My wife has memories of me being 19 and strong. Poor thing, when I was 19 I was pretty fit but not as muscular or ripped as she declares. The problem with this is now I have to live upto an expectation of something I never was. The middle age spread is, er, well spreading and the muscles are far less willing to perform as they were 26 years ago. She has been nagging me to lose the belly and do the exercises in the book she bought me but as all good men are prone to do, I ignored her. Well if a man is going to give in to nagging where will it end? I would probably end up spending my Saturday's in the shops buying new shoes and looking at man bags while I check out my new hair do in the window reflections. Shudder.

However a man has pride, especially when your son and even worse your daughters boyfriend ponce around all fit and healthy. So I have discovered that while strength may seem to vanish rapidly with age my capacity to acquire new strength is still there. 2 weeks ago I started press ups. My starting point was 30. Having been encouraged to do them 3 times a day and have now increased my capacity to 45 which is a 50% increase.

Many people don't feel strong. Especially when facing life's hard decisions and trials that are guaranteed to affect your life. The most amazing thing is that we have far more strength capacity than we realise. There is a difference between your absolute strength and your maximal strength. Your maximal strength varies with your physical and emotional fitness and simply let's you know how much of your absolute strength you can access which in physical terms is only about 50%.

The bible promises us that we can be Stronger. That we can run and not faint walk and not grow weary. My God has a limitless absolute and because of Him my capacity grows as I grow in Him.

The Kevin Upton show is a half hour magazine radio broadcast designed to discuss serious issues in a Christian context but also ight hearted way. We were broadcasting on a local radio station that specializes in working with ethnic minorities that has about 10 listeners, 3 of whom understand English. Nevertheless, we decided that to get the best quality of broadcast we would pre-record the shows but put them out as if they were live. All I had to do was go into the station put in the CD and press play.
Tragically that is where the plan unraveled. It like was like the elastic waistband of an old pair of underpants loosing themselves from the slavery of their occupant. I was left proverbially naked as the CD failed to load. The deadening silence screamed at me as I gasped to find words of intelligence and value. Even saying my own name seemed to escaped my oratory skills as I found er and um my most favorite of words.
Having ironically found Kylie’s lucky song on the computer screen and managed to press play, I lean back and wipe my brow with the knowledge I have 3 minutes and 44 seconds to work out what the heck I’m going to do next. The answer came to me from one of my staff who also works part time with the radio station. She causally laughs her way in to the studio grabs the offending disc and disappears to burn a new one with the urgency of a Hawaiian surfer contemplating his next wave. Such a nonchalant attitude is obviously more frustrating to me than to everyone else at the station. They all appear completely unfazed by the chaos and vocally confidant of my ability to fill the time with useless and uninformative information while playing completely rubbish music. It is a confidence that concerns me; after all do they think that I speak rubbish all the time?

June 2008 From the US to the Ukraine
My world is full of extremes. I came from the USA and was home for 4 days then left for the Ukraine. Now there is not a single thing about these two countries that are the same. Oh yes there is, I just remembered, the terrifyingly miserable security guards! They look like they are just about to haul you out of the queue, strip you naked and ask personal questions like “do you wax your chest?” To which, one would reply “er….yes… er no…no, defiantly no” from there they would beat you with electric probes and ask things like ‘Do you know Osama?’, while exerting something very painful in any orifice of their choice. Apart from that, it’s a very different country.
What is quite astonishing is the very truthful fact that in the Ukraine 80% of car drivers never actually passed a driving test but bribed an official. Now this is seen immediately at the point you find yourself hurtling down a under developed motorway system at 150k.
The hotel we stayed in was comfortable and close to the motorway and our conference was situated less than a 500m away on the other side of the road. It was the Getting picked up or taken back to our lodgings that scared the hell out of me.
To navigate from one side of the motor way to the other involved finding a gap in the barriers and doing a u turn while hoping that neither the oncoming traffic or cars racing up from behind take you out. We witnessed 3 accidents there in 3 days and I was in one of them! Other pastors who have been to the same place have seen children die here. Yet incredibly they keep on coming, throwing themselves along a road that was never built to take the volume of traffic and drivers who are not qualified to drive on them.
Ironically the most puzzling question I am left with as I leave the Ukraine is not about road safety but why when the Ukrainians have exchange most of their Lada rust buckets for new BMW’s Audi and Mercedes in the last 10 years could they not exchange there crap filled bog holes with cultured porcelain flushing toilets?

