteriously together. There was never a doubt as to what I had to do. But I knew that revealing what had happened to me was going to affect my family, friends, profession and future, and it felt way too big to handle.

Waves of anxiety came over me, I felt weighted down, like I was being abused all over again, many a sleepless night happened throughout that period.

It took several days to make a statement to the police who had arranged for it to happen in a police safe house.

And it was traumatic! I felt childlike again, vulnerable, sometimes crying and rocking as I revealed the full impact and circumstances which had caused so much pain and trauma in my life. I would wish no one to go through what I did, but again, that was the very reason for doing it.

The weeks waiting for the police to investigate were torturous. I remember clearly feeling responsible for

being the one who had raked up the past for all the other victims, who may or may not have been ready to go there. And then the day came.

Paul was arrested and charged. I was relieved that he had been taken off the street, overjoyed that children were safe and hugely comforted that the long and emotional process between hearing the boy’s conversation and action being taken was over. The court date was set. A further nine months of waiting but eventually the day came. Paul admitted most of the charges including that of rape and a week later he was sentenced to seven years in prison. The stronghold had come down. The power had shifted. I still find the feeling hard to explain. It was as though for the first time ever I had space in my head to think, something had changed, yes that was it, I was free! His victims, of whom there were many, had received some justice and now I would start to understand my new freedom and my continuing journey to wholeness.

If you too have been abused I would encourage you to open up and share your story with someone who you feel safe to do so. It may be a friend. It may be by telling a counsellor. Or you may end up taking the decision to tell the police. Whatever direction your walk to freedom takes, I want you to know, you are not alone. n www.matcarrier.uk

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HOPE Support Syrian Families this Christmas

Sing Silent Night this Christmas!

Football brings people together. It’s played in the dust of deserts and in shiny, purpose‐built stadiums.

And 100 years ago, it was played in No Man’s Land surrounded by the mud and mayhem of war.

T

his Christmas football fans all over the country will help communities to remember this remarkable World War 1 event. Peace broke out in the trenches. There was no fighting for 24 hours. Enemies sang the much‐loved Christmas carol, Silent Night, then they ventured out across No Man’s Land to exchange gifts – and some even played football.

To mark the centenary of the 1914 Christmas Truce, HOPE has commissioned a new verse and chorus for Joseph Mohr’s famous carol, Silent Night. All over the country in schools, sports stadiums, cathedrals and churches, choirs, congregations and sports fans will sing Silent Night as part of Silent Night Carols events.

The events have the backing of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, who is President of the Football Association. The Prince said: “Even in the bleakest of times, Christmas offers peace and hope. This Christmas, the Silent Night carol services are a powerful way to remember the sacrifice made by so many in the Great War and to celebrate the peace we enjoy.”

Roy Crowne, HOPE’s director, says: ‘It’s been amazing how the Silent Night Carols events have come together. There’s been a huge response, so we are expecting thousands of people to be at events held all over the country this December, in football stadiums, schools, churches and wherever people sing Christmas carols. The Christian churches, military chaplaincies and sports

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chaplains who have met to plan Silent Night Carols, want people to celebrate, reflect and join us as we pray that this Christmas people will find fresh hope for the future. Most of all we want people to discover the peace and hope found in knowing Jesus personally – supernatural peace that anyone who knows Jesus can experience even when you are surrounded by fighting.”

Rev Andy Rimmer, Vicar of the Lantern Church and chaplain at AFC Bournemouth, who has held Christmas carol events at the football ground in previous years, says: “The carol service is a chance to celebrate Jesus’ birth in a completely unique environment. We want this event to have a real community feel, as well as being attended by supporters of the clubs.”

But it doesn’t have to be at a stadium or a sports club.

You can host a Silent Night Carols event at your church or in your community.

Through Silent Night Carols, HOPE is asking churches to raise funds for the work of Tearfund – as it brings hope to those affected by the war in Syria, particularly women and children.

Since it began in 2011, the conflict in Syria has shattered a nation, bringing death, devastation and darkness. More than three years on and the civil war in Syria shows no signs of ending. Sadly, nor does the suffering of more than 9 million ordinary Syrians who are in need. The overall death toll is believed to be more than 170,000, with an estimated 11,000 of these children.

Tearfund partners in Lebanon and Jordan are responding to the needs of families who have fled there and those within Syria itself who have found themselves without an income or any idea of when the fighting will end.

This Christmas, by holding a Silent Night Carols event, you can bring the light of Jesus to Syria. By holding a collection at your Christmas service, you can provide essentials such as food, primary education classes, shelter and ways to keep warm in the winter. Your gifts will also help women and children cope with what they have seen and experienced.

Visit silentnightcarols.org to order copies of the free Silent Night Carols programmes, download a film and a short drama sketch. The website has many more resources: all you need to get involved.

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HOPE

Silent Night Carols Resources

Andrew Robinson/Medair

Silent Night Carols are part of HOPE’s Greater Love campaign, helping churches to serve their communities as the nation commemorates the centenary of the First World War. HOPE has been working for two years to bring together representatives from all of the main Christian denominations, Christian ministries and military chaplaincies to provide resources for churches to use to point people to Jesus’ “greater love” as we mark the centenary of World War 1. The resources include: n A 16‐page guide for local churches commemorating the centenary of World War 1 n A replica of the St John’s Gospel given to troops in 1914‐18 – a give‐away published by HOPE’s partner SGM Lifewords n A Greater Love DVD pack from CVM including interviews with serving military families and footage shot at the Menin Gate n Resources to use in schools from SU and YFC n A guide to planning Silent Night Carols events from HOPE and Sports Chaplaincy UK n Free Silent Night Carols programmes published by Tearfund to be used in any context where churches and communities gather to sing carols in December 2014 The Greater Love initiative has gained the backing of Prince Charles who said: “The centenary commemorations of the start of the First World War are a significant moment for us all to pause and remember the appalling sacrifices made by so many men, women, families and whole communities. Indeed, one of my own great uncles was killed in the Battle of Loos in 1915. I am delighted; therefore, that HOPE has brought together the churches, Christian ministries, and the military chaplaincies of all denominations to produce resources under the banner of “Greater Love”. This is clearly a significant moment for the United Kingdom and, indeed, the Commonwealth and so I can only wish this initiative every possible success in its most laudable aims.”

The Archbishop of York John Sentamu added: “We all want to move beyond war and conflict to build communities of reconciliation and peace. We have much to learn as we reflect on the sacrifices made by so many, from so many different communities around the Commonwealth. The “Greater Love” resources from HOPE will help us all: individuals, schools, churches and communities – as together we engage with the commemorations in a meaningful way.” n

An invitation to hope – an extract from the Silent Night Carols programme On Christmas Day 1914 the guns fell silent on the Western Front as German and British soldiers laid down their weapons, to exchange greetings, play football and sing carols. But they then returned to their hostilities.

This Christmas 2014 we are invited to leave our defended positions and meet those we might consider to be our enemies, exchange greetings, make peace and sing carols.

We do this not because of the actions of those soldiers 100 years ago. But because of the actions of God over 2,000 years ago; as he came to us, at great cost, to bring reconciliation and peace, joy and hope, life and light. And he came to us not just to bring change for one day, but for the whole of our lives.

As you sing today, raise your voice and imagine what it might mean if what you were singing were true, not just for you but for those you most need to be reconciled with.

Pray for peace for you and your community, and peace for the trouble areas of this world. And then leave, and live differently.

The Most Rev and Rt Hon Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury

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BRAD PITT

Making a Pitt‐Stop Award winning actor, Brad Pitt, took time out of his busy schedule to talk about 12 Years A Slave, his rather large family and turning 50!

BY VERONICA PARKER

rad Pitt is a household name. Earlier this year 12 Years A Slave, a film he co‐ produced and acted in, won Best Picture at the Oscars.

The American actor first appeared on our screens in daytime TV soap operas including Another World and Dallas. He is now best known for starring in films such as Oceans Eleven, Troy and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

This year he married equally famous actress, Angelina Jolie, and they have six children. Family is what comes first for Brad Pitt, which is why he often opts to produce rather than act nowadays.

This film was by no means a sure thing when it came to getting financed, was it?

How does it feel to be an Oscar-winner?

How would you summarise your experience working on this film?

B

I’m so proud of what Steve McQueen (the director), our incredible cast, and all the people who worked so hard on this film have accomplished. This is the kind of film that inspired me to get into the film business in the first place. There is so much that we can all draw inspiration from in Solomon Northrup’s struggle to retain his dignity and fight for his freedom. I never fully understood how precious our freedom can be until I read his story…That’s one of the main reasons that I’m so pleased that so many other people have been able to see this film and appreciate his momentous journey.

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[Smiles] No. There were many hurdles we had to overcome and we needed to pound the pavement a bit to get it funded. But I had a few friends and a few favours to call in and that helped the process.

Sometimes you need to work a little harder to get difficult material made. I believed in this project from the beginning and I was always going to go the extra mile to see it through. It was too good and important a story and Steve McQueen did a fantastic job as did Chiwetel (Ejiofor) whose performance I, as an actor, admired tremendously.

I learnt a lot. Steve is living proof that you can make a great film on a shoestring budget under difficult circumstances. He was the one who convinced me that he could pull it off and he did!

It was long hours, it was very hot in the sun in Louisiana, but everyone worked very hard and no one complained because they all believed that this story had to be told. That’s where the real passion of filmmaking enters into the process. Basically we love what we do. f

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BRAD PITT

JMVM/FAMOUS

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BRAD PITT

“AS A PRODUCER, I GET TO WORK OUT OF MY HOME, I GET TO MAKE THE KIDS THEIR BREAKFAST, DRIVE THEM TO SCHOOL, AND BE THERE FOR DINNER.” What drives you as a producer compared to your work as an actor?

Being a producer means you can look for stories that are meaningful to you and be part of their evolution from day one until the day the film is finished. I’ve spent a lot of my life on a film set and I’ve learnt a lot about how this business works and what kinds of elements enable you to make good films as opposed to bad ones. I’ve been able to produce a lot of films lately and each time out it’s a learning experience where I’m able to take that knowledge and put it to good use on the next project.

I still enjoy acting but I like spending more time at home with our family and that’s something you can’t always do if you’re spending three or four months away on a film set. As a producer, I get to work out of my home, I get to make the kids their breakfast, drive them to school, and be there for dinner.

FAMOUS PICTURES AND FEATURES AGENCY

Steve McQueen Director Steve McQueen has built his successful career on an extensive history of triumph in the short film genre, mostly as an artist with his films projected onto multiple gallery walls. This Turner Prize winning talent is something that he has transferred to full length features with his three highly successful films Hunger (2008), Shame (2011) and the Academy Award winning 12 Years A Slave (2013).

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BRAD PITT What are some of things you understand much better today about filmmaking that you didn’t when you first started out as an actor?

The key for me is to do stories that I find personally interesting and meaningful and which make me feel that I’m going to leave something behind which will make me proud and make my children proud. I would like to show some of my films to my children, which I can point to and say: “Your daddy made this!” I’ve learnt that I need to throw myself into projects that are personal and have something to say about the world in a lasting way.

Do you think you didn’t manage your career properly at the beginning?

When you’re starting out it’s easy to feel kind of lost. I didn’t really follow my instincts about doing more personal kinds of projects. You get a lot of advice from people who are trying to advance your career and wanting to make money off of you but who are also trying to help you make you a lot of money. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it isn’t always going to lead you to make good films. You spend too much time on career maintenance but then you think what’s the point if it’s not leading you to be doing interesting work, which is why you really became an actor in the first place.

Sometimes you feel that anyone else could have played that same part and that just leaves you feeling very empty. Eventually I figured out that I was in the game to tell personal stories where I can feel that my work as an actor was unique in some way and that I could add something to a film that would be different from what anyone else might bring to the way the story was told. You like being able to leave your own personal stamp on a film.

