RHODE ISLAND - My mad skills

It's saturday. I've spent the afternoon with fellow summer staff by the pool eating macaroni cheese. We are exhausted.


Megan demonstrates how to get to South Africa without passing through passport control

This week I have: negotiated my way over a ropes course, moved and assembled several more crazy tent like structures, moved sixty four mattresses half a mile to go into said structures, cleaned out half a dozen outhouses and a few bathrooms, helped a dozen blindfolded people to swing across a gorge using by tying their belts into a lassoo, played more games involving hoops than can be counted, given a presentation on Britain explaining the origins of rugby and why we can't seem to win it anymore, built a fire, learnt to cha cha and swing dance, fought with sticks, fallen off a bunk bed and helped build a shelter for a shelter with leaves and sticks for a person to spend the night in.


Sarah, Scott and our one match fire. My one hundred percent one match fire record remains intact thus far. God bless tumble dryer lint.

We are exhausted. And, tomorrow, the kids finally arrive. Oh, and I'm going to be directing a football camp. Please take five minutes out of your busy lives to appreciate the irony.

RHODE ISLAND - Camp Aldersgate

Look, dear, a little frog!

So, you're coming out of the bathhouse (American phrase for a building with no baths). And it's pitch black in every direction. You know you're heading uphill, so that's fine. You start walking, gradually your eyes adjust to the relative gloom. You see a tiny light up ahead, and another to the left. Knowing the area as well as you do (a three minute tour several hours ago) you juxtapose where your cabin might be and inch towards it. Frogs are croaking. Crickets are doing their, uh, cricket type thing. Oh, and it's pouring with rain. Furiously. And it's all great.

I really, really and with no sarcasm whatsoever love American summer camps. It's pretty incredible to be able to go to a place where they don't tarmac the roads, flatten out the hills and build concrete things all over them. Communication is difficult, sure, but one of the principles is that camps are a space apart from the rest of the world. Camp Aldersgate adheres to this principle more than other camps I've seen. Today's blog update is provided by the fine Gloucester local library (no, not that one) and phones are few and far between the 200 odd acres of forest, lake, swamp and ropes courses. But that's great; there should be more places like it. So let's talk hogans.


Disassembled hogan


Hogan during assembly


Finished hogan

A hogan is, from what I can understand, a big wagon which has had the wheels chopped off and is sitting under a big marquee. I've assembled the odd unwieldy tent in my life but hogans are pretty exciting for their sheer inability to follow the laws of easy assembly. If it breaks, it's broken. If it can have a tear in it, there's a hole somewhere. But somehow it all works. This is when you're very glad that there are a lot of experienced American types helping out with this stuff. It is a bit bizarre being the only British person in a several mile radius, and one of only three non American staff (Meghan from South Africa and Anya representing Russia hold up the rest of the trans-Atlantic end) but it's quite fun to be unique.

People will be talked about in due course (I need to dig up some dirt) but currently I'm in a cabin with the funky Mark (tracking conniseur from Florida whose knowledge of the American wilderness is immensly handy and reminisent of a certain Tim Sparks who will remain named) and Nick (New York state. More water bottles than any human can possibly use. And every Eddie Izzard routine on his computer. Therefore, incomprehensible injokes aplenty) They, along with all the other people, make me excited about the summer. Even though soon it will mean being joined by a whole bunch of kids who in the past have enjoyed locking each other in cupboards and setting hordes of mice loose on each other. But the place is so gorgeous, I think we'll all cope. If anyone wants me, I'll be hanging out with the turtles.

NEW YORK - Wednesday shopping

"New York, New York
It's a hell of a town.
Plenty of buildings,
predominantly brown."

Touring around New York is a well documented activity and, therefore, for the purposes of the Phworld we need to tackle this exciting city from another angle. Therefore, I ask you to join me for our exciting activity: Wednesday afternoon shopping in New York. New York may be a bustling metropolis with millions of peple trying to traverse the same few square miles of tarmac. It may cater to any art/museum/cultural whim you have. But can it cope with the contents of my simple everyday shopping list? Let's find out.

1) Buy hayfever tablets.
This request was for fellow New York Wednesday afternoon shopper, Sarah. We scoured the glitzy, ritzy glass fronted Madison Square Gardens and leafy Battery Park but, alas, phamecuticals were few and far between. but New York is not so easily beaten! Penn Station. A twenty four hour drug store and a small row of scary looking white boxes found us the drugs we required. As well as both pregnancy tests and 'make yourself fertile' applicators. I wondered what would happen if you used them at the same time...

