Four Legs Good, Two Legs BAAAAAD!

Life in rural Australia is a little different from life in Haywards Heath, or even Holland-on-Sea or the other places that we've lived. As a farming community Ruth and I have been exposed to aspects of life that we were sheltered from in the city. Yesterday, for example, I was witness to the execution of four ducks for crimes against the State (namely being ugly and going to the toilet in the water that the chickens drink from). I was close enough to see the actual act of beheading, but I couldn't get too close because I was terrified of what Goul would say if I accidentally got some duck blood on the FC Nantes T-shirt that he sent me. We shall be enjoying Peking duck some time in the next week anyway, so it's not all bad news in this Stalin-esque regime.

For those of you who are interested I received a few name suggestions for Eddie's (girl)friend. I dismissed one of them immediately for being crass and totally unsuitable. It had come from someone who really should know better. Never mind dad, I've let your other suggestion through. The suggestions were as follows: Number Six, Edwina, the Eagle Edwards, Salome, Dinah, Sheila, Lounge, Dorothy and Aunt Mavis. If anyone has a preference then please let me know. I'll make a decision next week and, of course, reserve the right to ignore everyone else's preferences (preferenci?).

Tomorrow there's an Easter festival in town. The churches organise it as a gift to the town, meaning that they make it happen and subsidise it so that everything is free. It seems like an excellent idea to me, and it tends to attract a couple of thousand people - which isn't bad for anything run in a town with the same population as Haywards Heath. I'll let you know how it goes.

We've been in Oz for about six weeks and we're still waiting for the stuff we shipped from England in January. It should have arrived at our place within 8 to 10 weeks, but we're in week 12 and no sign of it. It actually arrived in the country at the beginning of March, but has been held up at customs and quarantine because they apparently 'have a large backlog'. I'm beginning to fear that what this means is that Australian Customs Officials are walking around in my underwear, playing my PS2 games and showing people photos of 'their new friends in England' but I'm sure that the fine, upstanding, hard-working men and women of Customs and Quarantine would never engage in such acts. Surely?


In further animal related chicanery, Ruth saw a spider that she claimed was the biggest spider she had ever seen - in fact, she described it as being 'bigger than a tarantula'. It was a relatively harmless Huntsman spider but, as I've already hinted at, being a non-human at Cornerstone means that you live on borrowed time. A thrown shoe later the spider was regretting showing its ugly, alien mandible-filled face around here. The deed was actually done by Marshall, a twelve-year old boy, who earned the adoration of my wife and other females at the scene. Take a look at the above photo, the crumpled spider corpse next to the shoe of a twelve-year old boy. Bigger than a tarantula? I'll let you decide.

Whilst you are thinking about that, say hello to a sheep or - as next year's students will know her - 'dinner'.

You say Capsicum, I say Pepper. What's your problem?

We've noticed that not only is the quality of fruit and vegetables better here (the climate is such that pretty much anything can be grown locally) but they are much bigger too. Take a look at the photo on the left. Your eyes do not deceive you and I promise that there is no camera trickery involved. Ruth is holding a red pepper that is nearly as big as her head. Of course, in Oz they are known as capsicums. I can understand why they need a different name, as this Australian capsicum is only related to a British pepper in the same way that the QE2 is related to a rubber dinghy. But if you're going to go with a different name why not do it properly and call it a Frankenpepper. After all, it is clearly some kind of genetic aberation.

Reid and I decided to bring Calvin in to line and give him the Offical Webb Male Haircut (tm). He quite enjoyed me buzzing around his head with an electric razor and it certainly looks pretty good. His hair was getting a bit chaotic evil.


I've found a simple pleasure - having a shower after finishing work. My work now is a lot more physical than it used to be (unless you count wrestling some of the elders to the ground when a leadership meeting got out of hand) and is certainly a lot more dirty (unless you count...nah. I won't say that). After five hours driving round Dubbo in the MatMobile and then heaving filthy mats around I've found that there's something indescribably wonderful about coming home and having a hot shower. For me this has driven home the fact that we in the West surround ourselves with so many creature comforts designed to make us happier and our lives more enjoyable but then reality is that very few things are actually needed to live a life worth living and full of joy. Nothing in the Argos catalogue can give the deep satisfaction of a life lived for God in genuine relationship with other Christians. In this context, with fundamental needs met, an immense amount of pleasure can be gained from having a shower, taking a walk, drinking Splashe cola and simple things like that.

