If we ignore the football the weekend was a cool one with lots of quality time spent with friends and loads of excuses to eat, drink and be merry – and it’s still weeks until Christmas!

Friday night we did the fireworks thing over at Terry’s. The children loved this and, if I’m honest, so did the adults!

On Saturday we celebrated Sheena’s 30th. At least, I think we did, but the DJ referred to both Serena and Sheila as being 30 too – maybe it was a treble celebration! This was a great time and it was fantastic to celebrate with Sheena and her friends!

Talking of friends it was really cool to meet up with Sam and Laura and their partners, Mark and Rob. When I was a youth worker in Nailsea these 2 great people were people we naturally got on with and enjoyed spending loads of time with. More than 10 years on I find it still such a great privilege to be able to still spend time laughing together. It’s a pity we don’t see more of each other, but last night was really cool. I actually feel quite privileged that, years after being their youth worker, that great people like Laura, Sam and Sheena still speak to us and spend time with us. I suspect they are just humouring us and enjoying the observation of the onset of old age! Friendships like this, though, seem important to me.

Today was a good end to the weekend. We celebrated Becky’s 10th birthday after church in the Noodle Bar. Just as last Sunday in the curry house, there were around 30 of us all together. Experiences like this are really cool for the kids, and I’m seriously starting to think this kind of thing should be compulsory after church! All this getting home for lunch crap is a pain and prevents people from chatting – lets just go out each time; it stops the need for washing up an cooking too!

As I reflect on the weekend I have suddenly realised that my outlook and priorities as I get older seem to be very people based. This is quite a change from the Rob who only a little while ago would have been totally task and target based. Relationships are becoming more and more important – relationships with friends and a desire to take any and every opportunity there is to meet up. I find these time to catch up to be key. Meeting up and catching up is great as it sees so easy to lose touch so quickly. Time flies,as they say … maybe we just need to land sometimes so that we can all get off and take the time for those important things, and people, of life.

So … if you fancy meeting up, get in touch – especially if you are in some warm climate and wnt to pay my air fare to0!