Apart from your film work, how is it managing your big family these days?

It’s fun watching the kids getting older and learning more and more. That’s one of the great privileges of being a father – you get to teach them things and watch them pick up on that. You just need to give them a little inspiration and encouragement and then you see them just dive into things and then they’ll read everything they can about a subject and spend time trying to show you how much they’ve learnt. It’s a beautiful thing. f

FAMOUS

“I’VE LEARNT THAT I NEED TO THROW MYSELF INTO PROJECTS THAT ARE PERSONAL AND HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT THE WORLD IN A LASTING WAY.”

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BRAD PITT Does it get tiresome to deal with the paparazzi constantly on your trail?

We do a pretty good job protecting them from that. We have to take detours to go to certain places, we can’t take the kids to the park, so you try to find a beach maybe where there aren’t too many people. We like to be able to give the kids a feeling of security and privacy as much as we can… It’s easier when we’re in the countryside or in (southern) France where no one pays much attention to us.

Has turning 50 been much of an event for you?

NYKC/FAMOUS

Not particularly. I feel that my life has reached a point where I can look back and see that I’ve accomplished a lot of my goals as an actor and I’m also not as much a commodity anymore. So I feel freer to be able to do pretty much anything I want as a producer and on occasion as an actor. I’m also able to spend as much time as I would like to with my family, which is really my main concern. I think when you get older and you just naturally think much less about yourself and you see everything in terms of what you can do to make your family happy…. At least until they become wicked teenagers and don’t want anything to do with us. n

“I’M ABLE TO SPEND AS MUCH TIME AS I WOULD LIKE TO WITH MY FAMILY, WHICH IS REALLY MY MAIN CONCERN.”

12 Years a Slave

BY MARTIN LEGGATT 12 Years A Slave is a story of man’s incredible capacity for cruelty against his fellow man. This Steve McQueen directed film catalogues the harsh reality of Pre-Civil War American slavery and saw an incredible amount of success and acclaim on its initial theatrical release including the Academy Award for Best Picture in March earlier this year.

McQueen read Northrop’s autobiography of the same name and felt so moved that he was compelled to make a film prompting producer and starring actor, Brad Pitt, to comment: “Steve was the first to ask the big question: ‘Why has there not been more films on the American history of slavery?’ And it was the big question it took a Brit to ask.”

In 12 Years A Slave Brad Pitt delivers, for him, a very low key performance as Samuel Bass – a Canadian labourer and abolitionist and the man who ultimately plays the key role in returning central character Solomon Northrop (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to freedom. It’s a performance far removed from the usual Pitt role; think back to his role as a wise cracking assassin in Mr and Mrs Smith, the louche and philandering criminal Rusty Ryan in Ocean’s 11 (12 &13), the very unique Aldo Raine in Inglourious and gypsy bare knuckle fighter Mickey O’ Neil in Snatch. Pitt brings an incredible assurance and quiet restraint to a powerfully dignified performance, revealing a depth of range that had only been glimpsed at in previous roles.

JJJJJ Even if you’ve seen it at the cinema this is a film worth watching back in your own home.

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DISABILITY According to a recent survey from SCOPE, 43% of people said they didn’t know any disabled people (seriously, how is that possible?), whilst two‐thirds of those surveyed said that they felt uncomfortable talking to a disabled person. As a disabled person myself, I can vouch for at least one of us (me) being a little odd, but seriously, what is that about?

“AS A BLOKE, I FEEL LIKE I’M CONSTANTLY BEING TOLD THAT I HAVE TO PROVE THAT I’M WORTH IT.”

Can You Be Disabled and Be a Man? Haydon Spenceley looks into what it really means to be a man…

BY HAYDON SPENCELEY

I

t’s the kind of question that probably brings out an immediate “yes” from you, dear reader. You may even query why I am asking this question. Perhaps you’re reading to see if I’m about to be incredibly crass, even offensive. Or perhaps you’re even tempted to just turn the page (no, wait, come back, it’ll get good in a sec).

While the immediate answer to the question might be straightforward, sadly, as we’ll see here, some of us actually live, and think, like the answer is a lot more complicated.

17% of the population of the UK, according to the 2011 census, had a disability (as disability is defined by the government). 16% of the population of the UK, according to the same census, was under the age of 15.

Stop and think about that for a moment. There are more people in this country who are disabled than there are children. Judging by the amount of children there seem to be in the country that means there must be a lot of disabled people around somewhere.

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As a Church of England minister (with attendant white plastic dog collar), a wheelchair user, a man with an increasingly impressive (and manly, so my wife says) beard and a penchant for wearing purple trousers, I have a fair number of experiences of people staring at me in the street. I, of course, prefer to think that they stare at me because of my film star good looks and suave, debonair charm, but I fear it might be something else. Thinking about it, perhaps it’s no wonder that 66% of people might be uncomfortable talking to me. I remember one particular occasion when a young gentleman stared at me again and again as he walked away up the high street, incredulous at the wonder of my beard (I assume) until he walked in to a lamppost. I may have chortled. I remember another time in WHSmith, where I was calmly going about my business, and a guy came up to me and said, apropos of nothing, “I f***ing hate disabled people” before getting in the lift and disappearing. I was a bit baffled by that one, but at least he made his point succinctly, and he thought I was a person.

As entertaining as these experiences and others like them can be though, I have a growing sense that fear, and a sense that I am somehow “less‐than” as a disabled person, are coming, or returning, into play in our society.

In most times in history, the clearest way of seeing how a society is doing is to look at how much compassion it shows in general and to those considered to be its weakest members in particular. I don’t personally think necessarily that impairment = weakness. Far from it. It’s pretty clear to me that in the way God created the world, at the very least the possibility of impairment was present. Nowhere are we told that people’s bodies and minds would not be different from one another.

Nowhere are we told that we would all go through life like some cross between Jesus, Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Clooney, the perfect specimens of humanity in every conceivable way. Christians have no problem, it seems to me, holding up Jesus as the ultimate example of what it is to be a man, but he was nothing special to look at (the Bible, Jesus’ best PR, tells us so itself), was quite prone to losing his temper, said the wrong thing all the time, and most of all, achieved his greatest success and victory by becoming impaired to the fullest extent possible, before defeating death in the resurrection, but maintaining his scars. Jesus’ blemishes were part of who he was as he showed that He was who He Was. So, we have a problem. As a bloke, I feel like I’m constantly being told that I have to prove that I’m worth it. Whether that’s through “contributing to society”, through how much money I earn and how nice my house is, whether I’m a net drain on the state because I take too much money in benefits as opposed to the amount of tax I pay, whether it’s that the money paid on drugs and medical treatment to keep me going from one day to the next could perhaps be better spent on someone closer to the Clooney Utopian Model of Man, my sense of self is constantly under pressure. You might think I’m being silly, or facetious, but look at the questions asked about benefits and welfare in Britain

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DISABILITY (and other parts of the world) at the moment. They all, in the end, come down to what we think a human life is worth. There’s a danger that we’re moving the goalposts, so that less people who are actually men, can be considered such. As soon as we stop viewing each other as equals, beloved of a Creator (a foundational aspect of creation) and view each other in terms of a hierarchy, we are in trouble. And the thing is, as a man, I feel that’s one of the things I’m constantly challenged to do. I’m to measure myself, and my success, against others. It’s competition that I’m engaged in, survival of the fittest. If I’m not seeking more money, promotion, more security, more happiness, more recognition, then somehow I’m not doing life properly. I’m letting myself down, and I should get out of the way and let someone who really has the hang of this capitalism thing achieve all the success they deserve, because they work bloody hard.

We have a tendency, I believe, to socially disable others in our society. Social disablement is the constructing of society in such a way that others are excluded and unable to take part. This happens all over the place.

Whether it be trying to get into buildings or onto the Tube without feeling like death from having my face in someone’s BO‐filled armpit (alright, this happens to everyone), finding it harder to get work (it is demonstrably harder to gain employment as a disabled person), build relationships, form community, or whatever it is, we live in a society where we like to keep each other in our places, where the only way that we can be “socially mobile” is if we deserve it. Do you deserve to be upwardly mobile? Do I? Who gets to decide that?

This is all fine until things stop working. We slow down. Bits start to sag, fall off, fall out, or stop to stand to attention. What makes a real man then? Does what a man is change when you get older, when you gain more experience, when you become senile, when you’re round the corner from death? In our culture it’s easy to think it does. It’s easy for us who might be in the prime of life to value ourselves more highly than those whose function, or intelligence, or productivity is lower than ours, but what happens when we become one of those people who functions less well, is less productive, needs to be looked after more than we can look after others? By some people’s logic there’d come a time when none of us are valid humans anymore and we should all be gently assisted off this mortal coil. It is actually a fear of mine, hidden away deep down somewhere, that this might happen to me someday.

above other people has no place in our lives, our communities or our societies. And even if we were going to view ourselves, or someone else, as better or worse, it certainly cannot be on the basis of physical, mental or emotional ability or lack of ability. To view others and ourselves like that is to step onto a slippery slope that allows us to dismiss or eradicate those we don’t deem necessary, as I said. This is a chilling thought.

I have a hope that things can be better than this. I have a hope that we will learn to accept others and ourselves and stop fearing each other so much that we think it’s ok to practice injustice on one another as we disable one another. After all, we actually all need each other.

Impairment and disability might well be coming to all of us at some stage. Ultimately though my hope rests in the idea that the God who impaired Himself to the largest extent possible for us all, also achieved ultimate victory, so that our broken senses of self and perspectives on life, love, hope and freedom could be fixed and renewed.

There will come a time when we will no longer disable each other, whether we are impaired or not. Maybe I’ll be able to walk in heaven. Maybe I’ll have a gold‐plated wheelchair. Maybe it doesn’t matter in the slightest. What does matter is that I’ll be who I was always meant to be; in the place I was always destined to be. So will all of us.

So can you be a man and be disabled? Of course you can. Should men be disabled? No they should not. We should not live and behave in ways that disable each other. Do we really believe that every living person is of equal value? Are we going to live like that is true? If we do and we are, then we can make it one of our goals to accept that sometimes we will be weaker than we want to be. Sometimes we will have impairments that we don’t want to have, but we can also make a promise to ourselves and others to not devalue or disable someone on the basis of what they can or can’t do. Jesus doesn’t do it. Neither should we. Jesus lived a life of radical love, generosity and self‐sacrifice. Let’s do the same and follow his example. n Thanks to Mat Ray at Livability for the statistics.

“THERE WILL COME A TIME WHEN WE WILL NO LONGER DISABLE EACH OTHER, WHETHER WE ARE IMPAIRED OR NOT.” If what a man is, is down to how much power or authority we have, how much autonomy we exercise over our lives, then all is lost. Jesus lost everything to save everyone. We have to learn how to have less, to be less powerful, how to need to be less in control, so that we can understand that impairment, loss and decay are important parts of life. 95% of us will spend some time in a wheelchair at some point in our lives. It’s alright, it’s quite good fun. Have you seen some of those Wheelchair Rugby players? And anyway, if you could sit down all day, why would you walk around? I’ve never understood that.

To me, what it is to be a man is to be who you are, when people are watching and when they’re not. It’s not about how strong or weak you are. It’s not about what you do on your best day, or even on your worst. It’s about the spark of the divine that is within each one of us, recognising and responding to it as far as we are able, and learning contentment. Ideally we’d learn to live together, like and love ourselves, love others and, at a push, love God too. If we’re going to do that, then elevating ourselves over and Sorted. Nov/Dec 2014

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JOHN LAWSON

A Life of Crime “It was a massive contrast for me,” says John. “There was no unemployment in South Africa, I went to quite a nice school and I was a very polite, quiet little boy.” John soon witnessed things he had never seen before, such as kids carrying knives and taking drugs.

