Greenbelt 2014 - especially for Jan :-) (Part 1)

By special request I am resurrecting this sadly neglected space to blog about Greenbelt 2014, which after 15 years at Cheltenham Racecourse (very handily about 30 mins from home), has moved to Boughton House near Kettering (about 2 hours from home). This means it is on a completely greenfield site again, as compared to the Racecourse which used some of the fixed buildings, hard carparks etc.

The first big change which this meant was that cars are not allowed onto the campsites for the purposes of transporting tents and equipment, to avoid ruining the ground as much as possible.  All equipment had to be carried from the car park to the campsite - tent, bedding, washing up stuff, food, clothes, books, etc. GB said that wheelbarrows would be available to borrow for wheeling stuff down, and that there would be the usual golf-buggy taxis also. However, having once had to go through this process on my own at Cheltenham due to heavy rainfall, I remembered the exhaustion of numerous trips back and forth, the impossibility of getting a taxi because they were all too busy and feeling absolutely wrecked and achey from all the carrying and pulling. So I decided to take our caravan instead of the tent, which meant I could tow it into place and then move the car to the car park. 

We had a good trip there, arriving around 3pm and then queuing through a long slow line to get onto the site. It is a long way from the public road to the car parks! We set up without any problems (didn't have to reverse the caravan, phew!) but I did have to get help from a couple with a similar caravan on how to get the gas working - I hadn't pushed the regulator down hard enough on the gas canister. We did see lots and lots of people having quite a struggle carrying loads of heavy stuff and having to make several trips.

We went down to the Festival village around 6pm. First impressions were really positive - it is a very attractive site with lots of trees, glades, lakes, architectural garden features, and of course the wonderful Greenbelt site vibing which had lights and ribbons in trees, signs, flags and other lovely things :-)

We were too late to get to the Angels' reception and introduction, or the Opening Ceremony but went to try and sign up for the Scratch Choir which would be performing at the Communion service on the Sunday morning. I've never done anything like that at GB and I quite fancied something special to do on my 50th birthday :-)  Unfortunately they were only taking 20 people (not sure if that was kids + adults or 20 of each) and we were too late. So instead we took a peek in at the Family Twist so I could give Isabelle an idea what it was. This regular GB event gives kids the chance to sign up at the beginning of the session to do some sort of performance - telling a joke, singing, dancing or whatever. I had brought Isabelle's guitar to the Festival in the hope that she would want to have a go. To start with she said no, but then changed her mind and agreed to have a go on Saturday.

We wandered round, checked out the wonderful range of food available and looked in some of the tents for the GB merchandise, the bookstore etc. People close to me will find it hard to believe that that was the only time I set foot in the GB bookstore and I did not spend a single pound in there! That has never happened before :-0

However, Isabelle was then suffering from some tummy ache, having had a touch of the runs for 2 days, and she wanted to go back to the caravan. So we had an early night in anticipation of getting stuck in to things the following day. 

At about 3-4am Isabelle woke me up, having got up for the loo and discovering that there were no lights working in the caravan. I got up and checked, found that sure enough there were no lights or power of any sort, and that the caravan battery was completely flat. The culprit was the water pump which is supposed to shut itself off when not actually needed to pump water to the taps or toilet, but which hadn't and had been running for about 12 hours non-stop. Then Isabelle, having been to the toilet in the normal way, said she thought she might be sick, went back in and threw up several times, during which she also discovered she was having a nosebleed as well. This is not good when in the complete dark with no running water, not to mention my phobia of vomit! My mind was running on overdrive and thinking we would have to pack up in the morning and go home. The very sad thing was that I had arranged for my special friend and her daughter to come and visit us at GB for the day on the Saturday and I had to text her at about 4.30am to tell her not to come. We then slept in the next morning till about 9.30am.

To cut a long story short, we eventually got the caravan battery charged up on the Sunday so power was restored, and Isabelle gradually felt better through Saturday and I didn't get ill so all went well after that!

Naturally we had a slow start to Saturday, missing Yoga and Storytelling which we had fancied first thing. If I'd done exactly what I wanted to do on Saturday I would have gone at 10am to listen to Theo Simon (from fab activist band Seize the Day) talk about Voices for the Voiceless, I would have sent Isabelle to do Den Building on the Lawn at the same time (massive flat lawn area in front of the magnificent Boughton House); "Does Church Make you Happy?" about the Happiness Course ("based on both the latest science and ancient biblical wisdom") at 11.30, and also at 11.30 I wanted to listen to Nadia Bolz Weber talk about "The Authority of Experience and what the gospel has to say about real bodies, people, events and trauma - how a Christian community responded to school shootings, the Trayvon Martin murder and gay suicides". I did manage to catch perhaps the last 20-30 minutes of this latter talk and it was really good. Nadia is the sort of woman who wouldn't look out of place in a biker gang - tattoos and piercings and leather - but she is the founding pastor of the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver and she was wonderfully real about the agony and brutality of real life and how we can and do respond to that as ordinary people and as Christians. Hers is a talk I think I will download and listen to again.

