Norman Ralph

2010 started quietly for me on the blogging front, apart from my Twitter updates my first real blog post was about the 10:23 Homeopathy Overdose Project (which I was unfortunately unable to attend due to work commitments) and my strongly worded letter to David Cameron.

February was another quiet month on the blog front although I did spend a week in the Lakes and come hoem to find my house was flooded which left me without a PC for nearly a month.

March saw me foolishly making some long term plans about future living arrangements as well as celebrating Normanralph.com’s 3rd birthday. I also gave up my car to cut down on costs and get ready for city centre living.

A good friend of mine was deported in April and threatened with death on his return to his native Pakistan. Leeds Atheist Society ran Reason Week 2010 and I started following Major League Soccer.

In May I spent a lot of time preparing for my speaking engagement at CWF’s Enquiry conference in Birmingham. I also split up with my partner and moved in with Chris and George.

June was world cup month, so the less said about it the better, but I was hardly in a celebrating mood following the events of the previous month.

I spent most of July running around the country with work, really throwing myself in to my job.

Blackpool started their Premier League campaign during August and I started to really get ready for my trip of a lifetime. The month finished with a really great weekend with Sarann at Solfest.

Eurotrip 2010 took up September. In three weeks Chris, Kieran, George and I took in Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Munich, Salzburg, Venice, Verona, St Gallen, Montreux, Monte Carlo and Jard-Sur-Mer. I also turned 26.

October was a catching up month. I was working a lot to pay off Europe and to make sure that I got my best ever performance review to date.

I was off around the country again in November. Taking in an audience with Greg Epstein and a load of gigs.

December saw me celebrate the success story of Blackpool FC’s season in the Premier League so far as well as the contribution made by their manager. I also found time to go and see Tim Minchin thank god for Sam’s Mum’s Cateracts.

As you can see, it has been a mixed bag of a year. Some real highs in the form of Eurotrip and the number of gigs I’ve managed to catch, but also some real lows.

I think 2011 might be OK, there are some things that I am already really excited about seeing how they pan out as well as some concrete plans to go to Dublin, Malta and maybe even back to Verona over the summer. I also have some great work to do with some of the organisations I support i.e. the AHS and BHA as well as continuing to build up my own career and developing some projects of my own.

Here’s to you 2011.

Quite a lot of stuff has been happening over the last six weeks or so, I gave a presentation at Enquiry 2010, I moved in with Chris and George and Liz left me.

I will deal with the Liz situation first as it is the hardest one for me to write about and I am hoping that writing the second two bits will cheer me back up. About six weeks ago now Liz told me that she had had enough of being in a relationship and that she wanted to experience some of her life as a single woman so that she could really develop herself and come to terms with where she wants to be in life. I was gutted when she started to explain this to me as these ‘breaks’ are almost always permanent. The more she explained herself though, the more I came to understand where she was coming from. Liz has not been single since she was 17 and 7 years of solid back to back relationships is pretty intense. The way she argued her corner was something I respected too. She really sold the idea to me, that this was a key part i her growing as a person and that it was the right thing to do for me to let her go. In the back of my mind I thought that after a suitable length of time we would be able to rekindle the romance and get back together, but I was wrong. So very wrong.

We split up on a Sunday and by the following Saturday she was shacked up with another guy – John-George Salter (someone I considered a good friend until all this kicked off). After everything Liz had said to me, she had left me for another man. Apparently this had been obvious to everyone but me so i guess I didn’t know Liz as well as I thought. Her speech to me the week or so earlier had been a lie. The worst thing about all this? Well, Liz and John might have got together so quickly after we split up but they didn’t tell me about it for another three weeks!

I could probably go on spouting venom and vitriol about the situation – which has really thrown me off course if I am honest – but neither Liz or John or worth it. They are both small people with small minds and no grace, dignity or honour. I shall leave that at that.

The second major event over the last few weeks was Enquiry 2010, a two day conference in Birmingham run by the Chris Worfolk Foundation. I spoke on the need to reinvent the branding and marketing strategies of the atheist and humanist movements to better suit today’s marketplace. I will post the text of my speech soon.