John was picked on quite a lot and soon learnt the value of being able to fight. “I discovered I had an ability to take a punch; I wasn’t necessarily a good fighter but the other lads couldn’t seem to put me down. I was starting to win a lot of fights at school because that’s how you earned your reputation.” John was also anti police because of his father and the fact many policemen in his area ignored the domestic violence on his estate.

“I developed something inside of me to take the world into my own hands.”

If a Wicked Man… The story of John Lawson.

BY STACEY HAILES

L

ooking out of the prison window, John Lawson dreamt of freedom. He dreamt of the day he would no longer be behind bars, the day he could go back to his life – a life of crime.

John was born in a poor area of Glasgow but moved to South Africa when he was three. There, his Dad joined the police force, they had a fantastic apartment, John went to a good school and his parents had another boy. “It was a great life for me as a kid,” John recalls. But when he was ten, things changed. John’s Grandfather got terminally ill, so his Mum went back home with his little brother to say her goodbyes while John stayed with his father.

“The plan was that he would close up all our affairs, sell the flat, I would finish term at school and then we would follow my Mum back to the UK. But what we didn’t know was my Dad was having an affair at that time,” John explains. “He was really looking for an opportunity to make the break and he did that in an unusual way I guess. He picked me up from school one day, locked me in the flat and told me when it gets dark, put yourself to bed and he would see me in the morning.

“So he left, but he didn’t come back and I was left locked in the flat until four or five days later some family friends thought I phoned them up quite distressed and they came round and broke open the door. I was sent back to the UK. I was confused. I didn’t know what was going on.”

Back in the UK John’s Grandad passed away, shortly followed by his Gran. John’s Mum was left with nothing but her boys. The only place she could afford for them to live was on a housing estate outside of Glasgow. At the time, in 1978, it was known as the worst housing estate in the whole of Europe.

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“THE LEVEL OF VIOLENCE IN MY LIFE WAS INCREASING ALL THE TIME AND I WAS BEING PAID FOR IT.” John and his family then moved to Merseyside. All of a sudden he was the new boy again. “I had to fight again. I grew up and got into stupid things. I left school with hardly any qualifications.”

Feeling like he was only good at fighting John went into the nightclub industry and worked as a bouncer. “I worked with a team of guys who were all ex‐special forces and our company would send us to nightclubs to take control where the local team couldn’t handle the violence there anymore. The level of violence in my life was increasing all the time and I was being paid for it.”

John would also run drug dealers out of town. “For us it was easy money. There would be a drug dealer in town,

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JOHN LAWSON we didn’t like it, we didn’t do drugs and we didn’t like these people. So we would just go and rob them with balaclavas and guns, take all their money, chase them out of town and then think we were doing society a favour,” he explains. “All this time I was a good man because these were just scumbags. I didn’t do drugs or drink, I was married by now and I didn’t beat my wife, I wasn’t a gambler, I was a good man.”

Getting further into a life of crime, John joined a motorcycle gang and his company trained the team to do bodyguard work. “It was quite ironic really, because we used to go to a shooting club and Granada TV contacted the club looking for experienced men in weapons, and they used us to play armed cops in a TV series. I was doing that and then the rest of the week I would be going out with a gun taking people hostage – it was crazy!”

Whilst working as a bodyguard John got to work with stars like the Rolling Stones. Although they offered him full time work, John turned it down because crime paid more. “People always ask me what it was like working for the Rolling Stones. Well I was sitting in the corridor on a stool for 12 hours looking after Keith Richards while he was in his room asleep. I mean yeah, ok you get to talk to these people, but your not friends with them and it was the most boring job.

“I always wanted more. I was never satisfied and really that love of money just got me into more serious crimes.” If the people John worked for were ripped off, he was sent to get their money back by any means. “That even involved plotting murder and I was just so horrible and cold in those days. I was the one prepared to shoot the person we were going after. Thankfully it didn’t come to that.

“I was living this life of being a modern day outlaw and keeping way under the radar, being very careful and select about the targets we were going after, so these sorts of people couldn’t go to the police. They couldn’t

say this group of armed men came in last night and held me hostage and made me pay back the money that I had stolen from them. We began to feel that we were untouchable and smarter than the police.”

John also spent time in London helping his uncles run the sex industry in Soho. He didn’t care what he did as long as he got paid. “I was becoming more and more hardened all the time. Really everyone was out to rip you off. Everybody was bad.” John was helping run one of the largest brothels in London.

Breaking the Rules “We ran our operations military style. We used to laugh at the line we took which we stole from the A‐Team – ‘I love it when a plan comes together!’ We would drive home from maybe kidnapping a man, or holding people hostage and putting guns to their head and we would say ‘Oh, I love it when a plan comes together’. And that would give me a bigger kick than the money, the fact that we pulled off an operation. They were quite intricate, they involved a lot of surveillance, and we did a lot of homework on the person. I loved all the planning.”

By this time John had been to jail twice for minor crimes. Getting caught only made him more determined to be careful. “We had some certain rules which were: Don’t take a dump on your own doorstep, don’t deal with civilians and don’t do anything personal.”

It was when they broke those rules that John found himself in a prison cell. “I had a friend I worked for who was having some trouble with his girlfriend’s ex‐husband. I stepped in with my superhero vest on and said: ‘We’ll sort your problem!’

“We ended up threatening a guy who was a civilian, on our doorstep and it was personal. And of course the guy was able to run straight to the police.” The police found a gun in John’s car and so much evidence that John had to plead guilty. He was charged with attempted extortion and sentenced to four years. It then didn’t take the police long to round up the other gang members and they wanted to use John as a compellable witness. “They took me to the High Court from prison, my friends were in the dock. They said: ‘We’ve bought you here today to give evidence against your friends’. I was a bit rude to the judge and I told him where he could put his evidence, and it was not in a nice place! He punished me by adding an extra year and a half of contempt of court to my sentence.

“I still had a very hard heart. I was already planning more crime, I was just angry.”

Inmate Impact

“WE BEGAN TO FEEL THAT WE WERE UNTOUCHABLE AND SMARTER THAN THE POLICE.”

In prison John made friends with a Nigerian man named Tony. John could tell he was different to everyone else.

“The two questions you get in jail are: ‘How long you doing mate and what are you in for?’ He never asked those questions, he never wanted anything from you. There is one thing I didn’t like though – he was a Christian!

“He was always harping on about Jesus and I was like ‘you’re supposed to be a Christian, what you doing in jail you hypocrite?!’ Tony said: ‘Yeah, but there is always room for one more John. Do you think Christians are perfect? Do you think they never make a mistake?”

Every Thursday the prison had an independent bible study led by a pastor called Duncan. At first John refused to go until one day Tony shared something amazing with him. “He said to me: ‘You know John, if you don’t come you’re the one who’s going to lose out. That pastor brings in with him cake, coffee and biscuits’.” So I changed my mind!

“I made a plan. I knew one thing about Christians, which is that when they pray, they close their eyes. So I was thinking good, hurry up and get in your holy huddles, close your eyes and start praying and I will make my way towards the table and fill my pockets up with cakes, coffee and biscuits. f Sorted. Nov/Dec 2014

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JOHN LAWSON “That was my intentions, but then I went along and there was this guy Duncan who was so genuine, with a warm smile and he was welcoming all the guys, giving them a hug. In prison there are lots of courses you have to go on to make parole and the guys go on them and look bored out of their minds. However, in this bible study everyone seemed to be happy they were there.

“They handed out the song sheets and the words of the song will always stay in my heart. It was a song called Open the Eyes of my Heart Lord. The pastor played it like he was a rock and roll singer! The other prisoners sat back in their chairs, raised up their hands and clapped. I guess in that moment, I knew I was going to cry. I felt it strongly in my stomach, in my chest, in my throat. My eyes were welling up. I didn’t want anyone to see me cry so I moved the song sheet close to my face and hid behind it and I cried. I didn’t know why, I didn’t know what was happening, I didn’t understand it all and I don’t remember much about that evening but the next morning, when they unlocked my cell, Tony was standing outside with a Bible in his hand.”

John didn’t want the Bible at first but eventually took it. That evening he opened it up and flicked through. “I just began to read Ezekiel and what I read impacted me.

I felt like it was talking about me. It was talking about “If a wicked man…” Something struck me so much, I didn’t know anything about repentance, I didn’t know much about Jesus, but I knew I wanted a new heart and a new spirit. I felt in that moment I couldn’t continue living a life of crime. I began to consider all the offences I had committed and they were stacking up. I just broke. I

continued to read the Bible that week but couldn’t make any sense of it; I was starting in all the wrong places.

“I went back to the Bible study and I asked the pastor how do I get this new heart and spirit? Duncan said: ‘I promise you if you are genuine God will give you that new heart and new spirit. You’ve admitted you’re a bad guy. You can’t bribe God, you can’t offer him things in exchange for your soul. It would be like bribing a judge. You stood before a judge in court, you are in that courtroom and he is about to give you four years but you say you have done loads of good things though, do you think he will say oh ok, I will just let you off? No. It doesn’t work that way. That is your problem, that is all of our problem. God is holy and heaven is holy. Holy just means perfect, God is perfect, that means God can’t allow anything imperfect into heaven. If you are going to be judged by what you have done in your life, what do you think if you stood before God on judgment?’ I said: ‘I think I would be guilty’. He said: ‘That is why God sent Jesus Christ, to live on the earth this perfect life and offer Himself as a sacrifice and take the punishment you deserve. So if you accept Christ as your saviour, He will stand in your place on judgment day. He will take your fine’.

“I had never been spoken to in that way before. That the case against me could be dismissed, not because of anything have done but because of Christ. He said I must be genuine, not just a prison Christian. I knew then and there I had made a big mess and how all of that could be wiped away. I began to understand so I accepted the Lord as my saviour in prison and He began to change me and is still changing me today.

“PRISON TAKES MANY SHAPES AND FORMS.” “Thoughts of crime began to leave me. God changed my life very much! So when I got out of prison two years after that it wasn’t a big day for me because I felt like I was free already. I discovered you don’t have to be behind bars to be in prison. Prison takes many shapes and forms – self image problems, prisoners to lies, to anger etc.”

John was homeless when he was released but God rebuilt his life. He joined the local church, learnt more and felt a desire to share his faith with others. John regularly goes into prisons to talk. John speaks of his experience going back into the very prison he lived in.

“When I first started going back into prisons I struggled with it, particularly going back in to my prison as a free man. I sat with my friend outside the prison, we stopped for a coffee and we could see the stunning mountains behind it and I remember being behind bars and seeing this mountain range and I used to dream of freedom. I never dreamed that freedom would come while I was in prison.

I remember sitting there as we were about to go into the prison to share the gospel, and I began to shake. I felt sick, I felt physically ill. I went in there and some of the guards recognised me and the walk and going in to that chapel and meeting Duncan again was quite emotional for me. To share with those men in the prison where I was a prisoner was just phenomenal though!”

John is currently in the middle of writing his biography, which shall be titled “If a Wicked Man…” He is also the director and founder of Escape Ministries and has a passion to tell non‐believers about his faith and teach fellow Christians how to share theirs. He goes all round the world talking and teaching and will be speaking on Clare Balding’s Radio 2 show 16th November. He can be found most Sundays at Suncoast Church Eastbourne and would love to connect with you and help your church share the good news. n To contact John send an email to john@escapeministries.co.uk

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BUSINESS

CHARLES HUMPHREYS

We’re in Business Knowledge is the Key!

“EXPERTS THINK THAT THERE ARE NOW FEWER THAN FOUR DEGREES OF SEPARATION BETWEEN EVERYONE ON THE PLANET.”