Eddie has a girlfriend! Ruth and I came home one evening to find this little lady attached to one of our walls. Actually, I don't have any idea how to correctly identify the gender of a gecko, so who knows what sex it is. I will say that the new lizard was bigger, whiter and had the most evil-looking black eyes that bore into your soul. That last bit might not be obvious from the photo. The new lizard, as yet unnamed, was also seen outside earlier today so s/he has obviously found a way to come and go as s/he pleases. Eddie, on the other hand, remains our prisoner. He is not a number! Anyway, there's a new idea for an interactive blog. You get the chance to name Eddie's companion! Post your suggestions in the comments section, or if you're really desperate to suggest a name but are the kind of technophobic Luddite that can't use the comments section then please send an e-mail. Or enscribe some kind of crude pictogram on the back of an animal skin and post it to "James Webb, Land of the Upside-Down-Men". Winner will be announced in a future blog!

Despite our best efforts Xanthe has got some kind of auto-quiff going on with her hair. Unless we make a concerted effort to paste it down it springs up like a 'roo. It makes her look like some kind of alternative comedian.


We've been here for over a month now. It's been a good month. I got my first assignment back and scored an implausibly high 85%. I think that means that 85% of what I wrote made some kind of sense. That's pretty good going for me. I celebrated by buying a packet of mint M&Ms. They seemed like a good idea but were, overall, disappointing. In future I shall only buy them if I score less than 50% on an assigment. Hope you are all enjoying your lives, whatever you are doing at the moment. Peace out!

My week in brief

Hey everybody. I thought I'd start this update by just letting you know what last week involved for me. It will give you a picture of how being a student at Cornerstone works.

On Monday I had lectures from 8am to 9:30am, and then I worked at The Mat Exchange from 10am to 3:30pm. I had more lectures from 4pm to 6:30pm and then in the evening we had a community meal and meeting. The community meeting happens fortnightly (alternating with homegroups) and is a chance to share news and pray with one another as well as bring up and resolve any issues that have arisen from living in community.

On Tuesday I had no work in the day, which we pretty good because we have lectures from 8 to 9:30, 4 to 5 and then from 7 to 9:30pm. It's a long enough day without having to work as well. We went to town in the day and spent some family time.

Wednesday followed the same pattern as Monday, but without the meeting in the evening. I did some work on an assignment, but Ruth and I will probably be using Wednesday evenings to spend some time with Laurie and Elvira, who are our mentors while we're here at Cornerstone.

Thursday saw me at lectures from 8 to 9:30. Every Thursday we start clean-up at 9:30am too, which means that the students spend half-an-hour or so (usually more!) doing some cleaning and odd jobs to keep the centre looking nice. It's this kind of emphasis on service that was one of the things that appealed to me about Cornerstone. I got off lightly this Thursday though because I was working from 10am to 1:30pm on The Mat Exchange. I then had a lecture from 3pm to 4pm. Ruth goes out on Thursday evening to ladies Bible study in Dubbo so I have the evening to myself.

There are no lectures on Friday, but I was at The Mat Exchange from 10 to 4:30. The weekend is free - which is something I haven't experienced on a regular basis for about seven years. It's good. The flexible element of a week usually comes with the work. If I was, for example, working for Pizza Runners I would probably be working on an evening.

Last Sunday was pretty good. We tried a small, local Baptist church in the nearby town of Narromine. We also had to cook Sunday lunch for the students, so we were at church (the services here in Oz start at 9:30am) and returned to finish off the cooking. No-one could believe that we'd managed to go to church and cook a full Sunday lunch for fourteen people - with pudding. Well, I say "we" but I really mean "Ruth". She banned me from helping and also from taking any of the credit for the lunch. This Sunday we will try one of the Baptist churches in Dubbo and see how we get on. There are plenty of churches in Dubbo, so we should be able to find one where we feel it's the right place for us to serve.


