I’ve gone far too long without posting again, and there are too many things I could write about. I could write about the SPEAK Northern Forum, like I promised nearly two weeks ago. I could write about the NUS Stop Fees Now campaign which, in the run up to Sunday’s demo, has been quite a feature of work these last few days. I could write about what I found in the Bradford regeneration exhibition or I could write about the progress that’s being made with the city-wide 24-7 prayer week. As it is, I don’t really have time to write much at all, but I’ll just say that I think this is a really exciting time for this city. We’re going to go prayer walking in the city centre at an unearthly hour of Friday morning, asking God to show us a venue for the prayer week in January. It’s amazing to see the way His Spirit is at work here in just the smallest of ways. Together those small things make the most incredible difference, and I just pray we’ll continue to see them in still greater numbers.

OK, so I’ve spent most of the day in London at a House of Lords reception hosted by the university Chancellor, Baroness Lockwood (read: the Department of Marketing and Corporate Communications). It was actually quite impressive; from what I can gather they have an event every year, with a rotating focus on different departments, somewhat nullifying my expectations of a corrupt jolly for School of Social and International Studies staff and a host of international diplomats. Baroness Amos, the keynote speaker, said nice things both about Bradford and about foreign policy — which I’m sure can’t quite match the government’s official line. Unfortunately I didn’t get the opportunity to give her a grilling about what happened in Cancun, but it was kind of fun.

Anyway, the main reason for the urgency of this post: While I was in London I apparently missed a good deal of local media coverage of the unveiling of Bradford’s new town centre redevelopment plan. I’ve heard speculation that it’s a hoax, but it’s scarily real. There’s coverage at the Telegraph and Argus, the BBC and the Guardian. I’ve not had time to read much of it yet, but I’m not sure of the way the whole focus of the project seems to be Leeds, not Bradford. I’ll have to take a trip to the exhibition on Market Street on Saturday.

Who ever would have thought that operating a candy-floss machine would be so difficult? It’s clearly a job for a trained professional. Last night was the Bras on Bars FND for breast cancer awareness, so the idea was that candy-floss would go quite well with the pink theme. Ours didn’t come out very pink at all, though we were kind of saved by the pink light. There’s definitely a skill in catching the stuff on the stick, and not on one’s arm, hair, beard and nearby walls.

Still more exciting things that that happened yesterday, though; I was at a meeting in the morning with youth leaders from all over Bradford. The meeting normally happens every two weeks, which is pretty cool in itself but the agenda for this particular one was a week of 24-7 prayer in January. The idea is that all the churches in Bradford come together for a week of continuous prayer as a start for the New Year. It’s so exciting seeing this come together, as it’s just showing how we only need to do so little and God will make great things happen. This in itself is an answer to prayer, and a total witness to God’s power, but just thinking about what could happen if it goes well is a bit much to cope with.

I’ve also just come back from the SPEAK Northern Forum, which was very good, and I feel a renewed inspiration because of it, but I’ll talk about that more later. I don't want to overshadow the great news of ecumenical 24-7.

I’ve had an e-mail from a friend pointing me to http://www.freepalestine.com/ and suggesting that I link to the site as a follow up to my post of August 21^st. I didn't have that issue in mind specifically at the time, but it’s certainly relevant to the passage.

We’ve spent today interviewing for a new General Manager for UBU and, unlike last time, have actually found someone we want to appoint. I’m praying he accepts the job, ’cause I’m not sure I could face going through the whole procedure again. Big thanks are due to my church, who very kindly lent us a data projector for the day at extremely short notice; after I’m sure I phoned half the university looking for one.

Oh, and bad news for those that care, and don’t already know. I’m impressed that this made the front page of BBC News Online.

Delirious? released a new song on mp3 the other day. MP3.com has been down for what seems like ages, but it’s back now and Majesty [Here I Am] is available to download. I’ve listened to it a few times now, and I’m definitely liking it more than the last album. The official web site is also providing sheet music, so they’re obviously trying to write stuff that can be used in church again. I can’t remember off the top of my head if there’s a release date for the album yet. It’s called World Service and I’m sure Dave Wood has all the details.

Something else I've been meaning to comment on for a while: There’s an advert on the back cover of the current issue of Adbusters. They’d probably call it an uncommercial or a subvertisement or something, and it’s actually self promotion for their blackSpot sneaker. I’ll let you decide for yourself whether that redeems it.

I'd not realised it'd been quite this long since I updated. Today marked the end of week two, so welcome week is fast becoming a distant memory. Thinking back now it's hard to pick out the highlights, though I guess for me personally the moment I returned a large bag to a student who'd lost it several hours earlier would rank pretty highly. Probably unusually for someone in my job, freshers' week was not by any means the reason I stood for election, and it seemed so strange after the whole summer to suddenly have a campus full of students again. Moments like that however, just make you remember why we do it. There were many things that didn't run as smoothly as they might have, and much that could be learnt from the experience, so I'm trying to find the time to write it all down while it's still fresh in my mind. I was hoping that time would stop moving so fast about now, but it hasn't really.

I must just mention the redesign at lordrich.com. It's table free, so many congrats to Richard for that, he just needs a doctype and it'd be perfect. Chris is nearly ready to go table free on his Kings Hockey site as well, I thought he'd launched it already, but it seems not. As I mentioned in my last post, all that time ago, at some time I will get round to designing this site.