2) Visit the post office.
There are post offices, and there are post offices. Then there is New York. A block long and hundreds of metres wide. Pure post office in its natural enviroment... And not a person in sight. The New York 24 hour post office (look, I know this is the city that never sleeps but this is ridiculous...) has perfected the art of automated postage. Automated address finder. Automated payment and automated labels. Sadly it could not provide an automated pen which didn't explode in my hands and make my fingers torquoise blue for the rest of the day. I am aware, of course, that this could all be a nasty trick and that the automated slot I posted my automated package may lead to nowhere. (The intended recipitent of the automated parcel, the delightful Merry B, needs to comment in a few days time to see if it arrives. And whether it's appropriatly automated)

3) Buy sunglasses.



Sarah proves how easy it is to be sidetracked when sunglasses shopping by big, big hats.

Never the easiest thing to buy so we decided to put New York to the test and go to the largest department store in the world, Macys, and see if it was possible to buy two pairs of sunglasses at a reasonable price and not end up with other assorted rubbish (of course, such an act would be not out of place on a typical Wednesday afternoon shop. However, I was feeling thrifty) Things weren't looking good when we realised Macys wasn't open 24 hours (in your face, New York city!) but, astoundingly, it passed the ultimate test. Sunglasses were found, tested and paid for in the space of twenty mintues. And bonus points were awarded for the entertainment provided lovely pair of teenage girls ahead of us in the queue attempting to buy hundreds of dollars of merchandise on a non authorised credit card. God bless America.



So there you have it. New York. Metropolis. Mega city. And darn fine Wednesday afternoon shopping centre. Milton Keynes eat your heart out.

Liners

So, I've got a backpack. I also have a backpack liner. I thought backpacks didn't need to be lined. Not being, y'know, fine art. But there is a whole waterproof issue to deal with so, okay, I accept the value of the liner. Even though I quite understand it.

I've just bought a new sleeping bag. It comes with a sleeping bag liner. Once again, I furrow my brow a little. Okay, sure, there's all sorts of sleeping/easier to clean/pretty colours type reasoning behind the marketing and production of said items. But isn't a sleeping bag, at its most basic level, pretty much a big liner?

And then there are the liners within the liners: little bags I've put stuff in so it doesn't get lost in the mammoth recesses of the liner stuffed inside the backpack... Liners within liners! I just don't know where to go to get away from them! And they're going to be there all year. Sitting on my back, all within each other and waterproofing each others' lining!...

I need to leave the country.

Why Britain sucks

Okay, firstly a couple of reasons why Britain doesn't suck. Namley: Jo, Matt and their fantastic bouncy castle wedding. Hurrah to them and may they go on to have many happy years and, hopefully, bouncy castle funerals.


If your wedding isn't this much fun, you're doing something wrong

Bristol to Aldershot (location of the bouncy castle wedding) isn't really all that far. It's a large town served by a train and bus station. Really, getting to it and away should have been easy. This was my first mistake: assuming things. My second was deciding to go by train.

JOURNEY 1: AKA THE WIDOWMAKER

Before I describe this hellish trip, note that I forsaw problems with attempting train travel in this country and, therefore, alloted an ENTIRE HOUR for delays, lateness and whatnot. Not ten minutes. Not one train's leeway. An ENTIRE HOUR. Got that? Good.

The trip to Aldershot involved four different trains. Yes: four. Bristol is served by two train stations but, apparently, having both running trains along the main line to London is too difficult a concept for British Rail to manage on a Saturday morning (I can see their point, those Saturday papers take ages to get through. Must use a lot of manpower) so the first, uneventful, trip was between Bristol's two stations.

The second leg was along the mainline to Reading. This should have been fairly straightforward and, indeed, aside from a staring contest with the bizzarely eyepatched woman opposite me it seemed to be going swimmingly. Unforutnatley, unbeknowst to me, strange things were going on in the bowels of the train. Station stops were taking slightly longer than necessary. All those ratlling windows were creating imperceptable drag on the surface area of the train itself... Basically, we were getting delayed. Just a few minutes, mind, but it just happened to be the few minutes which the ever helpful (read: hopeless) Qjump ticket booking service had allotted me to cross the platform at Reading and catch my next train.