The final big thing was moving house. Obviously I needed a new place after Liz moved in with John. Initially, I looked at Morley as it is close to work, relatively cheap and totally away from memories of Liz. However, as time ran out I still hadn’t found anywhere suitable Chris made me a offer I couldn’t refuse. He offered me the box room in his flat in the city centre. For many reasons I felt this was a great choice. First up, I get to live with Chris and George, which is going to be fun! Next was cost, it will work out really cheap to live with two other people. Finally, it means I am not on my own. I have a history of not dealing with personal issues particularly well and I think the inbuilt support network of flatmates will really help offset my traditional head in the sand approach to my own issues.

Okay. So I have once again been guilty of not blogging on a regular basis as I have promised over and over again. I am afraid this is probably going to be a pattern that continues for as long as this blog exists.

In my defence, I have been busy working (I am currently working on a project that means I have to work long hours and travel a lot) and doing my best to spend time with Liz and my friends (something that I am equally as bad at).

I have about 15 articles/posts in draft format and I am probbaly going to start posting them unfinished/unedited because it seems I am incapable of finishing anything before starting something else and rather than have you sit here reading Twitter updates ad infinitum, you might as well get some unpolished work to read and maybe comment on!

I am using this site less and less to update the blogosphere of my daily activities, so I think a change of direction is necessary to make sure that this site doesn’t become a ghost town.

I haven’t blogged in a while so i will just bring everyone up to date:

1) I have had to take some time out from my studies to address a few situations, namely my finances. This credit crunch is a real bitch. Sidetracking slightly, why is it a credit crunch exactly? What’s crunching?

2) As a result of my sabbatical from university, I have had to step down from my roles within both the AHS and Leeds Atheist Society. This was a massive disappointment for me as long term readers will be aware I have been involved with both organisation since their inception. I hope to contine playing a role in some sort of capacity, even if just as a regular old member. The main issue being my need to give the leadership room to develop their own style and direction.

3) I have gone full time with my job at O2. I am now a performance adviser and basically I do the same job, with more responsibility for no extra reward. Well I technically get increased job satisfaction and a job i enjoy most of the time, but not exactly going to make a dent in the old finances!

4) I have moved in with Liz, just the two of us, into a nice little cottage in the Seacroft area of Leeds. It is one of the original village buildings from before they added all the council estates that now mean that Seacroft is a suburb of Leeds rather than its own little village.

5) As a result of the above, I have less than I used to to write about on here, hence the need for a wholsesale change in direction.

I would like to start concentrating on developing a few ideas I have for essays and the like on my particular subjects of choice, i.e. management, secularism, atheism and humanism. Some of this blog is going to get dedicated to that and related stuff, like pics, tweets etc. I also think I am going to put some more syndications on here, sharing posts and ideas by other atheist writers, bloggers and speakers.

I have also started thinking recently about whether there is scope to get more involved in actually devleoping the atheist movement into one that makes a real difference. Chris has focussed in on Humanist Action Group and is working towards turning that into a real charity. Whilst I could piggy back on to that, I wonder whether I could ever really make a difference. My areas of interest is with young people, I think it with this group that real difference can be made. I used to do a lot of work with Lancashire County Council and their youth and community section. I was involved in a number of youth participation programmes too. I also wonder whether I could use some of my contacts in parliament to do soemthing with lobbying and maje a difference that way.

Well as you can see, there are a number of directions this blog could take. I don’t know yet which one I fancy, or which one will come to fruition. Maybe inspiration will hit me, or maybe I will try all of them until I get one that works!

Regular readers will have noticed a common theme running through my posts recently, namely that of the AHS. Posts on the press launch and the general publicity surrounding the build up have dominated my blog. This is for the veyr good reason that it has been pretty much all I have been thinking about. Sure, I have been involved in a lot of A-Soc stuff like Galileo Day and starting up Perspective but most of my work has been focussed on the AHS.

I have no doubt that the time spent was worth it, you only have to read the coverage the launch got to see how successful everything is proving to be. Check out a few of the pieces here, here and here. The upcoming xchallenge is to ensure that my work with the AHS doesn’t detract too much from my current commitments. I mean I am currently a student, hold down a (not so) part-time job, am president of Leeds Atheist Society and president of the AHS. All of these commitments could and maybe should be full time commitments, but I am sharing my time between them. Thankfully, I have the support of friends and family (big thanks to Liz et al) and a wonderful team working with me both at A-Soc and the AHS.

In other news, it is now only 7 weeks until Rationalist Week 2009!