Don't stop moving to the funky 'arvest beat

Today I returned from Harvest, which is a Christian camp, in similar fashion to Soul Survivor but its up north near a fairly small place called Bishop Aukland, fairly near Durham. Harvest was on from Thursday till Tuesday but due to work on Saturday, I could only get there on Saturday afternoon, but then I stayed till the end. What an interesting weekend it was! It started out fairly normally, just hanging out around the tents, me and Alan played pass with a tennis ball over the table and then me and Sarah went for a walk, then we went to the evening meeting. Normal Harvest stuff! (My sister has just arrived and has attached herself to me 'limpet' style around my neck...) Anyway, so Saturday was pretty normal. Sunday morning is when it started to get interesting! At previous Harvest's I've experienced lots of coldness, rain, mud, and more coldness but never the excess windspeed that was there this time. It was quite nerve-wrecking sitting in a huge marquee tent and all you can hear behind the voice of the speaker is the loud rattling of the metal bars above your head that is keeping the tent up. During the morning meeting, the Stewards had gone round taking down tents that were looking like they were gonna blow away. Its like in the Adrian Plass Diary Aged 37 1/2 - he has gone to a Christian camp called 'Let God Spring into Royal Acts of Harvest Growth' and he says:

"Anne and Gerald and I erected our new 'Tornado-Tough' frame tent in no time, despite high winds and sheeting rain. After checking out the toilets, we walked up to the shop. Passed our magnificent new tent, standing tall and proud in the face of the gale. A little further on, our magnificent new tent passed us, flying through the air like a huge, loony, red and blue sail. Caught it eventually, just outside Richard and Doreen Cook's 'Super'Safari-complete-Comfort-Vacation-Van'. Could see Richard inside, drinking tea and reading a bible in the warm. He nodded and smiled and mouthed the words 'Praise the Lord' at me, as I wrestled with my horrible pile of soggy canvas. Mouthed something back." (The last bit wasn't needed in the story, I just think its funny :-p )

Anyway, so the stewards were going around making sure that wasn't happening to our tents by taking them down for us. They took down Michaels tent, which was very kind of them :-s By mid-afternoon, it was decided that our main tent which slept 3 people and kept all the food in it had to come down, because the pole at the front which was meant to curve outwards was infact bending the same angle but inwards. The small cupboard which housed the food such as breakfast cereal was blown over, despite it being in the middle of the tent. I know it housed cereal because someone that morning had neglected to close the box so there was cocoa pops everywhere and I had to scoop them all up! So, since Michaels tent was down and him and Chris were sleeping in that, and the main tent was down which Alan, Matt, Mike and the food were sleeping in, we were short of 5 sleeping spaces and a food store. In the end, Alan and Mike squashed in the 2-man tent with Tim that Tim had been in by himself, Matt slept in the boot of his car (which is quite large thankfully!) and from somewhere an extra 2-man tent was found for Chris and Michael. And the food was stored under Chris's mammoth BBQ table with tarpaulin sheets over in that were pegged down in strategic places. Taking tents down in strong winds is tough! In order to fold them, you had one person folding and about 3 people laying along the edges of it so they dont blow away. Absolute insanity! By tea-time the winds had died down a lot, and stayed that way. Until we were all woken up at 2:30am by the same howling winds. (Luckily we got no rain with it....imagine the hell that would have caused!) So since we were all up checking our tents were pegged down and were all quite awake and aware that sleep was not an option for the time-being, we all got wrapped up in our sleeping bags and sat under the stars for an hour. Due to the winds, there was quite a clear sky above! Very beautiful. Until the stewards came round telling us that if we weren't faffing on with our tents we should go back in them and go back to sleep. Somehow we all managed. I didn't make the wake-up prayers that morning.

So, I haven't even mentioned any of the Christian side of the weekend so far! I think I'll do that another time. I'm really tired and cant quite think straight about the important things like what God did (other than give us unexpected team-work experience).

The cat is still alive!

Man, housesitting is awesome. As much as I love living at home, there's definetly something to be said for independence. Going to Morrisons and wandering round the shop with my trolley thinking 'what do I need to survive?' (answer: orange juice, yoghurt, milk and chicken drumsticks, with the odd bit of salad thrown in.) Apart from sometimes forgetting to look after the cat properly, I'm doing a pretty good job! I've managed to eat almost every day, I've remembered to do my washing so I haven't run out of clothes, I've been washing the dishes...well the dishwasher has...but still, I've remembered to do them! I'm quite enjoying myself.

