Greenbelt 2011

After a weekend away at Greenbelt I am now massively behind with blogging, reading blogs, sending emails etc. I've got about three blog posts waiting to be written, so here's the first:

My drive over to Greenbelt, on Cheltenham racecourse, consisted of torrential downpours, interspersed with murky grey daylight, which wasn't the greatest encouragement to get there and get my tent up. The first night was fairly, erm, wet, but when I left my tent on the Saturday morning, I discovered the sun breaking through the clouds (this is after lying in my sleeping bag for about an hour wondering if the rain would stop for long enough for me to go to the portaloos).

The site really is beautiful (in the sun), with the hills round the edge. This photo was taken from the race course grandstand, which has breathtaking views right from the top.

This year I was camping with Rebeltreble, a friend from church and knitting group, and a crowd of other people. It was her birthday on the Saturday, which, of course, meant chocolate cake for breakfast.



This time too I did more of a variety of things. I went to various talks:

[I've linked to downloads of the talks, although you have to pay for them].
This one was my favourite, Janet Soskice talking about "The magnificent lady Bible hunters: sisters of Sinai", probably because it was fun as well as interesting. It was all about twin sisters who, in 1892, did lots of things that nineteenth century women weren't supposed to do, including setting off into the desert and discovering some Bible manuscripts at St Catherine's monastery at Sinai. I'll be getting her book about them to read. She also spoke about Bible translation in a debate, which I missed, but which I'll be downloading.

I also heard Billy Bragg on "The rich get richer and the poor get prison", about how to stop the cycle of reoffending once someone is released from prison. This was also fun though, as it featured someone his charity has helped singing as well.

And, in one of the earlier talks, which I didn't think I'd be up in time to hear, Brian McLaren on "How Christians could destroy the world in five minutes (and how to make sure we don't)", which was about Christian theology in relation to Israel and Palestine. OK, so definitely not a fun topic, but definitely an interesting one, and I hope something comes out of it.

Plus, most of a debate in the Kitchen venue, about "Taking it to the streets", about the rights and wrongs of people taking direct action, which I can't find a link to at the moment.

I also joined in with some worship. Not only the Sunday morning Communion with 15000 other people (quite hard to photo)

but also a more meditative/reflective service with the Moot community from London.

Taught loads of people to knit at the Woolly Thinking group, where we made knitted graffiti to use on the site:

Oh, and the usual obligatory Greenbelt things, like bumping into all sorts of people from different parts of my life, including MrsNiddyNoddy, the vicar (and wife), my baby bro and SIL, a friend's baby I met for the first time, somebody I went to university with 10 years ago...

Much cake was eaten, and tea drunk.

I also spent some time in G-source, looking at lots of church resources, and picked up a funky tea towel.

Had a chat with Reg Bailey, the Chief Executive of the Mother's Union (the one who did the report about the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood). They had a gadget on display for improving hygiene in developing countries - yes, it's a funky handwashing/soap-on-a-rope device:

(I am still struggling with the idea that the Chief Executive of the Mother's Union is a bloke called Reg. But I mustn't be sexist).

And viewed an exhibition of modern art from the Methodist church: "Jesus in the everyday".

I think that's everything I did? It was quite a busy weekend...

I've still got posts to do on books and garden at the beginning of the month, but I'm away most of this week at a conference so not sure when that will happen!

Stuff

Thank you for all the emails and messages I've had checking that I'm OK, whilst the riots were going on this country. I was really touched! It was all a bit bizarre really, as I saw all the riot footage on the news and some of my work colleagues had an unpleasant time getting home on a couple of days, but I didn't see any sign at all of any trouble. I saw a lot of the reaction to it, the upset when friends saw shops they'd used and loved for years burnt down. And the sense of unreality about what was going on.

I followed a link on Ravelry to this blog post about someone's commute to work - she walks across a fairly historic part of London to get to work, with lots of landmarks to photograph. My journey isn't quite as exciting, but these are the highlights(?). It isn't normally as quiet as this, but a lot of people are on holiday as it's August.

Cycle/footpath on the way to the station:

Walking through the town centre:

Empty seats (!) on the train. These usually fill up at the next few stations!

The station, first thing in the morning. Yawn.

Hordes of commuters at London Waterloo, waiting for the train to come in (we are such Super Commuters we know which platform it is, even before the train is announced!). Always entertaining when they change the platform at the last minute and everyone stampedes back the way they came...

 Trains racing out of Waterloo.

Hmm. That's not really very exciting at all.

More exciting was extracting my tent from the garage and putting it up in the garden to check it's OK for the festival I'm going to in a fortnight's time.

 Considering that I got it when I was 15 it's doing pretty well. Which reminds me that, now I'm of advanced years, getting an air mattress to sleep on might be a good idea. Really looking forward to going to Greenbelt. As usual, loads of great speakers I want to hear, and I seem to have volunteered for teaching knitting one evening too. I've taken a couple of days off work either side of the weekend to travel there and to sleep afterwards and do the washing (hmm, in my younger days I used to be able to stay up all night then go into work the next day no problem whatsoever. Don't think I want to try that now). I really am turning into an Old Fart.

And this is the OH's jumper. As you can see, I'm nearly there now, just one sleeve to go so I should have plenty of time to get it finished before I go to Greenbelt, as it's his birthday immediately afterwards! This has been a really enjoyable knit, nice pattern with clear instructions, and he's been able to try it on as we go because it's on circulars. And my interchangeable knitting needles have been excellent - I've been able to switch between sleeves and leave things on the cables using the end things whilst I waited to cast off until he could try it on.

I suppose I could have edited my foot out of the photo, but those are some of my sheep socks. And they're cool.