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).