Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 May 2005 18:51:58
I got back a couple of hours ago from our parish weekend away, in the lovely Ashburnham Place. It was really really strange for me to be there, as Ashburnham is the place that for the last decade at least my former church has used extensively for weekends away and, most notably, its annual week-long summer camp each August. A former flatmate of mine (also from that church) used to work there and maintained links there, and got married the other year in the parish church which is in the grounds, so I have been there loads and loads of times (to the extent that I think I could probably drive there with my eyes shut, not that I'm planning on trying to do that) but always with people from that church. This is the first time I've been there without having those people around (and in particular in the case of the summer camp, without having hundreds and hundreds of those people around), and it felt really odd in the midst of all the familiarity with the place. When I got there I sent a text to my best friend (who is still in my former congregation) to say how weird it felt not having the church there, and that I wasn't sure if I was relieved or if I was missing them! It also felt strange because it is very near the south coast, and as I'm hopefully moving way way UpNorth this was very possibly the last time I'll go there. Strange thought, when it's somewhere that is such a familiar and oft-visited part of the map of my journey so far.
Anyway - the weekend itself turned out to be great fun, though I arrived so early on Friday afternoon (having taken the afternoon off work to avoid the rush-hour) that I got roped into being on the welcome desk as everyone else gradually arrived. Which was mostly lots of fun, although not without its frazzled moments (updating room allocations and discovering that a number of people, including me, who had requested single rooms had been subsequently moved to a shared room without being told! That took quite a bit of sorting out and thankfully not too much stroppiness, and in the end most of us managed to get back into single rooms, hooray). It also meant that I missed the first evening session entirely, as people were still arriving up to 10pm, but as I usually take a somewhat relaxed approach to attending teaching sessions at these things I wasn't too upset!
Saturday consisted of Morning Prayer in the Celtic Tradition (led by Mary and which I was very impressed I managed to get up for) and then two teaching sessions in the morning, free time after lunch and then entertainment in the evening (I am still recovering from the Eurovision withdrawal symptoms, gutted I missed it - will have to have a Eurovision party next year to make up for it). The speaker we had was Michael Lloyd, who teaches at an Anglo-Catholic vicar factory in Oxford, speaking on the doctrine of the Trinity. I must admit that I was a bit confused by the fact that a tutor at an Anglo-Catholic seminary should have written a book published by HTB/Alpha and with a foreward by Sandy Millar, but then I guess it goes to show what a broad church the CofE really is! I thought about buying the book, as I've been looking for a while for a theology-for-dimwits book that wasn't theology-lite, but didn't quite get round to it, then just as I was leaving today my vicar handed me a copy as a thankyou for helping out on the welcome desk. So that's yet another book I'm going to have to find time for (anyone want to pay me to take a year off? I think I'm going to need that long to get through my backlog of unread books!).
I did check out the Ashburnham bookshop, without having very high expectations - past experience (replicated this weekend) was that it was largely very very evangelical books and cheesy knick-knacks. I did however manage to buy a history of and guide to Ashburnham Place (which I bought mainly for the pictures!) and a jar of raspberry preserve (I'm so spiritual :D ), but my best find was a New Jerusalem Bible with Apocrypha (it was £3 off, I wonder if that was because they were trying to flog off the dodgy apocrypha!), I've been after an NJB for ages as I wanted a more poetic version particularly for the OT, and the apocrypha was a bonus, so that was a bargain, very pleased with that.
During the free time yesterday afternoon I took advantage of the two hour window of sunny weather to do some drawing. I'll post a link to the end result sometime (currently experimenting with image hosting sites) - it's nothing amazing and I won't be giving up the day job, but I quite like it and it was so so relaxing to just sit there and look at the beautiful grounds (landscaped by Capability Brown in the 1770s) and try to figure out a way of representing it given that "exact replica of reality" isn't really my style (read: I can't draw for toffee!).
Yesterday evening, in lieu of Eurovision (sob!) we had some entertainment, compered by the vicar (who comperes similar such things at the Greenbelt late-night entertainment bashes) and consisting of the guy who'd been doing the youth work at the weekend who was billed as a "physical comedian". Previously he'd been billed as "ex-professional comedy illusionist" (those of us who'd not seen him before discussed over dinner whether "ex-professional" meant "has now changed direction" or "rubbish"). Anyway he was very very funny indeed (though I was very glad not to be chosen as a volunteer!) and left us all trying to work out how he did his tricks. Particularly funny were the gags that you could see coming a mile off - even though you *knew* exactly what was coming, his delivery was so good that it still had us in stitches. Sadly, once the entertainment had finished (at the outrageously late hour of 9.30pm) I was so shattered I had to go straight to bed! I think it's a pollution thing - I'm so used to breathing in muck that when I get so much as a whiff of proper country air it knocks me out and I could sleep for England!
Anyway - back home now, reunited with my computer and with a bottle of Merlot :D