Apologies for a very cheesy title to this post, but it’s actually quite an accurate description of the weekend. No, seriously.
On Friday morning I left home at the usual time, except this time I wasn’t going to work (in retrospect I kind of wish I was now, but still). Phil dropped me off at Fordham, from where I was able to get a lift in the minibus with James and Mike up to Sheffield. That’s right, we were doing what’s known in conservative evangelical circles as a “Mission”, where a group of Christians try to indoctrinate convert people.
We got to Sheffield in time for lunch, where we had time to meet the team and organise ourselves for the afternoon. The afternoon was mainly spent doing door-to-door work, and we had some quite good responses. I went out with somebody who has a lot of experience doing door-to-door work, but it still didn’t make it any easier – it’s actually quite tough to cold call like that. Still, most people didn’t mind and some even seemed to quite appreciate the effort, so it was a lot better than I thought it would be!
Afterwards we all came back for tea, before going out for the evening’s event: Ice Skating with the young people. Only James and I were going from the Fordham team – the idea was that afterwards James would do a short talk and I would give my testimony. I hadn’t been Ice Skating before, so I was a bit apprehensive. Suffice it to say that the apprehension was fully justified: a girl stepped out in front of me, and in trying to avoid her I somehow managed to fall over flat on my face and chip one of my front teeth. D’oh! It didn’t hurt that much though, and despite having a slight lisp (and looking like an extra from the X-Files) the rest of the evening went ahead as planned. I doubt I’ll be going Ice Skating again though, not in the near future at least! Learning to Ice Skate on a Friday night when the rink was absolutely packed out is probably not such a good idea.
On Saturday, we did door to door work in the morning again, and got a few more positive responses. In the afternoon we had “It’s a Knock Out” a family games / races tournament, which was very well attended and enjoyed by everybody. Then in the evening we had a break – I went back with my hosts (who were also hosting Roy and Janette) and we spent a pleasant evening chatting.
On Sunday I helped out with the kids group in the morning, and then after the service spent a while “jamming” with some of the other musicians from the church and from Fordham. It was really cool – they have a drummer there, which we don’t have at Fordham, and I think a lot of the newer songs really need a drummer as they were written with that sort of music group in mind. It’s not that I don’t like the music at Fordham – it’s excellent – but sometimes it would be nice to have a different style: Fordham has an ensemble with an oboe, clarinet, flute etc… classical instruments. I’d occasionally like to have a drummer, guitarist, etc – your standard fare in a lot of churches.
After lunch I headed back home on the train, which cost an absurd amount of money (over £70 for an off peak single to Colchester from Sheffield). The mission actually went on until this morning, but I needed to get back to see the dentist about my tooth!
Speaking of which, I went to see the dentist this morning (for the first time with this particular dentist – I haven’t been to a dentist’s for five years…) It was fairly typical of a dentist: you go in with one problem, you come out with five! Apparently I need various bits of work doing to my teeth. She also strongly recommended to me that I have my wisdom teeth out – apparently they are ‘highly impacted’, which means that if I leave it for too long they will cause serious problems. Having my wisdom teeth out would be a preventative measure. Anyway, I’m going back in tomorrow to have my broken tooth fixed, and I don’t know when the other work will be done.
All in all, what with the train ticket and the dentists, this has turned out to be a rather expensive weekend! Still, as they say, these things do happen…
There is one thing left to say though, on a more positive note: I watched “Forest of the Dead” yesterday, the conclusion of the Doctor Who two-parter by Steven Moffat. How good was that episode? I said last week that I thought this episode would be better than the first one, and I was right 🙂 (Well, it makes a change, doesn’t it?) I’m really looking forward to the next series of DW, under the leadership of Steven Moffat – he really seems to have the knack of writing a powerful script which doesn’t disappoint the fans as well as being cracking good stories. I hope that script editing for a whole series won’t dilute the genius too much, but even if it does at least we have the episodes he’s written so far to go back to!
*phew*… sorry that was such a long post. I promise next time it won’t be such a self-pitying whine! Well, not so much of a self-pitying whine. Well, alright, will contain just a little bit less of a self-pitying whine. But not much less. What’s that, you say you don’t want to read my self-pitying whines?
I should demand your money back :p