“D

arling”, explained the husband calmly to his wife, “God gave all men instinctive navigational skills; that’s why sat‐ navs are called tom‐toms and not Jill‐Jills. Trust me, I know where I’m going…” It was possibly the same driver who made a simple, but significant typing error into his sat nav for their holiday destination.

Instead of heading for the golden beaches of Capri, they were taken 400 miles off course to the industrial

town in Northern Italy of Carpi!

Upon arrival at an industrial estate, his wife’s words were never recorded, but it’s quite possible that she had one of Confucius’ quotes to hand: Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

At some stage in our lives many of us may have considered a particular profession, only to pull away in another direction due to lack of information and confidence. Whilst it’s vital to be realistic about our options and to understand what really suits our natural ability, personality and circumstances, it’s equally important that we don’t allow a lack of knowledge and confidence to dictate our next move.

“Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it.”’ – Stan Smith It’s very easy to view the whole job market as a battlefield, and there are some clear advantages to doing thorough research into this particular “enemy”. They say: “To be forewarned is to be forearmed.” The more investigation you are able to carry out on a certain career choice, the more confident your decision‐ making will be.

Ask people in your network Don’t forget to check out those in your own networks – you may be surprised at the number of people you know and their first‐hand knowledge and contacts could prove invaluable for you.

Experts think that there are now fewer than four degrees of separation between everyone on the planet. I recently tested this at a conference; I met the person who

made the christening cake for Prince George and realised that this left only three degrees of separation between the Queen and I! Networking is one of the most successful ways of finding work or discovering more about a job. It should form a major part of your job research – who works where, who knows who, who can tell you what it is like to work for a particular company, who can give you advice about your career path, etc.

It is not just your former colleagues that you can approach; ask your friends and relatives to keep a lookout for you in their companies. The point is this, check out who you know. They don’t have to be your best friend, but you might be surprised how doors can open unexpectedly for you through people in your wider network.

Target individual organisations What I’ve got to say next is not rocket science. If you’re considering a career, for example in catering management, Google a relevant company website and discover from the “horse’s mouth” what the job includes, e.g. http://www.caterer.com/search/ head‐chef‐jobs. 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.

Here are some great websites to help you in your career research: Career Profiles – http://growingambitions.tes.co.uk/jobs Prospects – www.prospects.ac.uk/sectors.htm icould.com – http://icould.com/ Princes Trust – www.princes-trust.org.uk/about_the_trust/the_a-z_of_young_ business.aspx Total Professionals – www.totalprofessions.com/profession-finder/sector-summaries Career Box – www.careersbox.co.uk/ National Careers Service – https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/advice/ planning/jobfamily/Pages/default.aspx Best Course for me – www.bestcourse4me.com/

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BUSINESS

MATT BIRD

Relationology The Secrets of Success

Secret 2: A Winning Mindset

Secret 1: Being In The Right Place At The Right Time One of the questions I’m asked from time to time is: “Can you make your own luck?” I believe that to a point you can engineer being in the right place at the right time. As it was once said – “The harder you work the luckier you get.”

You can create an environment that is conducive to success, but you can no

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more guarantee luck as you can sunshine during British summertime.

Successful people work hard to get to where they have gotten, however there is also a significant amount of good fortune involved in getting there – as much as some of them would hate to admit it.

Two explorers are walking through the jungle. Suddenly, they hear a tiger roar. One explorer sits down, takes a pair of running shoes out of his backpack and begins to lace up. The other explorer says: “You’re crazy, you’ll never outrun a tiger.”

He replies: “I don’t have to outrun the tiger, I just need to outrun you.”

Successful people realise that a winning mindset isn’t something that you decide to have and the job is done, rather it is a decision that you need to make every minute of every day.

Secret 3: A Strong Network of Relationships

Secret 4: Resilience to Set Backs

Secret 5: A Long-Term Time Horizon

“The old boys network” is a term in British society used pejoratively to describe the allegiance and commitment that can exist amongst groups of people who have significant personal history together.

Successful people recognise that the quality of their network of relationships provides mutual support, creates vocational opportunities and access to life changing knowledge and information.

Over the last few years I’ve journeyed with someone through the breakdown of their marriage, the imprisonment of a child and at times the near collapse of their business. Throughout this time there have been very dark moments, however the person I’ve journeyed with has remained incredibly hopeful about the future.

Successful people develop a resilience to setbacks, so that no matter how bad things get they remain hopeful for the future.

If the demands of your life and business are anything like mine then you will be constantly drawn to the immediate rather than the long term.

Developing a long-term time horizon is extremely challenging.

Successful people often have a tendency to make decisions about their life and business that have positive implications for decades and generations to come. By contrast people who are fighting for survival (and I have been there and it’s no fun) are rightly focused on the day and immediate needs.

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Matt Bird helps individuals, teams and organisations build the relationships needed to achieve greater success. He is an international keynote speaker and author of the new book ‘Relationology: 101 Secrets to grow your business through the power of relationships’ www.relationology.co.uk @relationology

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BUSINESS

MARTIN CARTER

Bolder & Boulder

“HOW DID A MAN WHO MADE A FORTUNE FROM DEVELOPING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION COME TO HAVE THE WORLD’S FOREMOST PEACE PRIZE NAMED AFTER HIM?”

What’s Your Noble Cause?

T

he winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is due to be announced on the 10th October. The Prize was established in 1895 in the will of the Swedish philanthropist and inventor Alfred Nobel, thereby making his name synonymous with the search for global peace. But it was nearly so very different. Born in Stockholm in 1833, Nobel spent most of his career developing weapons and explosives, inventing both dynamite and gelignite. So how did a man who made a fortune from developing weapons of mass destruction come to have the world’s foremost peace prize named after him? It’s all thanks to some sloppy journalism.

When Alfred’s brother Ludvig died in Cannes in 1888, a French newspaper mistakenly published Alfred’s obituary instead. Beginning “the merchant of death is dead”, the obituary went on to say: “Dr Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”

Understandably upset by what he read and how history would

remember him, Nobel changed his will, leaving most of his estate (worth over £150M in today’s money) to create the prizes which bear his name today in order to reward those whose work “conferred the greatest benefit to mankind” so that no future obituary writer would doubt his commitment to peace and progress.

So, thanks to an ailing brother and an editorial over‐sight, a fortune amassed from products designed to harm mankind is now used to recognise and reward those who do most to benefit all mankind. Even by today’s standards, where we regularly hear of personalities re‐branding and re‐inventing themselves, that’s quite a PR turnaround.

Alfred Nobel’s story is a salutary lesson for all of us. Most of us will have neither the good fortune to read our obituary before we die nor the financial fortune to do anything about it if we don’t like what we read. But that doesn’t mean we’re stuck with what’s already been written, we just have to invest a little time proactively and regularly asking ourselves three simple, but fundamental questions:

1

If you were writing your obituary tomorrow what would you want it to say?

2

If you read your obituary today, what would it say?

3

And so what are you going to do about it?

In my work, I meet lots of people who, in the hustle and bustle of everyday life or the desire to fit in or get on, have either never thought about or have lost sight of what they are working for. I meet others who rarely, if ever, take the time to check whether the impact they are actually having is the impact that they want to have. Nobel Prize time is a great opportunity to remind ourselves that in the words we use, actions we take and, crucially, the way we make people feel, we are writing our own obituary each and every day. To write the obituary we want, we need to keep focused on our own Nobel cause. n

“WE ARE WRITING OUR OWN OBITUARY EACH AND EVERY DAY.”

Martin is an experienced leadership coach, consultant and facilitator. He helps individuals, groups and organisations to make a bigger difference in the world by equipping them to be bolder in their actions and conversations as well as helping them shift the boulders that sometimes get in the way. Martin lives in the West Midlands with his wife and three children. You can contact him at martin@martincarterassociates.com. @MartinPCarter

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BUSINESS

MARTIN THOMAS

Collective Action Sometimes it Falls on a Generation to be Great

T

hese nine simple words are to be found whenever the line “famous quotes by Nelson Mandela” is entered into Google.

Sadly, political leaders of all persuasions continue to struggle to emulate the great man – known by the world as Madiba (chief) and Tata (father).

Why? Perhaps it’s because we feel we know and believe the story behind the words – how each syllable was hard won, hewn out of a life well‐lived; not researched from a spin‐doctor’s thesaurus.

This generation faces so many complex needs: from broken families, to intolerance and discrimination in local communities, to nations split by conflict, to a world where hunger, disease and disaster needlessly kill thousands of people each day. A new generation of leaders is needed to boldly step up and speak out against poverty and injustice, with Mandela – like courage and wisdom.

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However, we don’t all need to be statesmen.

We can all influence in different ways and I believe that you are never too young to be an influencer. Like the young boy in the photo, influencing the Vice President of Bolivia during a campaign to promote better treatment of children in that country, your endorsement can carry great weight.

In a country where eight in ten children endure physical violence, the Good Treatment Campaign is changing tens of thousands of adults’ attitudes to the abuse and exploitation of children every year and promoting positive practices in young people’s relationships with each other. The campaign has had a significant impact on society and on authority figures: Members of the National Assembly have praised the campaign for bringing members of different political parties together.

In the UK, people who catch Viva’s vision can use their influence in their own networks. One of Viva’s influencers amongst the business community in the UK is Isabelle Boscaro‐ Clarke from Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire. She uses her influence to raise awareness and support Viva’s work because she believes we “have a unique, networked approach to protecting children at risk across the world”.

Business professionals and philanthropists search for ways to find meaning and significance through giving generously and a personal recommendation from a staff member is the most effective way of applying to a company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) budget.

Using your network effectively can help charities like Viva connect with a wider group of people who have a heart for development alongside a desire to see sustainability, impact, reach and value for money.

Influencing enables others to be great – whether you’re a young boy in Bolivia or the President of South Africa – and giving a little strategic time can help bring lasting change to people’s lives. Could you be a part of that generation? n Martin Thomas heads up Viva’s mobilisation offices in the UK, North America and Hong Kong (www.viva.org/invest).

He is a writer (www.makingsense.me.uk), a trustee of The Bless Network, and a novice barista. He and his family live in Witney, Oxfordshire.

Viva – together for children Unit 8, The Gallery, 54 Marston Street, Oxford, OX4 1LF, UK Registered Charity No. 1053389 Registered in England No. 3162776

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WHY ADVERTISING WORKS Sometimes we need to remind ourselves what the short-term benefits of advertising are – during good times or bad – it creates sales immediately; it generates added business from current customers; and it brings in new leads and prospects. Then there is the long-term benefit of advertising – it works cumulatively.

The more familiar people become with a brand, the more favourable they feel toward it, and the more likely they are to buy it. In other words, people don’t like to do business with strangers.

And, since the owners and staff of a company can’t personally meet all their prospective customers in advance, their advertising must do this for them.

Maintaining brand recognition should be considered an on-going business investment. The moment it stops, it begins to lose power immediately – and future sales are in jeopardy.

Studies have shown that it takes four to six months to see the results of an advertising programme. Cutting back during a downturn is like throwing away your investment. Maintenance today costs much less than rebuilding tomorrow.

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ADVICE

JONATHAN SHERWIN

Big Questions Is Britain a Religious Country?

W

here were you when you first experienced elation? I have vague, early‐ childhood memories of blissful birthdays with cakes shaped as Subbuteo pitches and parties at water parks. In my teenage years I hit new heights kayaking down French alpine rivers, dodging rocks and trees, mostly the right way up, to be rewarded with pure exaltation coursing through my veins at the finish.

Of course, in sports, there was the 2003 Rugby World Cup final, that 5‐1 against Germany, the Miracle at Medinah, Super Saturday, and last year when Tuilagi opened up the All Blacks’ back line like a bayonet through a pack of ravioli.