As you can see from the photo above TCPWL has had an extreme effect. I weighed myself just earlier today and found that I have lost 5kg since leaving the UK. That's nearly a whole stone. I couldn't believe that I'd lost quite so much, seeing as my clothes don't feel any looser. "Where was I carrying the weight before?" I asked, shocked and without missing a beat my wife replied "Your chin.". Thank you dearest.

Eddie is alive and well. I've taken a photo of him in his favourite location - by our lamp. That seems to be his base of operations whilst living with us. I've taken a couple of photos so that you can see him in his new environment and get an idea of how big/small he is. Let me tell you that if my weight loss has been extreme then it's been nothing compared to his. He was much bigger when we first met, let me tell you.





And for no reason I'll end this post with a picture of one of my fellow students - Jun. He's from South Korea.

Going Native.

I know what's going through your mind. "Crikey," you are thinking "Is that James or Crocodile Dundee? I can't tell!". It seems that I've finally 'gone native' and embraced Aussie manhood. You can see in the picture me wearing my Jarvis Walker One-Size-Fits-All-Except-You fishing hat, a Socceroos T-Shirt (isn't the gold and green much more exciting than the white and red of England's eternal underachievers?) and my Aussie shorts. The shorts are called 'Ruggers' and the advertising blurb tells me that they are for 'Real Aussie Blokes'. The label inside tells me that they are made in India. Not pictured are my steel-toe-capped work boots. The Jarvis Walker hat was purchased because it has a wide brim and I thought it would offer protection from the sun. It does a pretty good job in that respect, though - as hinted above - it's a little too small for my swollen Pommy head. The down side of the brim is that it interferes with your peripheral vision and can result in the kind of accident that happened to me yesterday where I didn't see something above me and headbutted a children's climbing frame. It really hurt. So much for being a real Aussie bloke.

What did you do today? We went into town, bought a car, got some great milkshakes and chocolate chip hot cross buns from the mall and in the afternoon went swimming. I know you probably want to hear about the car but you'll have to wait. I've got to tell you about the hot cross buns. They're normal hot cross buns but some enterprising individual decided to remove the raisins (always the most disappointing part of the whole HCB experience as far as I'm concerned) and replace them with chocolate chips. Yes, that's right. Chocolate chips. I hope that whoever had that little brainwave got a promotion because he/she fully deserved it. They are delicious. I felt that I had to chronicle it in my blog because I didn't want them to disappear into history unnoticed. On the contrary, I hope that, in a thousand years time, when eminent historians are gathered to decide on humanity's greatest five achievements somebody somewhere will stand up and say "My esteemed colleague makes a fine case for including the 1969 Moon Landing, but on the other hand - chocolate chips. In a hot cross bun. Those guys rocked!"


Ah yes - the car. We've finally got a car. Everyone has been really kind in letting us borrow their cars over the past few weeks, but now we feel that we have a bit more freedom. It's a '96 VS maroon Holden Commodore. We opted for a sedan rather than a station wagon (translation for those reading in English - we didn't get an estate). Most people in Ozland seem to drive a Holden or a Ford - those are the only two types of cars made Down Under. There a fair few Japanese cars (usually Nissan, Mitsubishi or Mazda) on the road, but that's about it. A few rebels might drive a Korean car, but they are generally very few and shunned by most of society. Holden is probably the biggest supplier of cars in the country, and the Commodore is a common model. It's an automatic, has working air conditioning and Ruth managed to knock $500 off the price so it's just perfect.

I'm slowly learning the local lingo. It's fairly easy actually. Just take a word, shorten it to its first three or four letters, add an 'O' and you've got a 75% chance of using a legitimate phrase. For example - rego (car registration, our equivalent of road tax), servo (service station), yummo (err...yummy). People actually do use "Fair Dinkum" and say "No Worries" all the time which really does have a relaxing effect on the nation. My favourite Aussie phrase so far is the instruction to "Hang a yooie" which, translated, has the approximate English meaning of "My dear fellow, I believe that now would be a fine time to initiate a U-Turn at the next available opportunity". The other thing you need to know is that what we call 'Flip Flops' are known as 'Thongs' here. This information came to me too late to save the innocent shop assistant who I threw through a window after he asked me if I wanted to try on his thongs.

