Randomness on my first entry

Hello gentle readers. Hm, this is a bit bizarre. Writing a journal and posting it on the internet for everyone to see and read... this is going to have to be a bit different from my usual sporadic journal entries. Which occur on paper in my house.

Didn't do much today except read Mort and make notes on a D&D artefact I'm trying to invent. It's called the Gem of Faith. Maybe one day I shall put all my D&D stuff up in a different section of the surreal room. This might warrant finishing the surreal room itself first and I'm not sure what I want up there yet. The Protey fansite needs to be re-invigorated! And then I can restart with a major homepage effort. I have 50 meg to play with, anyway. Not tonight though. I'm not up to HTMLing or writing decent copy right now. The stuff that's up there at the moment is shite though; I need to write something a *bit* more welcoming.

Oh well, more when I can be bothered. Interesting new experiment, this.

Some musings on youth work

Well, it seems to have got around to being Sunday evening at last. And I guess I'm going to be doing serious washing at some point today or early tomorrow, I'm going back to Pembroke House tomorrow afternoon and won't that be fun? It probably will, actually; I like doing youth work and I like being there and I like Louise and Daniel. But I think I'll be glad in a week's time when it's over; it's hard work.

I should explain: I'm a volunteer for Pembroke House Higher Education Project, based in Southwark, which is working to raise the aspirations of kids in the area and promote higher education in the meantime. Last week I took part in an Easter Scheme for Year 9 students (that's ages 13 to 14) and next week it's a similar deal for the Year 10s, followed by a study skills day for Year 11 and 12 kids. I really enjoyed it last week. It was tough, but significantly worth it to be able to make an impact on the kids' lives.

The schemes last 4 days - last week was Monday to Thursday - and we took them out of the church hall where we're based twice. The first time was to South Bank University, which is local, and the second was to Cambridge. Cambridge, particularly, was *great*: we took the kids around the Pembroke College campus and the town, then had a Higher Education Q&A and finally took them punting on the river Cam. The punting was fantastic, too! There must be a drug in youth work. That's what they say, anyway.

Really looking forward to next week. In a slightly nervous way. But feel the fear and do it anyway...