At 12.30 ish we wandered round, got some lunch (though I restricted Isabelle to only a small amount of solid food and a fruit smoothie) and sat in on a two-woman play for kids called "Misunderstood Monsters" which was OK-ish (I was a bit bored) but Isabelle enjoyed it enough to sit there while we were eating, and join in the audience participation bits. 

At 1pm I would have wanted to go and listen to the wonderful John Bell of the Iona Community talk about "What shall we tell the children? - in an era when the popularity of books favouring atheism lies alongside a low public profile of organised religion, what are the important things we should tell children about God, the Bible and their role in the world?" Of course I already have my own ideas about the answer to this question but John Bell always speaks with great common sense and insight and I would have liked to hear him. However Isabelle was not up for sitting through another talk so we went for a cup of tea/sit down in the Angels Tent at which time I realised I had not brought my charging plug and lead for my phone down from the caravan so I couldn't get it charged.   

I can't actually remember what we did next. I know Isabelle wanted to go to Archery and Judo on the Lawn but we didn't get there for some reason. Perhaps we went back to the caravan for some cheap lunch. At 4pm it would have been good to get to The Bad Christian's Manifesto by David Tomlinson (Why doesn't the God of religion fit the God-shaped hole in people any more? How can we re-imagine divinity in the 21st century? Is there an antidote for involuntary atheism?) but I also wanted to go to a Mindfulness meditation on the Mount. Boughton House has modernised one area of their garden - digging out a lawn-covered pyramid-shaped hole in the ground with the matching pyramid rising up at the side - for Greenbelt this became the 'Mount', a venue for quiet thought, worship or meditation sessions. I didn't get to either event! What I did make it back for was "Help, Thanks, Wow" by Anne Lamott ("funny, insightful and wise best-selling author) talking on keeping prayer simple - help, thanks, wow, and now since writing the book of that title she has added 'what-ever...' in the style of American teenagers. I really liked her - she is indeed funny and self-deprecating.

We then went to the Family Twist and really enjoyed many of the contributions of the kids including a very cute 2yo singing Twinkle Twinkle and a couple of kids reciting and acting out a poem of Red Riding Hood.  We didn't have Isabelle's guitar though so she said she would have a go on Sunday.

I would have liked to go to Rime which was a combination of circus with theatre and dance based on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but we were in the Twist at the time, and I would also have liked to hear Sara Miles who wrote "Take this Bread" - "Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and writer. Then one morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. She ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed, embracing a faith she'd scorned and which would lead to feeding others in a way that she'd never imagined."  I have flicked through that book in a bookshop and I would love to read it completely (but so many books, so little time!). She was talking about "the idolatry of food in the context of widespread hunger" - another talk I think I will have to download.

At 7.30pm we went over to a Family Ceilidh in the Big Top and had an utterly fantastic time! This is the sort of thing where it's brilliant to have Isabelle who loves dancing and threw herself into it all very enthusiastically :-) It was so fun and lovely to have her as a companion to dance with.  After that we were exhausted so grabbed chocolatey (in Isabelle's case) and bananay/chocolatey/Grand Marnier-y (in my case) pancakes for our evening treat and then went back to the caravan for chilling out and bed.

On Sunday morning I had birthday presents to open!!!  :-)  Isabelle made me a cup of tea, and then I cooked bacon and egg for breakfast. We took our time and ended up being about 10-15 minutes late for the massive Communion service, which I wouldn't mind except I missed a couple of my favourite songs and speakers. However what we did hear I really enjoyed, and I sat in the sunshine watching three birds flying very high indeed - they were just little black specks circling round and round in the blue sky and clouds - and felt one of those moments of heaven on earth. For those who are interested I recommend looking up musician Marcus Hummon, and Thistle Farms which rescues women from prostitution, trafficking and addiction. At the end of the service, another group close to us burst into 'Happy Birthday' for one of their group, and at the end Isabelle pointed to me and said "it's her birthday too!" so everybody around me sang loudly and joyfully for me too :-)

And I will have to stop for a while - come back for Part 2!