I have to say – today is a gloriously glorious morning. The sun is out, the sky is blue and the temperature is a pleasantly pleasant 12 degrees Celsius (53 degrees Fahrenheit). Positively shirtsleeve weather.

Apologies if this edition of the Weakly News is somewhat tardy arriving in your virtual mailboxes. We were up in town last night and arrived back very late. Then, it was off to the gym at the crack of dawn (well, 10.00) and since I didn’t open my eyes until about 9.30 this morning there was, regrettably, no time to write the usual rubbish. So, apologies to those of you who may have been anticipating its arrival before now.

Last night, as I say, we were up to London to see part two of the outstanding production of Nicholas Nickleby, the first part of which we saw just before Christmas and about which I wrote at the time. The second part was every bit as good and finished off an outstanding evening. We met up in town with Sue and Stuart and Dave and Sue Walton for a pre-theatre dinner at what turned out to be an outstanding Turkish restaurant just off Covent Garden about 5.00. Although the service was nothing to write home about (so I won’t) the food was exquisite – I had slow, oven cooked shoulder of lamb which simply fell off the bone and everyone else similarly commended their particular choices. Then, since the service had been somewhat on the slow side, we had to sprint along Shaftesbury Avenue to get to the Geilgud Theatre by 7.00 for the performance. In the blink of an eye it was 10.30 and we then had to sprint down to Piccadilly Circus to catch the tube to Paddington and, as it turned out, the second to last train home. But, in spite of having to expend far too much energy transporting ourselves from place to place, the meal, performance and company was outstanding.

Interestingly, I had speculated on whether there would be a “Previously in Nicholas Nickleby….” introduction as one gets on many television programmes nowadays. Since it had been more than a month since we had seen part one (many people actually do both sessions in one sitting with a two hour break between the matinee and evening performance) I was hoping that someone might be able to remind my feeble brain of what had transpired in part one. To my delight and relief, they did! (And, in the event, I did manage to remember much of what had happened).

Had a couple of snippets of information concerning the latest activities of our favourite UN diplomat in Liberia and attach a couple of recent photos which have come my way. As you can see, he is “inspecting the troops” in the first and awarding medals to the Nigerian peacekeepers in the second. Great to see someone doing a good job!

And finally, I ran across the following the other day concerning Microsoft’s somewhat tardy response to a support call.

Microsoft takes 10 years to return support call Tuesday 15th January 2008 We've all sat by the phone waiting for technical support desks to return our call, but a US blogger claims it took Microsoft a staggering 10 years to follow-up on a call he made in 1998. The blogger, known only as Bic, says his parents were startled when they received a call at 11pm on 8 January. As it was so late at night, they decided to leave the call to voicemail. The message was from Microsoft support, checking to see if their son's PC problem had been solved. There was just one problem: Bic had moved out of his parent's years before. The dutiful parents informed their son of the call, who first assumed it must be a hoax. But having given the matter some thought, he realised it might indeed be genuine. "I recalled that I had called Microsoft not once, but twice (possibly as many as three different times)," he writes on his blog. "I remember in the past year or so when I called Microsoft and the problem was not resolved that Microsoft did call me back the next day to see if I made any progress in my little computer crisis (which I thought was super cool of them. I was really impressed). But wait a second, or wait 315,569,260 seconds, Microsoft hadn't done this the first time I called, and I called many years ago. But that must have been when I was living at home with my parents, which is why they called me at my parent's phone number." Bic even has his own theory on how this calamitous cock-up occurred. "On 7 January, 1998 a tech support person typed into their database to call me back the next day... but instead of typing 1/8/98 they typed 1/8/08. "Instead of typing the '9' right next to it they typed '0'. Microsoft had called me back 10 years later!" Support for Windows 98 officially ended in July 2006, and whether Microsoft actually solved the decade-old problem remains a mystery.

If nothing else, I suppose it demonstrates committment, even if it was ten years late!

Love to you all,

Greg

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I think we’ve had this one before (at least it seems familiar) but what the heck?

As a young minister, I was asked by a funeral director to hold a graveside service for a homeless man, with no family or friends. The funeral was to be held at a cemetery way back in the country, and this man would be the first to be laid to rest there.

As I was not familiar with the backwoods area, I became lost; and being a typical man did not stop for directions. I finally arrived an hour late. I saw the backhoe and the crew, who was eating lunch, but the hearse was nowhere in sight.

I apologized to the workers for my tardiness, and stepped to the side of the open grave, where I saw the vault lid already in place. I assured the workers I would not hold them up for long, but this was the proper thing to do. The workers gathered around, still eating their lunch. I poured out my heart and soul.

As I preached the workers began to say "Amen", "Praise the Lord", and "Glory"! I preached and preached, like I'd never preached before: from Genesis all the way to Revelations.

I closed the lengthy service with a prayer and walked to my car.

As I was opening the door and taking off my coat, I overheard one of the workers saying to another, "I ain't never seen anything like that before and I've been putting in septic tanks for 20 years."

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A man comes running to the doctor shouting and screaming in pain. "Please doctor you've got to help me. I've been stung by a bee."  

"Don't worry;" says the doctor, "I'll put some cream on it."  

"You will never find that bee. It must be miles away by now."  

"No, you don't understand!" answers the doctor, "I'll put some cream on the place you were stung."  

"Oh! It happened in the garden in back of my house."  

"No, no, no!" says the doctor getting frustrated, "I mean on which part of your body did that bee sting you."  

"On my finger!" screamed the man in pain. "The bee stung me on my finger and it really hurts."  

"Which one?" the doctor.  

"How am I supposed to know? All bees look the same to me!"

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A bus stops and two Italian men get on. They seat themselves, and engage in animated conversation. The lady sitting behind them ignores their conversation at first, but her attention is galvanized when she hears one of the men say the following:

''Emma come first. I come. Dennis come and Dennis come again. I come again. Two asses, they come together again. I come again and pee twice. Then I come once-a-more.''

''You foul-mouthed swine,'' retorted the lady indignantly. ''In this country we don't talk about our sex lives in public.''

''Hey, coola down lady,'' said the man. ''Imma just tella my friend howa to spella Mississippi.''

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