Getting Closer

Good Morning Everybody!

All have a good Easter? I did. Went to the South Lakes, and do you know what, we had the best weather ever. All the forecasters foretold of wet, wind, snow, you name it and what did we find when we got there? Well granted it was a little cold, but wrapped up warm we were fine. It was dry, it was sunny and above all it was full of fantastic fresh air and lots of room to put it in.

Ravenglass, it's on the South West Coast of the Cumbrian Peninsular. They have a steam train there that runs from the town up into the hills to Eskdale, at the foot of ScaFell Pike, highest mountain in England I'm told. It's a miniature narrow gauge line and takes about 40 minutes each way (at a top speed of about 20mph mind you). Of course being hardy creatures we sat outside; two tea shirts, a thick coat, scarf and hat ... but what fantastic views. Who cares about the cold!

Went for a walk up the fell side so we could get a better view of the valley (I like a challenge). Seriously though, my left foot was giving me problems (sure there's a film title in there somewhere?), so I sat on a rock, took my boots and socks off, and I'm telling you it was positively warm in the sunshine, surrounded as we were by snow covered mountains. Bloomin great! I'd recommend anyone to visit the place. And quiet too, not flooded with tourists as yet, like it is further over to the West, Windermere, Ambleside and the rest.

On the way back on Sunday we wanted to go over Hardknott Pass, one of the steepest in the Lakes, then Wrynose, which if I'm not mistaken is even steeper but one of the local mystics (well actually the girl working in the ticket office) told us that there was "snow in them there hills!". So we decided to give that route a miss not wanting to upset the Gods an'all.

Well enough of my mini-holiday stories and back to the real reason for this posting...

I mentioned a little while back the subject of alumni e-Mail, and I said that we were busy beavering away in the background trying to come up with a solution that offered more than just email forwarding, what we currently have inside friends@hope. Well we are making steady progress I believe. First we have now approval in principal to proceed with a pilot (it will cost us a small amount to set the service up you see, and we need to be careful that we are spending our money wisely). Second I'll be meeting with our experts in the IT Department over the next week or so to discuss all the technical complexities and stuff involved with getting this thing off the ground.

We now have a mock-up from which to assess the system and how it will work in practice and finally, we are looking at how we can better integrate the service into the existing community site.

So keep watching and checking back, and I will let you know progress as and when I can ...

Bye for now

Ray

A Sufi story from the Middle East

Mula (could have been Nassradin?) came upon a frowning man walking along the road to town. "What’s wrong?" he asked. The man held up a tattered bag and moaned, "All that I own in this wide world barely fills this miserable, wretched sack."

"Too bad," said Mula, and with that, he snatched the bag from the man’s hands and ran down the road with it.

Having lost everything, the man burst into tears and, more miserable than before, continued walking. Meanwhile, Mula quickly ran around the bend and placed the man’s sack in the middle of the road where he would have to come upon it.

When the man saw his bag sitting in the road before him, he laughed with joy, and shouted, "My sack! I thought I’d lost you!"

Watching through the bushes, Mula chuckled. "Well, that’s one way to make someone happy!"

An Easter Poem

Hi Everybody,

I am only writing a mini blog because I dont want to push our little Andy to far down the page. I thought as Easter is just around the corner (Sunday 23rd) I would track down a simple but chirpy poem.

Here goes...

Bunny rabbits wiggle,

So much they make me giggle.

They wiggle their ears,

They wiggle their nose,

The tail on their rear,

Wiggles too, I suppose.

And just when I say "Stop wiggling, stop!"

They wiggle all over, and take a big hop!

Happy Easter!!

If you like the poem and would like to read more click here.

Katie :)

My time at hope so far!

A message from Andy Mair follows. Andy is a secondary school student who is visiting us on a Work Placement. As you can read from his message the Development and Graduate Association Team are only one of the university departments that he will visit during his time here. All in all he seems to be having an extremely interesting time. We wish him 'all the best' with his future studies and hopefully sometime in the future we will meet up with him again; perhaps after he gets through with all that A-Level Chemistry, Biology and Maths ... Phew!


"Hi,
I've been here at Hope since Monday the 10th and am here till Wednesday the 19th. I'm 14 years old and in the 4th year or year 10 at Lymm High School. I'm here at Hope on my work experience and am having a ball! Everyone's been so kind. On Monday I started off by meeting Bishop Ian which was really nice and he was very interested in what I was here doing and what I hoped to get out of the work placement. After this I spent a short amount of time in Careers before going to see Carol in accommodation. Carol gave me a tour of the Campus and an insight into both student life and the history of this beautiful University. In the afternoon I spent some more time in Careers before leaving for home.

The next day I was to spend my time with Radio Hope and I was really nervous. I went along however and it was great! The students running the show were brilliant and very welcoming. I had a fabulous time and got multiple opportunities to go on the air. It was really interesting to find out how a radio station operated. In the afternoon they even put a challenge on called “Challenge Andy” which was really good.

Today I’ve been with the development team which as been really fun! I sat in on a very interesting meeting this morning and am now writing to you from one of their offices anyway must go now so bye!"

A Bit Messy?

Hi Folks
Sorry about the Blog, it's gone a little haywire. The main university website, from where we source our images for the Blog (well actually I'd forgotten that we did until now!) has just moved across to a new content management system and hence to another location on the web. Our poor Blog has lost it's image 'friends' and is looking just a touch out of sorts at the moment.

After treatment I'm sure we'll get the old thing feeling better again...

Watch this space...

Ray