Happy New Year

Christmas has been great - lots of time spent with friends and family. I have just returned from a brief trip to visit my family in Norfolk and I have enjoyed looking around my home town seeing what has and hasn't changed.

Neil and I have spent some time thinking about the last year and I will probably post some more stuff soon. Just a couple of things before I forget, though... I really need to get cracking on my next essay and I am going to have a look at the way media influences life expectations of young people. I want to have a look at the impact of films, specifically films with a theme of redemption and hope. It would be cool if anyone could let me know any useful websites that review films from a Christian perspective... or any books that may be useful. One thing I want to look at is how immediate the media is and whether it gives us time to properly and theologically reflect on the things that we see. That is why I am particularly interested in websites as it is a much quicker way of publishing thoughts, ideas, reviews and reflections... any thoughts would be good.

One last thing - although we don't have children, me and Neil often talk about ways that we would parent our children if we were to have any and we were talking about how to deal with all of the stuff and presents that are accumulated at Christmas and whether it is helpful for children to be bombarded with so much all in one go. Although I don't want children to be surrounded by possessions, I like the idea of giving them experiences and creating memories and I wondered whether we could get people to buy vouchers or give money toward trips and events that could happen later in the year, so they don't get loads of stuff at once and get treats throughout the year. Just wanted to record the idea really, but any thoughts from others would be great....