Three years ago you were in Mummy's tummy. Unbelievable. What a lovely celebration!

Lots of love,

Daddy.
xxx

One benefit of my new studio is that I can open the door and listen to the sound of life at home.

The other day Sandra was making a chocolate cake with Poppy. They’d got all the ingredients laid out – just like they do on TV – and got mixing and stirring and poured it all into two baking trays and put them in the preheated oven. Poppy was feeling very grown up.

A few minutes later Poppy was looking in the oven window and started crying great big tears, like her world had fallen in.

“What’s the matter?” Sandra asked.
“It’s my cakes Mummy – they’ve all gone wrong” Poppy stuttered “We’re going to have to start all over again!”

Sandra took one look and sure enough the two cakes had risen around the sides and left a big dip in the middle.

“Oh wonderful!” Sandra exclaimed and Poppy looked at her like she was on another planet “we can make higgledy-piggledy chocolate pudding!”

“What’s that?” asked Poppy.
“You’ll see…”

Once the cake mixture was cooked they carefully emptied out the contents of the tins onto cooling racks and broke everything up into chunks. Sandra made an amazing white chocolate sauce, poured it over the chunks and served it with vanilla ice cream at tea time.

“This is yummy!” Poppy said, looking a lot happier, “I like this better than chocolate cake!”
And she was right, higgledy-piggledy chocolate pudding was better than chocolate cake.

So I went off and wrote a higgledy-piggledy song.

S.

Today I want to talk about my ISP again…

I contacted the CEO’s office (BT) and they promised to fix my problem. The guy sounded intelligent and genuinely interested. So another engineer came out. When he couldn’t fix it (no surprise) I spent another hour and a half on the phone to their Indian call center. But I’m getting the same dribble of bits and bytes tonight as I was last night.

Knowing when to quit is just as important as knowing when to be a big boy and tough it out. And I’m quitting. They don’t deserve me. I don’t care if the fat cat CEO comes to my house in his big black limo and got down on his chubby little hands and knees with crocodile tears streaming down his piggy face begging me to stay… TOUGH LUCK BUDDY, I’M OFF!

Cherio Sir Christopher Bland. You’ve built something that’s seriously out of control. You need to downsize your organisation. But then, I'm not sure you'd fit.

There. I feel better now. Blog therapy works. Thank you. Same time next week?

S.

Poppy’s has gummed up ears. Nothing serious, but we got her checked out at the audiologist today just in case. Here’s how the conversation went:

Quack: Good morning
Sandra: Hello
Quack: Hello, you must be Poppy
Poppy: <silence>
Sandra: She’s had gummed up ears for a while so we thought we’d better have them checked out
Quack: OK then, let’s see how much she can hear
Quack: <louder> HELLO POPPY, WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DAY AT SCHOOL?
Poppy: <silence>
Quack: <silence>
Poppy: PARDON?
Quack: WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DAY AT SCHOOL?
Poppy: IT’S MY EARS <pointing at them>…. I CAN’T HEAR YOU VERY WELL

... and somehow we caught a glimpse of what Poppy might be like in her 80’s!

S.

Here’s my daily routine at the moment:

6.30-8.00 Wake the house up
8.15-10.00 Do some work
10.00-21.00 Wrestle with my ISP to try to get a speed slightly better than dial up

It’s a little like that film Groundhog Day at the moment,

S.

P.S. I hope I get this posted before my co-nn-ec---tion   - -   d-ie-- --

My ISP has been playing up – broadband is running at dial up speeds and it’s like watching paint dry. When I phone them up (BT) I get through to someone sitting in Mumbai who I can barely understand. After a month of international phone calls, 6 hours of that dreadful ‘oh hold’ music and me getting to a place beyond frustration we’ve finally got an engineer coming out today who (I’m told) will get speeds of over 3mb/s. That will be a step up from anything we’ve got here before. But I’ll believe it when I see it.

It’s funny how a slow connection makes my whole life seem like it’s running on dial up. Guess it’s partly a function of having a new (blossoming) little man in our lives. The finishing touch came yesterday when the sound card in my studio died. It’s an expensive RME Multiface that’s given me over five years great service. Maybe it’s time to upgrade that as well?

Yours hoping to get the pipe moving quickly again soon,

S.

This morning I finished tracking a song Sue and I wrote last week. It’s a Southern Gospel song called ‘What Brings Me To The Cross’. If you've got a mo you can here it here.

