We Do Adventure

Four Weddings and a Funeral is a classic Brit flick; it also seems like a reasonable ratio for matches and dispatches. In the last year we were in the UK we went to four weddings, although we attended two funerals. However, here we’ve been confronted by human mortality in a way we’ve never had to face before. We have a friend who’s been here six months, just a little longer than us. In that time she’s attended four funerals and a wedding. Not a month has gone by without us hearing of an unexpected death within the family or friends of people we’re getting to know. It’s all quite sobering. Today as we stood outside a graveyard in the biting cold our friend said: well, if I’ve learnt one thing this year it’s that you don’t know when you’re going to die. It’s the sort of line that could have been said to bring a bit of black humour into a bleak situation. But the reality is we’re all struck but the utter reality of the situation. It’s not so much that you’re left thinking ‘will it be me...

"No, I don't want to battle from beginning to end, I don't want a cycle of recycled revenge, I don't want to follow death and all of his friends." I blogged about these Coldplay lyrics before but I mention them again because since our move here we have not been far from death. There are several reasons for that. First was the tragic death of a 30 year-old man from the church we are attending in a car accident, just two days after we arrived. Although we hadn't met him he was a good friend to many of the people we are working with. Second is the custom here of posting notices announcing deaths on walls and lampposts, A4-sized obituaries carrying a photo of the deceased, clearly showing their religious background. In Mostar they usually either have a green border, for Muslims, or black border, for Catholics. Yesterday as we saw a family sticking another announcement to the wall Rowan observed it makes you realise how many people die all the time. Lastly, there i...

I write songs, I might go so far as to call myself a song writer. It is perhaps surprising, then, that I am so poor at picking up the lyrics of other people's music. Getting new music is a passion and Rowan has to put up with repeated over-playing of my latest albums. Occasionally, she'll pass an opinion or ask that I stop playing a particular CD. Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends got a mixture of the two the other day, still less than a week after its release! Coldplay 's latest album had, to be fair, been experiencing serious back-to-back outings. In the course of this discussion Rowan asked for an explanation of the title, which does seem a little long and sprawling. I couldn't give one. But last night it came to me. I was walking to a rehearsal listening to the final track on my iPod. Suddenly I heard the lyrics: "No, I don't want to battle from beginning to end, I don't want a cycle of recycled revenge, I don't want to follow death and all...