Floods... and ipods.....and other news.

What on earth is going on with the weather? I live in landlocked Birmingham, Central England and have just suffered the most horrific traffic ever... ever..!

I set out from my house to travel 8 miles - in an hour and a half I'd travelled just 4 miles. An inch of rain fell in an hour and flash floods gridlocked the city centre causing Britain's second city's road network to grind to a halt.

What a ridiculous state of affairs. Apparently the drainage system here is so poor that the roads can't cope - and don't I know it!!

On a brighter note, apple today announced that it was launching the ipod video flipping heck!



The news has provoked an incredible response to the number of geeky people I talk to - the most common response so far being "oh no, not another thing I have to buy..."

I have to confess, I am anything but a geek - in fact, I'm useless at anything that requires more than a modicum of tech knowledge. I can use a dvd player, I know how to tune the tele... blimey, I even know how to post a blog [ here, I have to confess, I don't even know how to set up a blog...] .. anything else and I'm useless!

I have to confess, I LOVE this format for a webpage - I wasn't to keen on the homogenous style, but it's much easier to navigate, far less cluttered and more interactive. Please feel very free to comment, I'd be delighted to hear more from you all - though I have to say, the feedback has been great of late.

On a completely different note, I'm off to Swaziland in late October for a week and a bit. I'll be visiting an AIDS orphanage that is funded by a group of churches - the church I attend being one. This isn't a patronising visit, it's a real trip to look at this project properly because I believe in it. I seriously want to raise some funds for it because it makes a huge difference to the number of children that can be housed. It really is as serious as life and death - or life or death. I'm part of a group of trustees that manages a curch budget for the charitable trust of the church. I'm proud to say that much is given to projects like this - but whatever is given, it's never enough.

I hope that the trip will be something that will be life changing. We take our lives here in the West for granted. I'm tired of the same old, same old and want to see more, feel more. This will be a huge adventure and I'm expecting the unexpected.

It's one thing to feel compassion when you see disaster at a distance on the tv. I wonder whether this will be a pandora's box? Why do I feel so drawn to these people? I am so excited, yet so aware of the devastation. 48% of the population are infected. How on earth can a population survive when half live under the terrible shadow of HIV?