When I recall these memories I find my mind has assiduously mapped out the little details surrounding the events. It was as if I was a little bit more conscious, a little bit more alert. I felt more alive and it felt good.

It’s little wonder that we spend good money and much time pursuing things in life that leave us

feeling good. It is, after all, nice to feel good. Great experiences, like a concert or climbing a mountain or a fantastic holiday, cause us to seek for further great experiences.

When we come back from our travels the first question often is, where next? The pursuit of pleasure leads us to open up our wallets and map out our time with war‐room‐ like efficiency.

Currently, we are told that around 12% of people in Britain attend some kind of church once a month. On that basis, one could conclude that our country isn’t particularly religious, yet I think our behaviours tell another story.

Consider the humble football fan.

He supports the team his father did, and lives locally enough to make it to most of the home games. He has a season ticket, and a drawer in his bedroom with team shirts of years gone by. After the game he comes home and turns on the TV to watch the highlights and catch up on the rest of the league.

Through the ups and downs and the comings and going of new managers, he sticks by his team.

Visiting regularly, checking the website, inviting his friends, and spending his cash. What about that is not religious?

And to an extent I’m with him.

Saturday evening, when the world is a little quieter, I quite like a bit of Match of the Day. I like the routine, the familiarity, the “quick fix” of action, and of course, catching the goals. And apparently I’m not the only one, with around seven million viewers tuning in over the weekend.

Having now been going for 50 years, it really has become an institution. In the recent “Match of the Day at 50” program, Thierry Henry when asked about his thoughts on the show replied: “It’s like going to church, you know, it’s a religious thing. It’s part of the culture in England.” I think he’s spot on.

And in this statement I think lies the fact that Britain is indeed a

“WE SPEND GOOD MONEY AND MUCH TIME PURSUING THINGS IN LIFE THAT LEAVE US FEELING GOOD.”

“THE PURSUIT OF PLEASURE LEADS US TO OPEN UP OUR WALLETS AND MAP OUT OUR TIME WITH WAR-ROOM-LIKE EFFICIENCY.” religious nation. It is a religious nation because it is a nation of worshippers. No, it might not be the Christian God or another religion that the majority of the people turn to for comfort and hope, but it will be something.

In our lives we have these sunshine‐through‐the‐clouds moments, mini‐revelations or periods of elation perhaps. We stare at them, think on them, analyse and run after them because we are looking to orientate our lives in a certain direction.

We worship. The choice we have then is what or who do we worship?

What or who is truly worthy to be worshiped? Many of us are content to fix our eyes on the moment, the experience, the snippet of ecstasy and miss the author of all these things – God. The next time you hit a high, enjoy it. Enjoy it and be thankful, and then, perhaps the next day when you wake up, why not begin to investigate why you are grateful and to whom you ought to offer your thanks? 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 at www.jonathansherwin.net.

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ADVICE

JON COBB

Money Sexy Pension? two? You’ve got no pension!

So what if we don’t blow it on a car, we don’t buy an annuity, but let’s say we take an income of £8,000 a year and leave the rest invested, hopefully growing at 5% per year. A quick calculation shows that your pension fund would be zero by the time you reach 83. A lot of you will live to be older than 83.

But that has assumed your investments have consistently grown at 5% and they say there are two certainties in life (death & taxes) well here’s a third: NO investment constantly grows at 5%.

Saving for a pension is a necessary chore. We have to do it, it’s not fair that we become a burden on the state if we can take responsibility ourselves, but being given freedom of choice & flexibility doesn’t always make it easy to make the right decision. I’d rather see the government force or encourage the annuity providers to just give us more attractive rates. It’s simple George… n

I

love the word “oxymoron”, it sounds a bit like an insult. At work we like to make them up and I think the most extreme we have come up with is “Christian Porn”. A juxtaposition if ever there was one!

Here’s another – “sexy pensions”.

There is simply nothing racy or sensual about pensions and yet successive governments have tinkered and meddled and re‐ branded in their attempts to get us to save for retirement, but largely to no avail. Still, every cloud has a silver lining and all these changes keep me in a job!

George Osborne, the current Chancellor, has announced a raft of changes that will come into effect in April 2015. These are as radical as…. the last lot of changes made by the government! Actually I’m being unreasonable here as what he has done is attempted to make them far more flexible when you come to take your pension at retirement. At the moment, for the vast majority, when you retire you are allowed to take 25% of the fund as a tax free lump sum and with the residual you buy an annuity. This has never been popular because of the poor annuity rates available. At the time of writing, if

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“INSTEAD OF BUYING AN ANNUITY YOU COULD TAKE THE REMAINING £75,000 AS INCOME AND BUY THAT DREAM CAR!” you were a healthy male aged 65, buying an annuity for £100,000 would get you a level income for life of just £5,946 per year and, if you wanted to include the wife, or have the income indexed each year, the value may well be less.

Although annuities are still an option, George Osborne has now allowed you to take as much of your pension fund as you want. So, if you have a pension fund of £100,000, you can still take the tax free lump sum of £25,000 but, instead of buying an annuity you could take the remaining £75,000 as income and buy that dream car!

Hopefully you will have been savvy enough to realise two problems here: Firstly, the £75,000 is added to your income so you will certainly be paying income tax on it and if you are already earning a few bob that could be a higher rate tax.

Secondly, what happens in year

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. @CobbyJon

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ADVICE

RICHARD HARDY

Family You Must be Doing Something Right!

I

was having my hair cut… I have this love‐hate relationship with hairdressers. I love sitting and doing nothing for half an hour.

Call me weird, but I also love it when they massage your scalp whilst washing your hair. There are times when I would pop‐in and pay for them just to do the massage such is the sense of relaxation! I don’t even mind telling them what I want – same as last time.

What I hate is the inane chatter that seems to be part of the deal. All I want to do is sit. I don’t want to talk. I don’t even want to think. For me it is the best bit of the whole experience. But no, I have to answer the endless questions that always start with – “Day off, Sir?” I don’t want to have to explain that I am doing a bunk to get my haircut.

I don’t want to have to tell them what I do for a living or where I am going for my holidays.

I also don’t want to seem rude or unkind, so I go with it, under sufferance you understand.

Anyway as I was saying, I was having my haircut and rather than wait for the chatter I got in first with a couple of questions. I asked: Have you been on holiday? Do you have family? The answer to the first was “yes, Spain” and the second was “yes, two”.

She didn’t seem to want to talk. I sensed an opportunity to get my own back so I persisted. How old are they? “Five and seven.” And then it happened, things got interesting.

Suddenly she got animated and told me a story of an incident on holiday where she had left her husband to watch over their two children, whilst she went to have her hair done.

Apparently he had fallen asleep on the sun bed and when he woke they were nowhere to be seen.

By the time she returned he was in a mild state of panic. She asked him how long they had been missing. He lied and said 15 minutes. (As it turned out he had been asleep for over an hour!)

Before she went on with the rest of the story she assured me that there was no way they could get off the site and no danger of them drowning since they were both good swimmers and the pool was fenced off.

When they eventually found them they were in the restaurant. They had been up to their room for a little rest. The youngest had been feeling sleepy so the eldest had waited with her. She promised she had been very careful not to go to sleep because she knew she was in charge.

Apparently the look of humiliation on Dad’s face was a picture. You can feel his sense of shame and remorse can’t you? I can because in my experience of fathering I have walked in his shoes.

Then they had felt hungry so had gone down to the restaurant, asked for a table for two; ordered a meal, charged it to the room and were halfway through dessert when discovered.

She then told me that they had

“I WOULD POP-IN AND PAY FOR THEM JUST TO DO THE MASSAGE SUCH IS THE SENSE OF RELAXATION!”

“WHY IS IT THAT WE JUDGE OUR PARENTING ON THE BASIS OF WHAT OTHERS THINK?” had a “domestic”. I can’t think what she meant, but couldn’t help feeling sorry for her husband. It was at this point that she said those immortal words that every parent at one time or another thinks even if they never say it out loud. “I don’t know what you must think of us. We must be the worst parents in the world”.

Having assured her I didn’t and that she wasn’t, I found myself thinking.

Why is it that we judge our parenting on the basis of what others think? Why is it that we assume that we out of all parents are the worst?

You see: We are all learning as we go along.

We all make mistakes. It’s a wonder any of our kids survive, but they do!

The fact that you feel like the worst parent means your aren’t!

Why? Because the worst parents don’t care what others think, believe no one can teach them anything and never think that they are at fault.

So I told her: “You must be doing something right for your eldest to demonstrate such responsibility at such a young age.” However, I suggested she didn’t mention that to her husband! 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

“IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN IS AN UNPOPULAR MAN.”

Prepare to be Unpopular

M

uch of my life has been ruled by popularity. At primary school this mainly consisted of unsuccessful attempts to learn all the lyrics to the theme from The Fresh Prince of Bel‐ Air, having the best graffiti on my Maths book, and furiously praying that one of the older kids would pick me for their football team.

Secondary school was much the same but the attention shifted to having the right haircut, wearing the best clothes, dating the prettiest girl and having the most friends on Facebook.

Now my popularity can be ruled by my wallet; I want a nice flat, a smart suit and to be first at the bar to pick up the round. I get an ironic high when I’m called humble and in the pulpit I often people‐please rather than preach. I tweet what’s popular rather than what is true and hesitate over the post button if anything I say may lower my “stweet‐cred”.

As you may have gathered, I’m getting it all wrong. And, over the

last few weeks I have realised that being a real Jesus follower means preparing to be unpopular.

It seems to me that the Biblical Christian is an unpopular man.

Dress him up in snap‐backs and fancy Chinos, trim his designer beard (the Moses sort) and hand him a tablet (not the Moses sort), yet deep down you have a man with deeply unpopular views: An outdated, fundamentalist, with an epic lack of tolerance.

Mind you, Jesus was pretty unpopular too. Sure, he was a kind and good man, lots of people listened to him, but he was far from popular. His words were offensive (his first preach ended in a riot), he raised the bar of religious morality and sexual purity, and both the religious and irreligious wanted him dead. It should come as no surprise that we find ourselves in similar sized sandals. After all, the fella himself said: “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.” (John 15:18).

So what do we do? I could shift and change with the culture trying to stay popular, each week another more progressive view of God, an acknowledgement that “back then” they didn’t really know anything, but not now, we’ve got God right now.

My Bible may have a few less pages, but I’ll keep a platform, increase in retweets, fit in remarkably well and shake hands with the top‐dogs.

The other option is much more tough. The other option is sacrifice.

Hand in my respectability; resign from my position of popularity.

I’ll remind myself that the world will hate me as it hated Him. I’ll be mocked on TV, undermined on

Twitter and I’ll probably have to buy my own drinks. But I will keep pointing to Him, The Way, The Truth and The Life. I might keep the chinos, the iPad and the hipster‐ beard, but I’ll recognise my status comes from Christ alone; without Him I am nothing, in Him I have everything. n

“TRIM HIS DESIGNER BEARD (THE MOSES SORT) AND HAND HIM A TABLET (NOT THE MOSES SORT), YET DEEP DOWN YOU HAVE A MAN WITH DEEPLY UNPOPULAR VIEWS.”

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. @samggibb

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OPINION

LYNDON BOWRING

Politics

Rather than joining in with the chorus of disapproval, why not think of a way to encourage your MP? Even if you fundamentally disagree he or she is still your representative in Parliament and deserves to be thanked! It is so easy to send an email or write a letter. The website www.writetothem.com is a simple way to find their contact details and send your message.

Give Them a Break!

L

ike many of us, Members of our Parliaments and Assemblies have been able to take a break during July and August, spend time with their families and rest from serving and playing their part in the House of Commons. However, today as I write Prime Minister David Cameron has had to break off his holiday in Cornwall (after only one day) and come back to London, following the shocking murder of a US journalist by a Jihadist with an English accent.