Hope you like it,

S.

We had parents’ evening at Poppy’s school tonight. The couple before us came out from meeting the teacher with the mother in tears. We had our ‘argument for the defense’ prepared and rehearsed.

But Poppy is doing so well that we didn't need it. I wish I had videoed the conversation because I'm not sure the performance is repeatable. Sandra and I celebrated quietly to ourselves on the 20 minute drive home, especially Poppy’s determination to do her best.

But knowing the perfectionist/obsessive tendencies of Poppy's parents I asked Sa if we're encouraging the right things. I mean, being top of the class can be the result of good or bad pressure. I hate the idea of hothousing children and would not want that for ours on any level. But Sa made such a great point – by encouraging her to do her best rather than to be ‘top of the class’ we are freeing her to be the best for herself and not linking her self-worth to a result or a relative position in her class. And that must be right.

Of course (as always) I was listening with my songwriters’ ears and there is such a cool read over: If I solely measure my worth as a writer on the results of my writing then I’m setting myself up for disaster. My mission (and calling) is to write my very best. And I'll strive for excellence in every part of that. But writing is a process not a result.

So what does this mean in practice?

• Should I try to write a #1 blockbuster hit? Sure, why not
• Am I a rubbish writer if I don’t get a #1 blockbuster hit? No, absolutely not

That’s a very freeing thought.

Yours aware that I have just made tonight all about me... well it is parents' evening,

S.

Got my first two smiles from Rocket Man today… at less than a month old! Sandra’s got loads more. Mind you, she's his personal chef so you should have seen the face I had to pull to get him to do that. It was something like this 8~@)

Yours trying to put my mouth back together,

S.

First full day back in the office/studio today. Feels great.

It’s funny how the mind works… there’s a bunch of things I’ve been aching to do over the last few weeks but I knew there was no point in starting them because they’d get done badly. The longer time went on the more I wanted to do them. So today I got started. Still got plenty to do. Still got a baby to register (must do that soon). But it feels great being back with the familiar.

Yours so wishing I'd been at the writers' retreat after hearing more,

S.

OK, here’s my approach:

• Take CCLI data for the top-25 US P&W songs over the last 10 years
• Weight each ranking (25 points for a #1 song, 24 points for a #2 song etc)
• Add up the number of points for each song
• Divide the number of points by the number of years they have featured in the top-25

Here’s the top-25:

1 Lord I Lift Your Name On High
2 Open The Eyes Of My Heart
3 Shout To The Lord
4 Come Now Is The Time To Worship
5 Here I Am To Worship
6 How Great Is Our God
7 Blessed Be Your Name
8 You Are My All In All
9 As The Deer
10 You Are My King
11 Breathe
12 I Love You Lord
13 Give Thanks
14 Forever
15 God Of Wonders
16 Trading My Sorrows
17 Awesome God
18 Holy Is The Lord
19 The Heart Of Worship
20 Majesty
21 He Has Made Me Glad
22 I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever
23 Above All
24 He Is Exalted
25 Change My Heart Oh God

Despite about a third of the songs having been around for the entire 10 years, a small group of newer writers (Tomlin, Redman, Hughes) feature in there despite having been around for just 2-3 years. And these newer writers tend to have more than one song in there (or others just outside the top-25).

Reading how the #1 song came about, Rick was sitting down with his guitar and a Mac during his daily devotional and “… the whole song came quickly; I didn’t struggle with it at all.”

Cool.

S.

10 things I’d forgotten about having a new baby:

1. Sleeping whenever I can so I wake up with the light on and realize I haven’t gone to bed
   
2. Thinking I’ve been given something so wonderful that it feels like I’ve cheated
3. Being uneasy about how small, vulnerable and fragile our little person seems
4. Grateful that it's not me that has to survive on two hours of sleep between feeds after having had major abdominal surgery
5. How Sandra tries to make life as easy as possible while she’s out of action
6. The amazing support of friends and family, even via emails or a phone calls
7. Hospitals are the worst places to have to be. For anything. Period.
8. Sometimes you forget there’s another little person around. Then suddenly you remember
9. Wanting to snuggle but I can’t because I haven’t shaved
10. Having a ball of warm, sweet smelling fluff rising and falling on my chest

Yours writing this after putting the dishwasher on at 4.30am,

S.