We Do Adventure

You have to be careful what you read in the news. It can give you a very unbalanced perspective on things. Today as I sat in a multi-agency round table meeting to discuss Roma issues in a village school near Jajce I caught myself thinking: I can't imagine this happening in France. I'm aware this is probably very unfair to all the un-xenophobic French whose views are not presented in the British media. However I was struck with the contrast between reading recent stories of deportations and sitting in a room with representatives from the local social services, local government, OSCE, EUFOR and others discussing issues around education with a group of Roma parents. Here were people trying to make life better. That, at least, is the optimistic view. Listening to the realities of the struggles this community faces it's easy to wonder if life will ever change. This evening I read a less than hopeful article about the future of the whole country . With such big problems in need o...

Nine years ago yesterday Rowan and I sat on a beach in Crete talking about the future. It was one of those moments that changes the way you see things from then on. For me it was the first time I realised I wanted to move on and do something different (well, sort of the same-but-different) from what I'd been doing up to that point. We came back from the beach to a text telling us a plane had crashed in New York and walked into a hotel bar to join a crowd watching live TV coverage minutes before the second plane crashed into the Twin Towers. The world changed that day. But for all the things that were different in the post-911 world what we were doing wasn't much changed, at least not dramatically so. Until two years ago. Two years ago today we arrived in Mostar , after an epic road trip across Europe, to start doing something the same-but-different in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was a life change unlike any I'd imagined, although Rowan had spent half her life wanting to d...

Cut and bruised we have returned from winter preparations at the apartment we'll be moving to sometime over the next month or so. I once learned to chop wood – and even got paid to do so – but that was more than two decades ago. Rowan had never wielded an ax in anger! Neither of us cut the wood pictured here. We bought it pre-chopped. However, as is the way here, it was all just dumped in the street outside the building and we had to stack it neatly in a dry place. The wood is destined for the hot place pictured to the right of the ageing Electrolux cooker. That's our new stove. It'll serve as the main source of heat for us this winter. The fancy looking contraption that looks like a boy racer's exhaust should, we're told help it to chuck out a bit more heat. While I might know how to chop a log or two I have to confess my fire-starting skills are distinctly less developed. Okay, so I'm suddenly remembering a spot of petrol-assisted bonfire starting and if ...

“Mr Writer, why don't you tell it like it is? Why don't you tell it like it really is? Before you go on home...” Yesterday afternoon, as the Stereophonics sung these words in my ear, I had one of those moments of conscience. Am I guilty of not telling it like it is? Come to think of it do I really know what it is like? The ‘it’ is probably life in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the land of contradictions that is broadly the subject of this blog; our life and work in Mostar being the particular focus. I am aware, often painfully so, that our life here is nothing like that of a great many of the population. For one, I have a Passport that allows me to live and work around Europe. Bosnian Passport holders need an expensive visa just to visit the UK. Such restrictions affect how you see life’s possibilities. My brother commented on the video I made of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s World Cup playoff defeat to Portugal that at times I could have been Alan Green. Sometimes I do feel more like a c...

Never underestimate the power of a late night conversation. There is the tale I would retell here – and a tale worth telling it is – but time does not permit me to delve into the details. However I cannot let an auspicious anniversary pass with drawing attention to one of the more defining dialogues of my life. It is three years to the day to when a few friends hijacked the small hours to ambush my comfortable consumerism. It was a battering. I was left under no illusions about my shallowness; with no excuses or adequate explanations for my seeming aversion for getting my hands dirty. That was then. Now, almost six months into a new life, things are different. I have taken giant strides toward meeting the challenges laid down for me. I won’t claim to be there yet but I’m definitely moving in the right direction. And so to my, discretely, unnamed assailants I owe a huge debt of thanks. We’ve often joked about that evening but it truly had a profound and lasting effect. I know it was pre...

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...

We have a leaving date - 8th September, if you're asking! - and that does funny things to you. It's a cut off, a full stop. It means that for somethings if they don't happen by then they won't happen. Explaining what exactly is going on in my head isn't that easy: I want to go but there is a huge cost to leaving some things behind. All of this means I'm leaving with a heightened sense of 'carpe diem'. And so last night we were in London, listening to Christine Caine speak at Hillsong church , before taking in the delights of The Cans Festival in Leake Street. Christine's message couldn't have been more suited to our situation. She spoke about starting A21 because she saw a need, and of the continuous cost of choosing to step up into the next thing God puts in front of you. She spoke of long hours of unseen, unrecognised work and the character it builds. It was encouraging and inspiring. But from one of the UK's most forward looking church we ...

Last night I finished reading a book that I'd started a couple of weeks ago, sitting on an old BA 737 flying to Sarajevo. It shouldn't have taken that long to finish; it was a slim volume. Nevertheless, I felt like I was fighting, page by page, to conquer 'The Ragamuffin Gospel' - that is, until I reached chapter nine. Suddenly a book that had seemed slightly disjointed and not much in tune with my life experience was speaking straight at me, articulating my feelings with a clarity I doubt I could have mustered myself. It was suggesting many between the age of thirty and sixty experience a 'second call' - Rowan and I sit very much at the younger end of that spectrum! "The second call invites us to serious reflection of the nature and quality of our faith in the gospel of grace, our hope in the new and not yet, and our love for God and people. The second call is a summons to a deeper, more mature commitment of faith where the naiveté, first fervour, and unte...