Today would have been Andy’s birthday.

I don’t want to wallow in sadness because that’s not what Andy would have wanted. Instead I want to highlight a few things that he influenced. So today, if you find yourself thinking about Andy, think about these things:

Carol Jarvis’ solo album is on pre-order at Amazon and you can order it here. Carol plays trombone wonderfully, and from a brief conversation with her I know that Andy changed instruments in a brass band so that she could take over, and encouraged and mentored her. She is donating the profits to MacMillan Cancer Support.

Stuart Pendred has been one of Andy’s mates since childhood. He’s now a hugely accomplished singer (yes, you are Stu…) and will be the baritone soloist at a performance of Brahms’ A German Requiem on Saturday 20th March 2010 at St Paul’s, Onslow Square, London. Find out more here.

Stu is also involved in running for Andy’s Angels who will be running again in 2010 in aid of the Bone Cancer Research Trust. The first race they’re hoping to compete in is the Oxford Town & Gown 10k on 16th May 2010. Find out more about entry here. I believe that the team are hoping to compete in more races during the year.

The BCRT was a cause that Andy was devoted to, partly because so little is known about Bone Cancer. At the time of writing over £5,400 has been committed in donations towards the £10,000 target that he had set himself to raise. If you want to donate or sponsor the runners, please do so here.

My own family, MrsG-T, MiniG-T, MicroG-T and even BabeG-T had all met Andy and all were touched by the great example that he showed of dealing with life and its ups and downs.

And finally, think about Andy’s amazing family – his wife, three daughters, son, sister, brother-in-law and nephew. They’ve handled the changes in the last couple of years with tremendous dignity, great humour and been unfailingly lovely. As a family we’ve hugely enjoyed spending time with them all.

Guys, I think you’re all great. Thanks for being a great tribute to our shared memory of Andy Greig.

Happy birthday Pal!

You might be wondering why I’m writing a post about Electric Vehicles, popularly referred to as EVs, having just received my lastest diesel company car.

Joe Simpson has written a post over here about Renault’s advertising of its strategy to move towards affordable and usable electric cars in the next couple of years, and others have commented on the cleverness or otherwise of Renault’s campaign.

However, my concern comes from the short sentence that is seemingly overlooked,

Renault – and Ghosn – are under fire in the French press for focusing too much on these electric models that are still two years away, and hurting sales of the current range.

The potential move towards EVs is a step-change in cars, the first significant change in the basic fundamentals of the personal automobile in perhaps one hundred years. It’s a different technology, which will require a different national infrastructure to provide charging points instead of petrol stations, and it’s an infrastructure that will probably be completely independent of the current one. This is not like adding a separate diesel nozzle to existing petrol pumps. In the immediate future you’re not going to recharge an electric car in the five or so minutes it takes to refuel your current vehicle.

Where am I going with this?

This could be the CD to the turntable, the DVD player to the VHS video but with the car. It’s the same end – you travel at your own time and speed – but in a completely different format, and with a significantly larger cost to the end-user.

So, if Renault (and others) are successful with their electric vehicles what’s going to happen to the market for petrol and diesel cars? Who’s going to buy a current model knowing that they’ll be facing something like 100% depreciation in two to five years?

If EVs take off, the market for petrol and diesel vehicles is likely to crash very quickly in the same way that VHS recorders did. This will potentially leave countries with massive fleets of unwanted cars as the populace move to EVs. How will the car manufacturers manage the transition?

I have an old turntable in the loft. Occasionally I drag it out, plug it in and listen to some vinyl LPs. Is this what’s going to happen to the car in its current form? Will some of us have their current (or next) car stashed in their garage, and bring it out for the odd drive, revelling in the past and the memories that go with it? If so, I’ll be swapping the Insignia for a nice V6 Capri. And maybe a classic V8 Range Rover. Best chat to MrsG-T about building that triple garage I guess.

Which car would you choose to keep?

When MrsG-T and I married and merged our CD collections we were surprised that of the (roughly) 350 CDs there were only four duplicates. As the years have passed, children and pets have been added, bills increase inexorably and responsibilities get greater, our CD collection has stayed fairly static.

Of course we’ve added bits and pieces, but the one thing that’s beginning to bother me is the lack of new spiritual music we’ve added in recent years.

We stopped going to most music-oriented Christian festivals ages ago and seem to have lost touch with the ’scene’. As it were.

So, anyone want to post recommendations in the comments for stuff we should be listening to?

We like a wide range of musical styles from Bach to Queen, JTQ to The Who, Diana Krall to Oscar Peterson. Any ideas?

The underlying point of his talk was that without integrity our society will collapse.

He pointed out that British society is generally very cynical about the people who rule over us, illustrated by the joke about telling that a politician is lying by observing their lips move.

This cynicism has led to our society being sceptical about the motives of those around us, business, marketing, bosses, leaders. We now tend to assume that they have aims to benefit themselves at the expense of the ordinary people like us.

Our society needs to change; and big change comes though small changes. We need a change deep within people where they stop living for themselves and stop being selfish.

Society is given to pleasure-seeking, but in the past it was more about doing the right thing. We need to swing the pendulum back towards what is right.

Perhaps we need to start living for an altruistic goal, for a bigger ideal than our own pleasure. Business should be for the benefit of society, not just to line the pockets of shareholders.

And where does this all start?

In the heart of YOU. (And me.)

We the church need a greater passion for the people around us.