And on that note I shall talk a little about Cornerstone, as I think there might be a few people still in the dark about what we're doing here. Perhaps the best way to highlight what Cornerstone is about is to quote its vision statement - Our vision is to expand and enrich the kingdom of God through committed communities, winning, training and mobilising genuine disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ to live radical Christian lifestyles. There are several Cornerstone communities in New South Wales, but we're currently based at Dubbo which is where the national offices are as well as where the 'grad students' are trained. The 'grad students' are people like me, doing the third year of the three year course and being trained in 'Christian Leadership'. It's really a preparation for continuing service with Cornerstone in a staff capacity. The communities across the country have the same aims - namely to live as a genuine Christian community, to reach out to the local community and to equip people to go on to live a Christian lifestyle wherever they end up. So that's what Ruth and I are doing out here, living in a community, studying, working and seeing what God thinks the next step should be for us. I'll try and unpack this some more the next time I write.

Oh, and for those of you who are interested, Eddie has shrunk but is still alive and kicking.

Eddie Lizard

The other day I noticed that a gecko had found its way into our house. I pointed him out to the boys, caught him on videotape and thought nothing more of it. It seems, however, that the gecko never found his way out of the house. He has been spotted behind furniture by various family members over the past few days, looking a withered, translucent shadow of his former self. It seems that the natural predator of the gecko is Ruth, as his food supply of bugs and snakes and stuff is wiped out by my wife before he can get to them. I'm just saying that she cleans the house, not that she eats bugs and snakes. Anyway, spare a thought for poor Eddie (the sixth Webb) today.


The boys have bikes. We found them quite cheap so Ruth bought them. They were probably quite cheap because they required Churchillian perseverance to put them together. You know me. I'm not prone to exaggeration but it was probably the hardest thing I've ever done. As you can see from the photo, we had to recruit Ali (another student here) to help us. The only reason the boys have working bikes is because Ruth and Ali do not like to be beaten by mere toys. Me, I'm quite happy to be beaten. After five minutes of trying to fit a pedal into a hole that it was clearly too small for I was all for saying "Sorry boys, your bikes are broken because the instructions were written by chimps and require tools that haven't been invented yet. Stop crying. I'm going out."

Ruth taught Calvin how to use our digital camera. Nice one Ruth! Now I spend my free time deleting photos of random objects from our memory card ("Look! It's a broom! That's a good one of the toilet flush."). Actually, some of his photos aren't bad at all. He took the one above (of the bikes) for example. I'm going to display some of his better ones below.






Calvin has started at preschool and is loving it. He gets to take a packed lunch, which is the best thing ever as far as he's concerned. Furthermore, he also gets to take a packed 'morning tea'. It's quite odd. 'Morning tea' is a big deal here and a far more accepted phenomenon than it is in the UK. It feels like it should be an English thing ("More Morning Tea vicar?") but the Aussies do it properly.
On Calvin's first day he won a dancing competition and was awarded a prize by an alien. You've really got to hand it to the Australian education system.

Today we had a prolonged dust storm. It gets very windy here, and because the terrain is so flat and dry it simply whips up dust everywhere. You soon learn not to leave your windows open. One of the results of storms (of either the dust or rain variety) here is that our Internet connection can be a little inconsistent. However, the blog must go on!

This weekend was the staff conference. It meant that the staff from all of the Cornerstone sites were here at Dubbo for the weekend. It was really nice to get to meet people we'd heard about, as well as get a broader picture of the work that Cornerstone does around Oz. It just confirms for us that we're in the right place at the right time. I think that next time I write I'll try and say more about what Cornerstone is about.

The problem I have is that there's just so much that I could write. I really don't know what to say next at the moment, so I'll just leave you with a photo of the three children - plus an unexpected cameo from Doctor Octopus and Spiderman's feet!