He needs to discuss the growing crisis brewing in Iraq and Syria with colleagues, Foreign Office and Home Office officials. If the situation worsens Parliament may be recalled which will mean MPs will have to forego their well‐deserved time off and return to work.

British Politicians sometimes get a bad press and come quite far down in popularity polls – slightly lower than estate agents! Many feel that those in the “Westminster Bubble” are not in touch with the real world. It is a fact that politics has probably become more professional but maybe that is not such a bad thing. In the past, many MPs treated it as a part‐time occupation, combining it with a legal career for instance, but today they are expected to spend more time in their constituencies and hear firsthand about issues that concern people attending weekly surgeries and through letters and emails. Others think some MPs are only in the job for the perks and feel very unhappy about instances of inappropriate behaviour or inflated expenses. But the truth is that the vast majority of the 650 Westminster MPs, as well as

those who sit in the other Parliaments and Assemblies in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, work extremely hard! I know this from our experience at CARE; we are privileged to work alongside some exceptional men and women on many important issues.

I remember attending the funeral of a very humble pastor I knew who lived in the East End of London.

Imagine my surprise to find that the local MP and his wife had made time to be there. This outstanding Christian man is a great example and I assure you there are many like him.

At the last General Election, of the 200 or so MPs who were elected for the first time, over 40 were committed Christians filled with a commitment to serve with integrity and conviction. Many of them, along with others who have been in Parliament for many years, work across the political divide on issues such as human trafficking, online safety for children, help for those with addictions and many other matters.

It is easy to criticise – and sometimes that is necessary, but our MPs are not so different from the rest of us, with concerns about health, family and work. Let’s give them a break! 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.

“POLITICIANS SOMETIMES GET A BAD PRESS AND COME QUITE FAR DOWN IN POPULARITY POLLS.” Sorted. Nov/Dec 2014

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OPINION

LEE AND BAZ

Cut to the Chase Be Accountable

BY LEE JACKSON

W

arning – this is going to honest, very honest. Please don’t read into this that I’ve got life all Sorted (bad pun – sorry!) because I haven’t, but I thought I’d share my thoughts anyway. Give it a read and feel free to put me straight!

I reckon the key to real success is probably one of the most unpopular words today.

I’m talking about the “A” word.

Accountability.

Yeah, that one. Kind of scary, eh?

But as you know, we should tackle the big issues from time to time.

We hear about politicians and public figures needing to be accountable all the time. The Levison and other high profile enquiries never seem to be out of the news.

Even George Clooney called a Daily tabloid to account for lying about his fiancé in a story a while back, long over‐due, I’m sure you’ll agree. The tabloids can at times seem to just make stuff up and get away with it, other times of course they can be right, so it’s a tricky one this accountability thing. But just because it’s tricky doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be attempted or aimed for. I see individuals, businesses and organisations reaching for this every day in my work as a speaker.

But how is accountability a key to success?

I believe it works on three levels:

“MANY OF US HAVE SIMILAR STRUGGLES ANYWAY.” 78

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1

We have to be accountable for our work and our goals, otherwise we may as well just stay at home. As Larry Winget says: “It’s called work for a reason.” I see his point, we should work hard and give it our best shot, if we don’t hit (fair but big) targets then maybe we need a nudge occasionally, I certainly do, as running my own business means that no-one is there to kick me!

2

We should try to be accountable for our time and resources. How we spend our time for example has a massive impact on our effectiveness. I’m not saying I’ve cracked this one, but I do know one of the most powerful forces in the world – procrastination – very well. And as I’ve now contributed to eight books I know the power of “being busy” on Facebook or putting my DVDs into alphabetical order when I should be writing in my office! We can all default to procrastination if we are not careful.

So. I’ll be blunt – who’s asking you the challenging questions?

You want to make it in life? Then you’ll need those tough questions.

3

The challenging one – I think it’s also really healthy to be accountable to some close friends for areas of our personal life too. Yeah I know, it is scary, but I believe it’s worth it. Success, as you know, isn’t just about money and career, there’s a personal level here too. So to sharpen me up away from work I meet with three mates on a six-weekly basis to keep each other going (and I have done for many years now). I don’t find it easy sometimes but we have all given each other permission to ask tough questions, and it works, it really does.

We have a laugh together and often a beer or two, but once the banter has died down we get down to business and they ask: “So, Lee how’s it been?” Then we all get a chance to share about work, family and pressures that all of us face. What we have realised is that many of us have similar struggles anyway. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.

Accountability doesn’t have to be a weird meeting; it’s more of a lifestyle choice. We all need encouragement and an occasional nudge/kick and I know I’ve got three guys who can do that for me and I’m grateful for it. In fact I’d almost go as far as saying that I’m here because of them.

Don’t be a bloke sat in a shed, get out of the “shed”, think long term, and really be held accountable.

It works. n

Lee Jackson is a speaker and powerpoint surgeon(!) He’s also one half of ‘Lee and Baz’ where, with his mate Baz Gascoyne has written men’s books and spoken/eaten curry at loads of mens events. His website is www.leejackson.biz

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Manchester United Score Falcao Radamel Falcao joins the English team on loan.

BY STUART WEIR

I

“MANCHESTER UNITED IS THE BIGGEST CLUB IN THE WORLD AND IS CLEARLY DETERMINED TO GET BACK TO THE TOP.” But Radamel Falcao – named after the Brazil star Paulo Roberto Falcão, who played 28 times for Brazil (1976‐86) – is no ordinary centre‐forward. He is a proven goalscorer in four countries for River Plate in Argentina, FC Porto in Portugal, Atletico Madrid in Spain’s la Liga and for AC Monaco in the French league as well as for Colombia (see table).

The striker told his new club’s website: “Manchester United is the biggest club in the world and is clearly determined to get back to the top. I am looking forward to working with Louis van Gaal and contributing to the team’s success at this very exciting period in the club’s history.”

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He is simply a natural goalscorer with a rate of more than a goal every two games. For him, goals are what football is all about: “I think I’m lucky to play upfront because you could say it’s the best job in football, scoring goals! I have the chance to score goals on a regular basis, and the goal is the best expression of the game… players and fans alike enjoy a special moment in football which is triggered by a goal, and I feel truly blessed to have the opportunity to do this.”

The son of a professional footballer, by the age of 13 Falcao played for Lanceros Boyaca, becoming the youngest ever player in the Colombian professional league. At the age of 15 he left Colombia to play for River Plate in Argentina where he stayed for nine years, when his 34 goals in 90 games for River Plate opened a door for him to play in Europe for Porto.

When he was young, Falcao’s mother attended a local church and took him to Sunday School. He was brought up in a home

whose principles were based on the Bible.

“From an early age I attended church and when I could understand, I made the decision to follow Jesus Christ and let Him guide my life. I understood that He has a plan which I simply needed to obey because He would go on to fulfil the promises that He had made for my life.”

Reflecting on this early life he now says: “To have been brought up in a Christian home was the best thing that could have happened to me, to know that God is in the midst of my family, that His love sustains us. Now my wife and I share the same principles of wanting to love, obey and please God. This means that we can grow together and walk towards the same goal rather than different ones, which is to please God in all that we do.”

In his two seasons at Porto he scored 34 goals in 90 appearances – enough to help Porto win the League, the Portuguese Cup (twice), and the UEFA Europa League. It also resulted f

Getty Images / Matthew Peters

n a move that took most people by surprise, Manchester United acquired the services of Radamel Falcao on the last day of the summer transfer window. Falcao comes to Manchester United initially on loan but with a view to the move becoming permanent later.

With Manchester United’s season starting with a home defeat at the hands of Swansea City, followed by draws against the mighty Sunderland and Burnley – not to mention the 0‐4 League Cup disaster away to MK Dons, stern action was needed.

First they prized Angel Di Maria away from Real Madrid to join other new signings Marcos Rojo (Argentinean World Cup player from Sporting Lisbon), Ander Herrera (Athletic Biblao), Daley Blind (Ajax) and Luke Shaw (Southampton). Then Louis van Gaal was heard to complain that he seemed to have five centre forwards and no defenders! So the obvious thing to do was to buy another centre‐ forward?

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SPORT

Getty Images / Clive Rose

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in a transfer to Atlético Madrid. In the 2010‐11 Europa League he scored a record 15 goals in a single annual club football European competition.

“To tell you the truth, Portugal didn’t figure as one of my career goals. I had little knowledge about the football played there. But I believe that God used this time for my growth and as a professional player I was able to learn a great deal. I had a lot of success and began to be recognised on a world scale, as it was there that I won my first International European title which is of great significance.”

He spent two seasons in Madrid, scoring 52 league goals in 67 games. In his first season he helped Atlético win the UEFA Europa League, becoming the first player to win the Europa League in successive seasons with different clubs. In the second season, Atlético won the Copa del Rey (Spanish Cup) beating Real Madrid in the final.

In the 2012 European Super Cup game, Atlético beat Chelsea 4‐1 with Falcao scoring three times. Of that game, he said: “To go three‐nil up against a team which on paper was much stronger than Atlético was totally unthinkable. We were playing extremely well with great efficiency, and to have scored three goals in such a big game which was being watched all over the world was an incredible feeling.”

The move to AS Monaco surprised a lot of people – some said cynically that it was just about money. He argued that he saw Monaco as an exciting, long‐term project to take an average French League club and turn them into one of the top clubs in Europe. His plan was to “play an important role, which will enable me to grow as a player. It’s above all for those reasons that I chose Monaco”. Some people would say the same attitude could apply to Manchester United as it could be a “long‐term project” to take Man U back to the summit.

His goals took AS Monaco towards the top of the French League – they finished second behind Paris St Germain – until a serious knee injury ended his season, forcing him to miss the World Cup. Ironically it was in a French cup tie against fourth tier Monts D’or Azergues that the injury occurred, after he had given his team the lead.

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In 2007 he played his first game for Columbia, “fulfilling my childhood dream of representing my country, and in particular for the main senior team among the best players in the country. It was another stepping stone in my career. It was a friendly in Colombia against Uruguay, and it was so extremely hot!

My first goal for Colombia was during an international tournament in Japan against Serbia which we won one‐nil with my goal. As well as being my first goal for Colombia, I was particularly happy as it was the goal that practically secured victory”.

Colombia qualified for the 2014 World Cup finishing second in the South American table.

With nine wins and three draws they were second, first being Argentina. It was the first time they had qualified for the World Cup finals since 1998. Falcao scored nine goals in the qualifying competition. Sadly, the knee injury meant that he could only watch his team‐mates in Brazil.

Being a goal scorer – and a highly paid player – puts pressure on him. Falcao recognises that quite simply people expect him to score. He expects it too adding: “The pressure always comes from inside.”

He has learned how to deal with that pressure: “I try to lean on God, knowing that He is always there to help me. God has helped me a lot to maintain composure and stay firm in certain moments, good and bad.

“The Bible is a manual for us here on earth to live according to God’s will. It’s full of teaching about what’s best for us, what’s right or wrong, but above all about what God put in place so that we could live vigilantly and be blessed here on earth. I often read Proverbs, sayings of wisdom which produce discernment in me and encourage me to think about what I want, what I think is right or wrong.

“I try to place all areas of my life in God’s hands and this includes my football career. I pray for God to take control. We can have a constant, daily relationship with God through the Bible and through prayer, and know that He loved the world so much that He gave His Son so that we might be saved. He loves us despite our imperfections, mistakes and sin.”

People might think that as a successful, rich footballer, he has everything but Falcao is quick to point out that there is more to life than fame and fortune. “There is a material world but there is also a spiritual aspect to life.