So, that train was missed. And, it being a saturday and therefore a day when nobody (read: everybody) in Britain can surely want to go anywhere, there wasn't due to be another train for an hour. However, the very helpful ticket counter person was able to direct me to a different route and two completley different trains to get me into Aldershot only half an hour later than planned. Hurrah!...

... Sadly, what this minion of British Rail didn't feel they needed to inform me of was that the connection between these trains (at North Camp and Ash Vale stations, fact fans) was to be done on foot. Now, I'm not complaining about the walk. It was five minutes worth. However, it is one of those things which you wouldn't really assume to do unless you lived in the local area and (A) Realised the tiny North Camp station had another, equally tiny, Ash Vale station down the road and (B) Had any idea where that station would be since British Rail, in all their great reasoning, didn't feel the need to put up any directions of any kind in North Camp to illustrate this point... There was one solitary sign pointing the way to Ash Vale station. Pointing the wrong way. To a busy roundabout.

Long story short is that my lesuilly hour stroll through Aldershot became a ten minute dash to the church, arriving seconds after the bride (but, hilariously, some minutes before other friends of mine who had driven)

Queue bouncy castle wedding and eight hours of Britain not sucking. And then...

JOURNEY 2: AKA SLEEPLESS IN GOODNESS KNOWS WHERE

Taking train journeys at night in this country is a mug's game. In a country where you can't get a drink after eleven or find a meal after ten it's frankly dangerous to expect the rail infastructure to be able to handle (A) Lateness (B) Decreased numbers of passangers and (C) The dark without some sort of huge problem.

I waited at Aldershot station for a train to Ascot (never been there. Nice racecourse, I'm told)

Fifteen minutes before it was due to leave some other people joined me on the platform.

Ten minutes before it was due to leave, we got an annoucenment to change platforms.

Eight minutes before it was due to leave we all noticed that neither the new platform or the old one carried any evidence of the imminent arrival of this, the last train for the night to Ascot. To all intents in purposes, it had dissapeared (as, bizzarely enough, had any station staff who might have been around) Nethertheless. Being tired, cold and British we all sincrecely believed that the timetables and accouncements wouldn't lie and that our train would be delivered as promised.

Five minutes before the train was due to leave, someone on the opposite platform shouted over to us that there was a bus on the station forecourt which we might want to check out. We all dully trooped over.

It transpired that the Aldershot to Ascot train had been cancelled and replaced with a bus service. And nobody had told us, the station or, indeed, anyone else of the fact. Had it not been for that particulalry nice shouty passanger, we all would have missed the bus. (Which, incidentally, was completlety unmarked. So much so that some poor drunk types actually thought they *were* on a bus and were a little peturbed to find that they had landed forty five minutes away in Ascot rather than being tucked up in bed ten minutes down the road)

One of the interesting characteristics of buses is that they are, generally, slightly slower than trains. You can test this yourself by racing them. This is a generally accepted fact by most people with even the most rudimentry intelligences.

Not, however, by British Rail.

Despite clear roads and a driver devoid of the most basic parameters regarding road safety, the half hour train ride to Ascot took forty five minutes by road. Thankfully for this blogger, I had forseen British Rail's ineptitude (remember that ENTIRE HOUR I dedicated to getting to Aldershot that morning?) and so was still five minutes early for my train to Reading. Not so lucky for those poor sods who got to Ascot only to find that all their final trains for the night had gone.

British Rail, in their considerable wisdom, had decided that there was no need to hold those last few trains for all those poor sods who'd put their late night travel plans in their hands. And, of course, this is the same British Rail who knew full well about the charter bus en route for the station.

Not that my adventure was over, however. After getting to Reading and managing to, this time, successfully cross the platform and catch the final train to Bristol (learning from previous experience when five minutes was not enough for this activity, I dedicated half an hour to it this time) A journey which, on any other day would take seventy minutes. But because of British Rail being scared of the dark, and having less station stops to make, that same journey took a grand total of a hundred and five minutes.

I did eventually get back to Bristol sometime around 2am. The rest is a little hazy after that.

There have been moments over the past couple of months or so when I've been wondering about leaving the country for so long and thinking that maybe it's all a bit of a mistake. That, actually, I'll miss the way things work here and the insight of the people and whatever... Thankfully, there are then six hour train journeys of stunning ineptitude when I can dispense with any such worries.

I can't wait to leave on the 14th. And anyone who lives in this country who doesn't have the consolation of knowing you'll be flying out of it next week? I don't know how you manage, I really don't.