May 2008 Guns and Bibles
I have just spent 3 days visiting the Lakeland revival in Florida with friends and pastors from the west coast. As most had not been to the USA before, part of the inauguration was a trip to the gun dept at Wal-mart. A place where Guns and Bibles can be purchased together along with your coffee and vegetables. Yee-hah!
You can almost feel the need to buy a pump action Beretta which has no sights massive bullets and is simply used for blowing living things away. Oh glory! My opinion on Guns and restraint changed in about the time it took me to lift up one of these machines and aim it at the sweets potatoes. The only things missing were the Stetson, rusty pickup truck parked out back with tobacco chewing wife and seven illiterate children sitting in the rear. My hound ‘Brutus’ would obviously be sitting up front with me, along with my grandmas bible and a large bottle of moonshine. Oh praise the Lord for the good ol’ US of A

I want it to be known that I’m a looker! No not a looker, as in I think I’m some sort of undiscovered beauty. No, I’m a looker, a person who looks at themselves while passing mirrors or reflective shop windows , in fact anything that involves the possibility of seeing myself looking back.
Now I know this seems a strange confession but I feel the need to come out, so that all the other lookers in the world do not feel ashamed of their obsession. I feel the need to liberate them to look, stare, smile and even wink at themselves without fear of being judged by those who consider such activity immoral.
This time has come because of family member reprimanded me one evening while I was trying to go to bed. Bed time in our house of adult size teenagers is fast becoming a mission in itself. When they were small you could just put them to bed. But no, these days now we have to run the gauntlet of them lying, hanging and generally lurking on our bed while we try and discreetly get undressed.
It was on this occasion that while we are talking and laughing together that I looked up at myself in the full length mirror. Now what is wrong with that? Why do I have to wait till everyone has left the room before I look? It’s not rude is it? It’s not like scratching your bum in public or picking your nose.
On one occasion one of my leaders became most offended with me because during a small prayer meeting I happened to be caught looking at myself in the lounge mirror. I wasn’t even standing staring; I just simply glanced at my reflection while pacing up and down. Has the world gone flippin’ mad? It’s my face and I like it! I will look, smile, peruse contemplate and generally take in the familiar lines and wrinkles any time I like be it in public or simply with friends and family.
No one has ever said why it’s wrong they just say you shouldn’t do it and tut at the people who do as if they had a STD and were utterly immoral. How did we raise a society to believe it’s wrong to look at your reflection or consider it to be vain or proud? The insanity and small mindedness of it all staggers me.
If you are a looker, look with pride. It’s your face so where ever there is a reflection take time to take it in and enjoy. Here’s looking at you kid!

24th Feb 2008
Its Sunday afternoon and I sit here at home resting between services, we have just had 2 packed out morning meetings and by the time I manage to leave for some lunch the Chinese were already beginning to arrive for the afternoon service. I know I only have a couple of hours before I get ready for the evening service. But once again the quality of my personal life will be determined by the decisions I make after I have finished writing this blog.

You see Cheryl has been away in Denmark all weekend and is due home tonight at the same time the evening meeting starts. Now when the lady wife goes away, I, like all good mannered men know they want the place as neat and tidy as when they left it. Now what do you think? I’m not a flippin’ angel of course it’s a mess!

Cheryl has taken our daughterwith her leaving me at home with the 2 boys. So we spent the weekend male bonding by entering the world only real men and the insane would dare to enter. This dangerous concoction involved mixing toxic resins in sand to see what would happen. Unfortunately apart from the vapors that make the house smell like a an ICI chemical plant I have fine gritty sand spreading itself slowly but surely all over the house. If preventative measures are not taken soon the sand will eventually find itself deeply nestled in the crevices of my underpants where for some yet unknown reason all sand will inevitably end up.

Oh the pain of making a decision! I could go for a short power nap, I could tidy up or I could prepare in deep prayer for this evenings service. But the question remains, what Is the right thing to do?

13th Feb 2008
While walking the 5 - 600 yards uphill to the church I stumbled across a £5 note on the pavement. It was twitching in the wind all screwed up and worn out. It appeared the owner had been the type of person who was always in a hurry just throwing things into their pockets without taking any care as to their safety. In one thoughtless moment they put their hand in to pull out some keys and flicked out the money onto the pavement. Now one would think that I would be happy to find what the careless left behind but I hate finding money on the road. It takes me back to when I was a child and seeing my father lose a £5.00 note. I can still feel the panic and see the distress in his and my mother’s eyes as they tore around the house desperate to make it reappear. It was one of those moments where wish I could fix their troubles but I knew I was powerless to do anything about it.
So here I am looking for the owner of this rather sad and pathetic looking fiver with the same sense of loss and disappointment, knowing that at some point today they are going to reach into their pocket to pay for lunch or maybe a coffee and have the embarrassment of not having any money.
I keep the money clenched in my fist and begin to run up the hill hoping spot to someone who looked like a candidate for loosing something. In the distance there had been a man in a cream jacket with who was walking up toward the city centre. As I neared the top of the hill the man looking rather lost suddenly turned and came back toward me. I’m looking at him thinking he must be the one after all he wasn’t very neat and tidy. He passed by me back down the hill still looking a little lost so I gather the confidence to stop him in his tracks. Now at this point I’m not sure how to approach the matter. I mean if I say did you lose some money he might just think it’s his lucky day and say yes! So I plump for the more generic option and say "Did you lose something just now?” he turns toward me, an aging Indian or Pakistani with slightly wild hair going grey over the ears. Looking shocked and slightly confused he stutters "Er, no I don’t think so" now I’m caught, what do I do next? It’s getting a little awkward and I’m beginning to regret ever starting this conversation, so rather than pursuing the matter I let him go. Turning back up the hill I think to myself "oh well least I got a fiver for my lunch!