If Jesus died for everybody, then everybody is as valuable as Jesus.

Laurence suggested that every Christian should see themselves as a secret pastor. We all have our own small congregation of friends, family, work colleagues. We need to love them and care for them, but exhibit integrity in every area of our lives.

So there’s the challenge:

How far does the love of your church go?

How far does your love go?

Recent events got slightly out of hand and, to cut a long story short, I had to jump into a swimming pool with my iPhone 3G in the pocket of my shorts. It hasn’t survived the experience well and now won’t charge up.

So, I called Apple who told me to take it to one of their retail stores.

I don’t live particularly close to any of them (the nearest is about 40 minutes away), so I waited until I was going to be nearby and tried to book an appointment at the Genius Bar.

No appointments were available, but I went to the store anyway, only to be turned away by the Concierge.

I have now tried twice more, but there are (I kid you not) no appointments available in the entire week at the store I’ll be near.

So this evening I called Apple and spoke to a helpful guy called Michael. He was extremely informative, explaining how I could mail the phone in to them and they would repair or replace it for the princely sum of £146.13.

Having no other option, I agreed to this, and everything was going swimmingly until the question of payment came up.

Incredibly, Apple will only accept payment by a major credit card for this service. I don’t have a credit card, will not take one out (I don’t need an easy way to fall into debt) and I’m not about to use someone else’s card as I was warned that in the event the phone was ‘irrepairable’ the card would be charged the full cost of a replacement handset. That’s about £440…

So I’m left in the position of having an unusable handset, no realistic way of getting an appointment at an Apple Store and can’t pay for a by-mail repair.

What kind of customer service is that? I was able to sign up for the contract and purchase the handset using a debit card (in an Apple Store!), but I can’t get it fixed using the exact same card.

The same issue has ensured that I can’t use Apple’s MobileMe service.

What other company actively stops their customers from expanding their revenue spend?

I’m disgusted.

What does a really ordinary guy do to understand his value within the world?

A man, I think, generally wants (or needs) to feel that he provides something worthwhile to the people around him. It’s a feeling gained by some innate sense of worth or value – that life would be worse for others if you weren’t around.

I’ve met a few people this fortnight who have exceptional talents – an ultra-distance runner who will be representing his country later this year, a magician who works in schools and churches and who kept my children amazed for a good 30 minutes over lunch, a man who has spent most of his adult life writing children’s songs that are very well known – and suddenly felt incredibly worthless.

Note that it’s not because any of these men went out of their way to make me feel small. That all came from inside. Everyone has talents but some seem to be more highly valued or ’special’.

People like me need to be making a difference.

So I turned to God last night, asking “why am I here? I’m an ordinary guy – why do I exist?” God answered through 1 Peter 2 v 5.

“And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple.” (NLT)

About twenty years ago I worked for a summer at an outdoor centre in Scotland and one of the many tasks that I turned my hand to was building a stone wall. I had to pick stones from around the grounds and somehow make them fit into a wall shape using mortar to bond them together.

The stones were all differently shaped, differently sized, almost like people…

But twenty years later that wall is still standing, still retaining the hillside that we’d cut into to create a car park. And if you took one of the stones out, that part of the wall would be severely weakened if it didn’t actually fall down.

So I’m going to continue to be an odd-shaped, odd-sized stone. And hopefully try to make a difference in the world around me.

If you pray, please pray for my great friend Andy (and his family) this week. This is not a one-off ‘throw one up’ kind of request – I need to find people who will pray consistently and faithfully for the family.

Andy is currently going through a course of chemotherapy to treat cancer in his lungs. In a little over a year he has already had a course of chemo, a knee replacement due to bone cancer and radiotherapy.

Tonight (Monday) he arrives in hospital in Oxford, UK, to commence another course and has specifically asked for prayer for the following:

• Cannula: last time out there was a problem with the cannula (the thing stuck in the arm/hand which allows fluids to enter the body) and it took seven attempts to get a replacement one in. So, pray for GOOD VEINS and a VERY GOOD VENEPUNCTURIST.
• The the CANNULA WILL REMAIN GOOD and stay like that until he gets to go home.
• GENERAL WELLBEING & PEACE OF MIND. Andy has to stay in the ward from tonight until probably Friday. He’s not even allowed to walk to the hospital shop.
• Pray that THE DRUGS WILL BE EFFECTIVE WITHOUT MAKING HIM ILL.
• And finally THAT HE GETS HOME ASAP!

I’d like to add some points:

• Pray for Andy’s WIFE, SARA and his four children (age 8-17) who are bearing this with immense good humour. They are lovely, lovely people who genuinely don’t deserve to be coping with this, but who are doing so admirably.
• Pray that HE WILL NOT GET BORED!
• Pray that SARA BUYS MORE MOTORCYCLE MAGAZINES. Andy misses riding his BMW bike. A lot…

I’ll try to update here with information as and when I get it, but you could have a look at Andy’s own blog or even support Andy’s Angels.

“First of all, the only person who can really initiate change in the direction of the organization/church is the senior leader. The staff, the leaders, the volunteers, etc… can turn the wheel all they want, but if the senior leader is not fully committed to taking things a new direction…….then forget it!”

I think you should jump over here and read the full thing.

I caught this on my friend Johnny Laird’s Blog and it tugged at a heartstring. If you’re Scottish, and in ‘exile’ may it do the same for you.