(ADDENDUM: I was reminded tonight that British Rail doesn't actually exist anymore. This is true. However, I think it's still a perfectly suitable shorthand for a system of trains which are British and don't work propely.)

The Real Phworld

First leaving party yesterday. Balloons and cake washed down with lashings of Futurama. Feeling a little sad... Ahem... Right, time to salvage this blog before it plummets into the depths of silly self reflection. Take a look at the funky map my Hiatt Baker possee made for me:


He looks just like me!

Now I'll have no problem finding my way across central Africa. Oh, hang on a mo, which continent was it which I wasn't even going to set foot in? Darn...

HANOVER - Robbie Worship I - The Serendipity Mix

NOTE: Robbie Worship is such a significant blogging event that I feel the need to split it into two categories. This one is the Robbie Worship: The Serendipity Mix. If you came here looking for my random travel related insights and bizarre stories of German translation, this is the entry for you. If, however, you prefer your blog to be of the slightly more ecclesiastical nature (i.e. if you know what ecclesiastical means) then you might also/instead check out the below Robbie Worship: The Freaky Church Remix, which is slightly more ponderous and intellectual in nature. And which I heartily apologise for. But, then, there is nothing in the world quite like Robbie Worship.

The problem with going to any sort of conference in Germany is that many elements of said conference are probably going to be delivered in... well... German. When said language is your third or fourth of choice (depends how much Portuguese I feel I can remember on a particular day) it can get a wee bit depressing. After another hot day at the Kirchentag, Charity (former chaplaincy assistant partner in crime) and I were both well into that state. A half hour wandering around trying to find a Bavarian theme pub with a beer garden which didn't seem to exist wasn't helping, either.

Which is why, after finally settling on a pub, the innocuously titled "Ich will nur eehte Liebe - The Spiritual Yearnings of Robbie Williams' seemed like an appealing choice for Thursday evening entertainment. It might be kinda churchy. It might be kinda in German. But it felt like it might be a little piece of home. So after a gathering of our Fellowship of the English, a rushed meal (a story in itself. Thank goodness for the inability of Germans to take any kind of poor service and helpful waitresses) we headed off.

And this is where things get a little weird.

There was the Bristol contingent. Six of us including Simon the curate (minister for all you non-Anglicans out there), Rob the church warden, Charity and I who make our living working for the Church and PhD chasers Sarah and Lynn. And then there were the Germans: one of our wonderful hosts for the week, the aforementioned helpful waitress and her sister. (N.B. Note that British people do not go around the world indiscriminately picking up waitresses. Especially not British people who work for the Church. She was fascinated by our Englishness and the fact that we all seemed to be genuinely excited about going to church. I also think she has a thing for Robbie)

We arrived at Robbie Worship and, gotta say, things weren't looking good. The church was large and almost entirely empty. And the lecture was long and entirely German. We settled into the back pews and waited as someone came up to do the first reading in the normal church style. "Komm her und gib mir deine Hand, ich will das Leben beruhren..."

It was then that our friendly waitress, I'll call her darling Nicole, began translating. "Come and hold my hand, I wanna contact the living." Yes: Robbie lyrics were being read out. In church. In German. And in complete seriousness.


Robbie Worship: blessed art thou

I feel I must apologise to the organisers of Robbie Worship for the next hour or so. Where, whilst most sat reverently whilst Robbie lyrics were read out and sung, a small contingent in the back few rows giggled, waved and took lots of pictures. Perhaps they thought we were really connecting with the material. We were. Just differently to other people.

A few other things are worth mentioning about Robbie Worship:

1) The house band



... Black suits, colourful ties and German stoicism all in one. Franz Ferdinand meets Kraftwork (and bonus marks for the most excellent rendition of the guitar riff in Angels)

2) The Robbie host

Black and white suit. Trendy glasses. Eager and committed devotion to the Gospel of Robbie. Sadly he was apparently sighted elsewhere in the Kirchentag a day later. I'd have liked to have thought Robbie Worship was his sole purpose in being.

3) Guess the minister

My poor darling Nicole, not a church person and already freaked out by English people going to church for entertainment ("You don't go to church to laugh!"), translating a church service which confused her no end ("So now he's talking about Elton John. He's not in the Bible, is he?") then had to deal with the fact she was hanging out with a bunch of Christians, many of whom worked for the Church. And that one of them was a minister. She increased Simon's 'cool factor' by guessing wrongly. And then got up at an unearthly time of the morning a couple of days later to come to another service which freaked her out no end. Awww.

