Today has been a London day.

First it was great to catch up with Yvonne Criddle again who is now based in Church House and is one of the National Youth Officer’s for the Church of England. I have known Yvonne since my time in Nailsea when she was the Diocesan Youth Officer for the Bath and Wells Diocese.

We were able to chat about current youth culture, the church, youth leaders in the church, the youth strategy and many other things. We also had a great lunch in the Church Commissioners at Millbank.

I think with the youth strategy endorsed by Synod and a new forward thinking Archbishop means the Church of England has an exciting time ahead of it. I await with great anticipation.

After lunch I traveled across London to meet Allan Moxham at EA Media Consultancy. He is a very enthusiastic guy who passionately believes Christians have great newsworthy stories that others would be interested in but we are just to wary to give to the press. I must say I do agree. We should, as Christians, make a bigger impact with our stories so people can see that Christianity is alive and kicking in this land.

Currently, YFC have a contract with EAMC for our PR which was why we met today. We do, I think, have a good partnership which can be strengthened.

By the way – if you want to write press releases, or articles or even letters to the editor of your local newspaper then the EAMC can help you. At its resources pages here there are good helpful guidelines to get you going. Look them up.

And the fox I hear you say ….

Well, no doubt you have heard the stuff on the news tonight with the hunt supporters gaining access to the House of Commons and the trouble outside with the police. Church house, where I met with Yvonne, is of course at Westminster so on my way to EA Media I got stuck with lots of hunt supporters which caused the police to stop people trying to work to get to their tube stations

I must admit this annoyed a bit, well quite a lot actually. I thought to myself I do not mind people protesting but if it prevents others and harms others then it does not seem right. When I got home and saw the violence I just stood in disbelief that what was a demonstration about fox hunting became a bloody battle scene. To know that I missed the aggro by 30 mins. left me feeling weirdly cold.

Seeing innocent people, in the wrong place at the wrong time, trying to go about their normal business being hit ‘by mistake’ by the police left a chilling reminder of circumstances and time being very closely interlinked. In short, I was thankful that I was out of there and away from the trouble. If my meeting with Allan had been 30 mins. later I might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It reminds me that split seconds and timings can have different impacts on our lives; whereas most of the time we like to think we are in control. We may be deluding ourselves there.