I stayed up till about 3am last night, watching my new favourite propgramme Lost, this very bizarre film called Empire Records, then (slightly sad, I know) watching the cast commentary for Lord of the Rings. Great fun. Shame we had no beer in the house, that would have topped it all off nicely.

I had a marvelous day in Scotland yesterday, visiting my newly married friends Helen and Michael who live on a campsite. Not in a tent - that would get cold! Micahel's parents own the campsite, Michael runs it. It is quite handy to have your friends house labelled on the national map and from the motorway - makes for easy finding! We got a tour of the campsite, then walked to the tiny village shop to discover they dont sell charcoal, so drove the 20 minute drive to the nearest town where we did find charcoal (and marshmallows...can you guess what we had for tea?) Ofcourse, as it does most of the time when we have a barbeque, it rained during the cooking of so the men were huddled around the BBQ with their jackets and umbrellas. Unfortunatly because it was a few hours drive home, we missed the bonfire, which was an old stattic caravan they were gonna burn - how fab would that have been?!? Huge! But we did get lovely BBQ food, marshmallows, guateaux and guinness with a gorgeous view of some gorgeous mountains - can it get much better than that?!?

So, its only 7 weeks till I leave for Colombia. Still no visa, gonna go down to London in 2 weeks with my Dad, then stay on for a few days and visit my friend, come home and apply to uni! Thats what I need to do this afternoon, is look on the UCAS website, find websites of unis and see when they can have me for a visit before I depart from the UK. So I guess I better be off!

Results, uni and a cat

Last year I applied to Lancaster Uni to do a music degree. On Thursday as many people know was results day for the A-levels. I nervously headed down to school to pick them up. I got to the hall and very nervously opened my envelope, to discover that my results were

Music - C
English Language - C
Biology - C (?!)

I was very pleased with these results. A bit gutted that I was only 4 marks off a B in music, but ecstatic that I got a C in Biology! And it was enough to get into my uni! So, as any crazy person might do, I promptly phoned them up and cancelled my application. Insane? Yes. But with good reason. I applied to music knowing I was pretty good at it, I enjoyed it, and didn't know what else to do. In the last 2 months, I've found what I do want to do. Nursing! Quite a difference, yes. So I'm gonna apply to do a nursing degree. I'm not sure which uni to go to, but I'll figure that out soon hopefully! Some choices are Liverpool, Manchester, Lancaster, or Northumbria, which is in Newcastle. I want to go away though. The good thing about a nursing degree is that its NHS bursary, so I get my fees paid for me. Thats very nice of them isn't it! So we'll see what happens.

Still no visa for Colombia. I'm going to London in a few weeks and so will go to the embassy and get one there. That'll mean I dont have to send my passport in the post, and I will be able to leave London with a visa (hopefully!) I'd really appreciate prayers for this, because its been really stressing me out recently. A visa is a very important thing when you want to go to a country for more than 90 days.

Me and my brother have been house/cat sitting for my uncle the last week. hasn't been bad, its quite fun having a short time of independence. I've discovered that I really need to learn how to cook, because for the first 4 days I didn't eat very well at all! Partly coz the bread was mouldy which didn't help, but I still had no imagination to come up with anything else.

So, that's all for now! I'm gonna go clean church and then finish watching the rest of the Lord of the Rings trilogy which we started yesterday, got half way through, so are gonna hopefully finish it tonight!

Little joke

Do you think infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

I saw this is in a shop of the fish quay near my house. It was an old fashioned fish shop with loads of carved wooden signs with random sayings on. Most of them were pretty funny. I can't remember any others off the top of my head though! So that one will have to do for now.

I went to work tonight, it was pretty busy. I don't like the Friday evening shift! Thankfully its not my normal shift, I was just covering for someone on holiday.

I started painting my room today, it is Indian White (to make it you add orange and black to white. Curious...) and I've done one wall so far. The last 3 days we've had strange men wandering round our house fitting windows. They were just some guys off the street, fancied smashing some glass, so we invited them in! Hehehe. The house is looking slightly more normal house, they're coming back tomorrow to hopefully finish off! Thankfully I'll be at work in the morning (how often do I say that?) so hopefully I'll avoid the work (I do say that one a lot.)

I'm off to bed now, so tired. Work tomorrow, then probably more painting. Joy!