We can have everything but if we’re not satisfied spiritually then it’s as if we had nothing and we feel empty. With Jesus Christ, we can be assured that He will never leave us, He’ll always be there, something which I have experienced in my own life through His faithfulness, love and through showing me that Jesus paid a price for our lives.” n Stuart Weir spoke to Falcao in Monaco last season.

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. @stuartweir

Getty Images / John Peters

SPORT

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Playing Record Club

Dates

Games

Goals

River Plate (Argentina) FC Porto (Portugal) Athletico Madrid (Spain) AS Monaco (France) Colombia

2004-9 2009-11 2011-13 2013-14 2007-

90 51 68 20 51

34 41 52 11 20

Source www.soccerassociation.com

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SPORT

Competing with Confidence Sorted talks to Fanie van der Merwe, about competing in the Paralympic Games and the Commonwealth Games.

BY STUART WEIR

O

ne of the many ways in which the Glasgow Commonwealth Games were an overwhelming success was the way in which disability sport was integrated into the programme alongside so called “able‐bodied” sport. While the Olympic Movement runs parallel events – The Olympic Games and The Paralympic Games – and other events include a token disability event or two as a warm‐up before the main action starts, the Commonwealth Games integrates the two.

“LIKE SO MANY PEOPLE WITH A DISABILITY HE PREFERS TO TALK ABOUT WHAT HE CAN DO RATHER THAN WHAT HE CAN’T!” Glasgow 2014 had the largest ever number of fully integrated Para‐Sport events with 22 medals contested in five sports within the programme, including the first Para‐Sport Cycling (Track) events in Commonwealth Games history. And when Libby Clegg and guide Mikail Huggins won Scotland’s first track medal in many years at the Commonwealth Games, there was no reference to the fact that Libby was competing as a blind runner in the T12 class – she was just a Scottish athlete winning gold.

Another athlete who won a gold medal in Glasgow was Fanie van der Merwe from South Africa. He competes in class T37 – for athletes with cerebral palsy. When he was born he had a brain injury that affected the functioning of the right side of his body – growth,

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coordination and functioning. He also has some spasticity. The result is that the right side of his body functions less well than his left side. Like so many people with a disability he prefers to talk about what he can do rather than what he can’t!

“I can drive and do most things that able‐ bodied people can do. What helped me a lot with that is that I started sport when I was really young. My brother was always doing sport. I went to an able‐bodied school that made me compete with able‐bodied guys. It is more the smaller motor‐functioning things that are harder for me.”

Fanie was brought up in a Christian family and in his words “knew about Christ” all his life but without actually knowing Christ. He talks about his story: “After school I took a gap year and went to London and just lived after my own heart’s desires, the party life, etc.

While doing that I was really convicted. The thought kept coming up, ‘this isn’t who you are’. Looking back, while I was in London God really prepared my heart for the year that was to follow.

“Next year when I started university in Stellenbosch, we were forced to go to church and the Lord just came over me and said, ‘come back you are my son’. That was when I decided that I wanted to follow God. I went in a small group where I had space and could start to walk in relationship with God. I realised the ongoing relationship I needed with Christ. Only after I gave my life to Christ, did I understand that it is about putting your faith in Christ and believing.”

As an athlete (a sprinter), Fanie has had a great career, so far winning 11 major medals, his first being a silver in the 200 metres in the 2006 World Championships. However, his real breakthrough came in 2008.

Beijing was his first Paralympics and he went into the Games ranked second. He recalls f

Fanie van der Merwe Medals Paralympic medals: 2008: 100m gold, 200m gold 2012: 100m gold

World Championships 2006: 100m silver 2011: 100m silver; 200m silver; 400m bronze 2013: 200m silver; 4 by 100 relay silver.

All African Games 2011: 200m gold

Commonwealth Games 2014: 100m gold

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SPORT Getty Images / Julian Finney

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his first race, the 100 metres: “I was very nervous before I raced. I remember going into those games saying, ‘I want to do this journey with the Lord because it is the only way I am going to get through’. I ran the semi‐final and had a good race finishing in a time of 11.9. The problem was that a Chinese runner ran 11.2 to win the other semi!” Fanie admits that his first thought was that he was running for second place in the final.

As he went back to his room that afternoon to rest before the final, his coach gave him an iPod and the first song that came up was “God Will Lift Up Your Head”. It was a life‐changing moment: “I put the song on and I was just jamming in my room – worshipping the Lord and going crazy. I decided then that I am not going to go into that race with a second‐place mentality. I believed I could win the race. If it did not happen, that was fine but I was not going to go into this race settling for second place.”

When the final came, Fanie was surprised to see that the Chinese athlete was not there. He did not know why – he later discovered that the officials had decided that the Chinese athlete was in the wrong classification and had been moved out of T37. Fanie went out and won the race. Looking back, he sees it as a significant moment: “That was a big blessing

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for me. As a friend said, the Lord was opening a door for me to win gold. A lot of the times you think, I have got to go out and beat the guy, but that was a way that God just opened the door for me. To put my faith out and believe I’m going to win that race. I didn’t know how it was going to happen but it actually happened. So that is a really awesome memory for me.” Fanie completed the double a few days later, winning the 200 metres as well.

Fanie was new to Paralympics in 2008 and then went into 2012 an experienced, world record holder and was expected to win. As he was the first South African athlete to run, he also had the chance to win his country’s first athletics medal in 2012. He started well in the 200 and led, but then suffered cramps and was passed by five athletes as he struggled to the finish line in sixth place.

After the disappointment of the 200, Fanie decided to pray: “I went out sat down and started talking to God. I realised that I was running for acceptance but I felt God say, ‘ok Fanie, but I love you because you’re my son.

You don’t have to perform to be accepted. I can’t love you more – not even a gold‐medal would make me love you more’.

“That gave me perspective on where I was and gave me new hope because I knew I could go out in the 100, not trying to perform for

acknowledgement but I could go out and run for Jesus and whether I win or lose not make a difference to being God’s son.

“Going out to the track for the heat of the 100m I saw all five guys who had beaten me in the 200 and that was the first thing I had to overcome was the thought – ‘the guys who beat you are in your heat. You’re not going to make the final’. I remember fear coming over me in the call room. But I just said ‘if I am running for Jesus then it doesn’t matter if I win or lose, I can just go out and do it’. After that I was feeling more at ease. I can go out and do it for it’s not about me.”

Fanie went into the 200m final confident.

“The one thing I remember was thinking that my confidence is not in how I’m feeling or in my ability. My confidence is in Christ and no matter what happens it will be okay.”

The final started with a false start and a faulty start. Only on the third time did the athletes get away. Fanie started well and at halfway he, Liang Yongbin (China) and Roman Kapranov (Russia), were clear leaders and as they approached the finish, there were two. “I realised that unless I did something the Chinese would get the benefit of the doubt and it went through my mind to dive. We both had the same time 11.51, a new World Record, but they gave me the decision on the photo finish. That was a great experience.”

Going back to the 2014 Commonwealth Games was another special and new experience for Fanie. He found it very different and strange to be part of a different South African team – multi‐sport and able‐bodied.

He missed the camaraderie and the fellowship of his paralympic friends. “It was very different, a new experience, a new challenge but worth it. It is great to meet some of the South African able‐bodied guys, to see where they are at and what they do and to build relationships with them and input in their lives as well. Also to see how an able‐bodied event is. We don’t get many of those opportunities so I feel very privileged to be part of Glasgow 2014. My race was really fun.

The crowd was great. I think I was a bit more relaxed out there than the Paralympic Games.

I remember thinking ‘I’m going to embrace the crowd and enjoy it and just run with faith and with confidence’. It played out really well and I won.”

Fanie feels that the end of his career is in sight. He would like to make the Rio 2016 Paralympics and then probably call it a day. He is passionate about sharing what he has learnt through sport with others. His plan is to go into full‐time Christian sports ministry with a focus on youth development through sport and see where it leads. n

Getty Images / Julian Finney

Getty Images / Cameron Spencer

SPORT

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HEALTH & FITNESS

FITNESS With Phil Baines

Let’s get to the Bottom of This…

L

ast time we looked at the issue of a sedentary lifestyle. This naturally involves a lot of sitting around. Sadly for a lot of us this is the main thing we use our bottoms for.

The gluteal muscles are the largest in the body. Made up of three you have: The gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and the gluteus minimus.

The gluteus maximus (I know this sounds like something from the film Gladiator, you’re probably expecting the “Now We Are Free” music theme to break out) is the largest in the body and the most superficial of the three, being nearest to the surface or skin and the most visible. This is the muscle that gives the bum its shape – or not!

All our muscles work in conjunction with others and an injury in one can reflect in other areas. However, if our glutes are weak this will impact on the whole structure. The glutes support the pelvis and hips and are a real “powerhouse muscle”, yet they are one of the most neglected in terms of exercise.

Let’s look at some simple exercises to fire up the glutes.

1

The Clam: Lie on your side on an exercise mat; bring your knees up to your middle so your hips and knees are forming a right angle. Put your lower arm under your head and engage your core. Then, keeping your feet together on the floor, raise the top knee slowly as far as you can, keeping the other knee on the floor.

Lower down gently, repeat 15-20 times and then roll over and do the same on the other leg. Do three sets on each leg with a one-minute rest between reps.

After a few weeks this will probably be easy, so invest in some exercise bands. These generally come in four to five colours and depending on the colour, the less flexible they become. Tie them in a circle and put them around your knees, slightly above the knee. As you will feel after 15 reps, this is really does target the glutes.

2

Side lunges: Start without weights. Stand tall with feet shoulder width apart.

Engage your core and keep breathing throughout the exercise.

Step to the side with quite a wide step, keeping the standing leg straight. Bend the other leg, using your glutes, hamstrings and quads to really drive you up. Step the other way, do the same. Do 15-20 reps times three. After a couple of weeks do the same exercise holding some dumbbells or kettle bells.

3

Squats: We have talked about squats a lot in the past. Stand with a wider stance and squat down as low as you can with in your own range of movement (ROM). Push back up using the glutes. The lower the squat the more you target the glutes.

4

Superman: Kneel on an exercise mat. Take your right leg and your left arm straight out. Squeeze your glutes and move the outstretched leg up and down in a pulsing movement. Repeat ten times.

Keep the leg outstretched and take the leg in a large circular movement ten times either way. Finally, do the circular motion quickly ten times each way.

Repeat on the other leg. This sounds easy but it’s a tough exercise. Remember to stretch to finish. Sit on the ground and cross your foot over the other knee.

Gently sit forward and you should feel a stretch in the glutes.

So go on “fire up those glutes” and get these powerhouse muscles working. Don’t sit on the problem! 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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HEALTH & FITNESS

HEALTHY COOKING With Chef Mike Darracott

Special Christmas Deep Filled Cherry Mincemeat Pies Serves 12 people

INGREDIENTS FOR THE FILLING 1 x 411g jar of sweet mincemeat 100g glace cherries, chopped FOR SUGAR PASTE 300g sifted plain flour 90g caster sugar Pinch of salt 140g butter or margarine 2 small eggs 4 drops vanilla essence FOR GARNISH 2 tsp granulated sugar for topping off 3 tbsp of icing sugar for decoration

METHOD Preheat your oven to 220째C/428째F 1 Get a bowl and cream together the sugar, egg, and vanilla essence.

2 Next, blend in your butter or magarine and then slowly add your sifted flour in a bit at a time and mix well. Once this is done cover the mixture with cling film and put it in the fridge to chill for about 15-20 minutes.

3 Take your paste out of the fridge and divide it into two pieces. Put half back in the fridge. Then grease a 12 holed deep pie tray and roll out the paste. Cut out 12 circles large enough to fill each hole.