This, ladies and gentlemen, may have been the most random night I've ever had with a bunch of Church people and locals on the streets of Hanover. It was certainly one of the more enjoyable.

HANOVER - Robbie Worship II - The Freaky Church Remix

NOTE: Robbie Worship is such a significant blogging event that I feel the need to split it into two categories. This one is Robbie Worship: The Freaky Church Remix. If you're one of those people who likes your blogs on the intellectually shaky, churchy side then this is the place for you. If you, however, are scared by such things (and I can't say that I blame you) and want to hear about Robbie Worship from a travel blog "what a crazy day" kind of viewpoint then simply scroll up to Robbie Worship: The Serendipity Mix where normal service shall be resumed. I apologise for the multiple blogs on the same topic. But, then, there is nothing in the world quite like Robbie Worship.

Picture the scene... It's Thursday evening, it's Germany and you're going to church. You're a little late but that's okay; it's a large building with a smiling sides person (note: I find this such a random job description seeing as most of the work these poor souls have to do is based around the back of the building. Anyho.) You manage to slip into the back rows of the place roughly un-noticed, and just as the preamble is coming to a close.

The guy up front isn't dressed like a priest. He's not even dressed like your usual charasmatic evangelical. He's got a black and white suit on which screams cruise ship entertainment host... Something in the back of your head is buzzing but you decide to ignore it. After all: this is contemporary church. It's cutting edge. Things are meant to look a little different and less imposing. To drive home the point, the place is darkened and a projector is lighting up a section to the right of the altar. A swanky Powerpoint presentation cannot be far away. Indeed, cruise ship man is reaching the point in his spiel which calls for illustration. He goes for his little button. The screen lights up. And staring back at you is the face of your spiritual leader, whose hair is legendary and whose chosen words you can quote like any well learnt lesson... It's the warm, smiling face... Of Robbie Williams.

Welcome to Robbie Williams worship. The strangest church service of your life.

Okay, so I'm really into cultural relevancy in the Church. i.e. the idea that modern music/film/TV/books etc. are useful products of discussion by people of faith because artists often create media which functions as expressions (unconcious or not) of spiritual themes. And which allow us, the readers, to have our own encounters as a result.

It's a bit of a pre-occupation with me: My only current contribution to world literature, for example, is an examination of TV's Angel and I spend too many hours of my working week skulking around the forums of Damaris and the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. So the prospect of a Robbie Williams themed Kirchentag event didn't strike me as particularly revolutionary. Just a bit of a chat about how the Robster's lyrics, although pop glossed to the point of nausea, are often quite touching and/or even moving. And, of course, it'd all be in German. Therefore: a trifle dull... Oh contrare.

You see, what I'd never realised from this particular area of Christian studies is that it is possible to get it really, really wrong. You set out to do something cutting edge and insightful but really you end up with a big ol' mess. Rather than engage with Robbie, Robbie Worship basically aimed to offer us Robbie as worship in and of itself. Robbie's lyrics were read to us like the Gospel. Robbie's songs were sung by a congregation led by a band as devoted and practiced as any worship band (this blogger even noticed moments of "eyes closed reverance" from the lead singer)

Here's the problem with Robbie Worship on a basic level: it assumes that spirituality is inherent in all art. And that artforms are there to be decoded for their one basic meaning. Crack the code, tell your audience about it and they will get the spiritual experience. They will get Robbie.

This, as any A-Level English Lit. student could tell you, is a critical viewpoint which was put to death over half a century ago. Texts, you see, don't contain spiritual meaning. They are just texts. They may have been written from a certain viewpoint and can be rather unsubtle in nature, but they do not have inherent meaning in and of themselves. Texts only achieve meaning when they are received That is, after all, the joy of reading a book or hearing music. Not finding out what the author was thinking, but having your own thoughts provoked. Forming your own ideas and, crucially, having a true meeting between the text and the Spirit. Good Christian examinations of contemporary culture (like good literary criticism) encourage us the consumers to do just that. In the same way that a truly great sermon doesn't tell you what a Biblical passage means, but prompts you with ideas that allow you to have your own experience with the passage.

This, of course, prompts a discussion about Biblical studies and whether or not it fits into this same 'no meaning without readership' theory. Which is an intense theological discussion all of it's own... And that's the reason I don't write freaky church blog very much. As a wise spiritual person once said: It speaks a language which I don't understand.

Here endeth the freaky church section of this blog. Normal service is now resumed.