4 Now mix your cherries with the mincemeat and spoon in enough of the mixture to be nearly at the top.

5 Then take out your other half of sugar paste from the fridge and roll out 12 tops for your pies. With any pastry left you can make some simple leaf shapes and place them on the pies for decoration.

6 Place in the oven and bake for around 10-15 minutes.

7 Finally, sprinkle some icing sugar on top of each pie.

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 “MY BIBLE APP NOW HAS A “SAVE” FUNCTION, WHICH WOULD MAKE EVANGELISM A WHOLE LOT EASIER.“

On‐line vs Bent Spine

W

ell done.

You’ve made it this far. Or you’ve started reading from the back like I used to do to save time with Agatha Christie “whodunnits”.

But if you’ve worked your way from the front page to this point in consecutive order, I applaud you.

You’re defying the YouTube zeitgeist, or the MTV generation, or the Twitterati, or whatever they call it nowadays. Yes, you might own an e‐book (well technically you don’t, you rent it long‐term), but I’ll wager you’ve also got real paper‐made books too. And I love you for it.

We consistently hear that printed media is dead: that Kindles have kicked out comics, that Newsstand 92

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apps have put paperboys and paperbacks out of business. Well‐ thumbed second‐handers are things of charity shops, where both book and seller have seen better days, spines bent. I say: not a word of it.

I first thought e‐books were publications about Yorkshire accents, but yes I’ve downloaded a few. I’ve laughed and cooed as I’ve swiped, changing font sizes and screen colours as I go. I’ve even got a Bible app on my phone. It occasionally announces an “update”, which is odd. Has Paul written a new letter to the Geordies? Has Leviticus been revised based on user comments? Have they added Now That’s What I Call Psalms? It turns out my Bible app now has a “save” function, which would make evangelism a whole lot easier. Unless

they mean it saves your place or Bible verse, and not someone else’s soul. But do I still pick up my physical actual in‐your‐hands Bible?

Is the Pope Catholic? Yes, yes he is.

And I’m sure he has a Bible or two around too.

So yes, I read e‐books and e‐zines – I click, I retweet, I share, I like. But to truly unwind, bring me a newspaper. Hand me a magazine to flick through. I’ll see articles that I’d never have found on the interweb.

I’ll gain an awareness that I won’t get from online browsage, where I’m more likely to only read what I know, my interests and prejudices reinforced. With a printed bunch of pages in front of me though, I’ll absorb a little more, I think, of what else is happening.

I’m no beach Kindle‐reader, praying it’s sand‐, water‐ and burglar‐proof. On a train I want a page‐turner, not a screen‐swiper. I want a picture of the author on the back, and the title in nice big letters on the front so other passengers can judge me based on its cover (there’s a saying about that I’m sure).

So keep buying this mag! Call me old‐fashioned, but I like a printed thing where I can go cover‐to‐cover: the long way, through the pages, not the quick way, over the spine. And am I saying all this just to then ask you to buy my books “So A Comedian Walks Into A Church” and “Genesis: The Bibluffer’s Guide”? Of course not. I want you to finish this first and then buy them.

So turn the page, keep reading, and if you really have to be newfangled, then alright, my books are, reluctantly, on Kindle too. 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 to find out more. @paulkerensa

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HUMOUR

TONY VINO

In Vino Veritas experiencing life independently from me. I’m no longer there when he falls over, gets upset, feels happy, shy or discovers something new. Not unless I continue to hang around outside the playground at playtime each day speaking to him through the bars like a rubbish version of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas. No‐one wants that guy for a dad.

His starting school has been as much a marker in my life as it has for him. I am literally back at school again when I drop him off. Walking through the playground old insecurities return as cliques form and I navigate a myriad of new relationships. This time it’s not a question of whether I’m excluded from a game of tag but whether I get invited round for coffee by the cool parents.

Unlike adults, children are totally present in the moment. They don’t over think things. To me Jo Jo’s first day was a moment I agonised over for weeks. I worried about all the potential life shocks that could scar him for life. He was just happy he got to play with a plastic cheetah and had ice cream for pudding.

Thinking back I can’t remember my own first day at school so it mustn’t have been that big a deal for me either. I don’t remember other supposedly seminal moments like my first time riding a bike or my first kiss. I do however remember my first buffet experience. I was eight at my uncles wedding and my mind exploded by the concept that I was free to put whatever I wanted on my plate. No‐one telling me what to eat or what was an acceptable amount of trifle. It was also the first time I ever had Coronation Chicken, which was equally seismic; I’m no royalist but that stuff makes me proud to be British.

In life we just do not know what those experiences that are going to shape us or our loved ones are. All we can do is line up for the buffet and try to not put too much on our plate. The beauty of life and buffets is if you think you’ve had too much; trust me you can take more. n

One Small Step

M

y little boy Jo Jo started school for the first time this year. He’s 15 so it’s about time too (joke – he’s four). It was his first time wearing a uniform, first time charging around a playground and first time eating lunch out of a plastic tray. He was fine; I on the other hand was an emotional wreck. I found myself several times that day walking past the school spying on the playground to see if he was alright. I had an urge to queue up with him at dinner time for moral support and I also quite fancied the idea of eating off a plastic tray. This culinary experience isn’t generally available unless you’re in prison.

When he came home I of course gave him the third degree on how the day went, what he thought of his teacher, what friends he’d made and how many compartments does the tray have anyway. He approached the interrogation in the style of a British POW refusing to answer any questions because the information is “classified” (and he just wanted to watch Rastamouse).

I no longer probe him when he gets home as I’ve realised my need for the minutia of his daily activity comes out of my own neurosis. I want to know the details of his life so I feel the illusion of control. For the first four years of his life I had direct input into where and with whom he spent his time. Behind those school gates my little boy is for the first time

“I’M NO LONGER THERE WHEN HE FALLS OVER, GETS UPSET, FEELS HAPPY, SHY OR DISCOVERS SOMETHING NEW.”

Tony Vino is a professional comedian who straddles the world of comedy clubs, festivals and churches. For more information see www.tonyvino.co.uk. @tonyvino

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COMMENT

JEFF LUCAS

Lucas Aid remember our sins no more. The fire testifies that our sin is real—but the Jesus who sits at the fireside is just as real, and his verdict is trustworthy.

We are forgiven – and this forgiveness is offered to us as we are, not to us as we would like to be.

When Peter had insisted that he alone would be faithful to Jesus, even if everyone else would flee, he was being more than a thoughtless motor‐mouth. I think he was totally sincere in his pledge, which he partly delivered on, misguidedly, when he drew a sword in the garden.

His denial in the courtyard meant that he couldn’t sustain faithfulness – but when he made his vow, he truly believed that he had what it took. Like all of us, he lacked self‐awareness and was blinded to his own limitations.

But as he felt the warmth of those flames, Peter had to learn that recovery from failure involves not only facing it, his sin, but also facing ourselves, the sinner.

Take grace out of the equation, and we might be tempted to hopelessness. But grace welcomes Peter, not the faithful, saintly, strong version of Peter that he wanted to be, but the fickle, cussing, temperamental, impulsive, and weak man that Peter was.

And so it is with us.

Ashamed? Overwhelmed by what you did, and disappointed and hopeless because you did it?

Make a breakfast appointment with Jesus. Now. n

A Fireside Chat

I

t can summon clouds to blight the sunniest of days. It can mug us in a moment, or slowly smother us.

We’ve all experienced it, with the possible exception of those who are criminally psychopathic.

Shame.

We messed up. Failed. Stumbled.

And now, because a time machine is not available, and we can’t go back, but we feel unable to go forward.

Peter, the fisherman who denied Jesus three times, felt like that, even after the resurrection. And so the risen Jesus arrived unannounced at a beach, made a fire, and cooked them breakfast. But before they ate, there was some time with Peter beside the fire.

In John’s gospel, the previous time that Peter was described as being by a fire was when he denied Christ with curses. So was Jesus tormenting

Peter by reminding him of that terrible betrayal?

I don’t think so. The gathered coals of the fire silently said this, loud and clear: the denials happened.

In forgiving us, God makes no attempt to minimize, excuse, or overlook our sin. Peter’s failure was not brushed aside or deemed unimportant.

But the fire shows us that in forgiving, Jesus looks squarely at our sin, names it for what it is, and then forgives. His view of our sin is not blinkered or blurred. Just as the crucified Christ looked at his tormenters and cried out to his Father for their forgiveness, so Jesus looks at the ugliness of our darkest sins and then chooses to pardon us, not with a grace that is forgetful, because our sin slips his mind, but rather because he chooses to

“WE ARE FORGIVEN – AND THIS FORGIVENESS IS OFFERED TO US AS WE ARE, NOT TO US AS WE WOULD LIKE TO BE.”

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Adapted from Jeff’s new bestselling book, ‘Faith in the Fog’, published by Zondervan.

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 One Life

REX/Snap Stills

30. It was weird to see Gene Hackman in his mid‐60s when he is now solidly into his 80s. I was sure he had never aged!

Now look, I know that life goes on and people get old. I get that. It’s just a bit strange when you’ve frozen someone at a certain stage in life, due to a film or similar, and then somehow 21 years has gone past, and they are now, well, old! I can remember when The Firm came out.

I was 21 years old and just finishing university. The world was full of possibilities and it seemed that I had loads of time. Turns out that the world is still full of possibilities but that I don’t actually have loads of time and never really did.

It’s not that I have regrets. I have a beautiful family and I’m married to my childhood sweetheart. I’ve had a roller coaster of a ride when it comes to my work life and I seem to have so far crammed in loads of experiences. However, I’ve realised that in my head, I have frozen my mental image of myself at my early 20s. In some senses this is good. It means I still take risks, life still excites me and I haven’t grown old,

“IT JARRED ME TO REALISE THAT THE CO-STAR WAS NOW IN HER 50S WHEN ON THE SCREEN SHE WAS BARELY 30.”

REX/A Rodriguez/BEI

I

love watching a good movie.

There’s nothing like putting your feet up and immersing yourself into a plot. I love them all; thrillers, action, sci‐fi, comedy. I even don’t mind watching the odd Rom‐Com with a cup of herbal tea (for those at our recent men’s festival “The Gathering” you’ll know what I’m talking about).

So, the other day, once I had finished work and doing a few things around the house, Karen and I decided to watch what is now a 21‐ year‐old film called The Firm with the one and only Tom Cruise. It’s a cracking film so no complaints there, but halfway through I started to feel a little bit disturbed. I had this kind of niggling thought going on somewhere deep inside the old grey matter that went something like this: “You are seeing them as they were, 21 years ago…”

Firing up the smart phone, I went onto Wikipedia and looked the film up. I couldn’t believe it. It’s hard to explain but it jarred me to realise that the co‐star was now in her 50s when on the screen she was barely

“TO QUOTE THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION: “GET BUSY LIVING OR GET BUSY DYING…” ” moany and cynical in my outlook.

In other senses however, it’s not so good, especially when you kick a ball around with your mates and get an injury that doesn’t clear up as fast as it once did (or in fact never really gets better at all).

I guess the message that hit home for me was that none of us have any rehearsal time. My twitter bio has a phrase that I picked up from my Dad. He once turned round to me when I was contemplating undertaking some sort of challenge and said: “Nothing ever happened to a guy who didn’t have a go, son.” I like that… As he walked away I could hear him mutter. “Better to be a has been, than a never was…”

I like that even more. So for the next however many years I have, I will be characterised by trying to be a “has been” and cramming in more adventures. To quote the Shawshank Redemption: “Get busy living or get busy dying…”

Next edition I’ll be reporting back from my attempts to take up skateboarding again. 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. @carlfbeech and @cvmen

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Sorted Issue 43 Nov_Dec 14 v3_Layout 1 06/10/2014 22:29 Page 100