Just to keep you guessing
31/8/2007
Today I bring you a post about... cookery. May I recommend, for your delectation and delight, this fudge recipe that I tracked down yesterday? I was, as you might have guessed, a little depressed post-greenbelt, so I decided I'd cook up some sort of delicious sweetmeat to raise my spirits. I thought of fudge, but the recipe we had called for condensed milk - and frankly going all the way to a supermarket seemed excessive. This was my solution. It's wonderfully straightforward, only needs milk, sugar, butter and vanilla (you could probably replace that with whatever other flavour you were after for your fudge...) - and produces a rather passable product at the end.
The only slight worry for me was that the recipe includes the final instruction to "cut the fudge into small squares and store in a sealed container". Now I suspect that this might count as, errrr, well, packing it... Certain connotations there that I'm a little wary of, but the recipe demmands it, so who am I to refuse...
Yes, I know it's immature, but I'm 17 for f***s sake - that's what I'm for...
Attempting a measured response
30/8/2007
It now being well over 48 hours since I left site, I think I'm probably not going to get any more ready to try talking... The executive summary, for those that want to skip the rest, is that I had an outstandingly wonderful weekend. The detail goes a little like this.
Working: I was on the site stewards team for the second year running because I'd enjoyed myself so much last year. This year, in a rather unexpected turn of events, I found myself being made a deputy team leader, which I was equally excited about. As it turned out, I didn't feel like I did much that I hadn't done last year - I did some of the teamsheets (who goes where on which shift), and occasionally I'd go on a little walk-around before the shift to see how things were going. But the second of those was a) at my own choice b) quite possibly unneccessary and c) something that I might well have done anyway. So yeah, I hope I proved useful as a Deputy, even if I did feel a bit of a fraud.
Music: Because I was working, there were one or two things I'd have liked to go to and didn't: dfg's last gig would have been something to be part of, and I liked the description of echo park (mentioned muse, radiohead, coldplay and early U2 as influences...). But I did get an afternoon at mainstage that broadened my world considerably. Monday night started with This Beautiful Republic, and that was enough to get me properly buzzing. Real energy, and proper rock on mainstage at a real time of day - a breath of fresh air, and if they'd been a bit better known I don't doubt things would've got really exciting. Iain Archer really didn't do much for me, but that didn't matter. Because at 8pm on mainstage at greenbelt, I heard Duke Special for the first time. Mind-blowing. I'd heard one track of his before, an early version of "Something Might Happen", but I was worried that this wasn't really enough for me to know what was coming - my expectations might be way off. In fact they were - he was better than I could have imagined. Watch this space, if you're not already. He's gonna be huge.
And the rest: Didn't get to enough talks to merit their own section, but David Ford was good - which is nice, since he's the head bod for theology at Cambridge :-). Food was lovely as ever - PIE, and the £2 crepes were highlights. The 10-minute stewards' communion on monday afternoon was the most affecting worship I've been to all year. And more than anything else, it was fantastic to realise that (however much of a loner I'd been last year), I was coming back to be among friends.
Stuck in phase 2
29/8/2007
This cartoon is from the wonderful Dave Walker - as ever I find myself very glad he's around to show me the lighter side. And yes, you have guesed right as to what me being in phase 2 means... be glad you're on the other end of the internet, so can't smell me.
Hopefully I'll have more response later, once I've cleared my head.
It's Greenbelt time!
22/8/2007
Photos from Jonathon Watkins.
So it's the end of August, and I find myself posting for the last time before greenbelt, and trying to describe exactly why it is that I couldn't imagine the world getting cloer to heaven than it does over the August bank holiday on Cheltenham racecourse. Perhaps I should've realised by now that I'm never going to do justice to the festival, and accept that people who know GB already understand, and people who don't can't.
Unfortunately the weekend is too powerful for me to just let it go like that. I have to try to explain... Which is a shame, since I'm just not eloquent enough to describe the feeling of God dancing with you. But perhaps if you've done Reading or Glasto you can imagine that, but then imagine the feeling that everyone there is your close friend. Then imagine that there's a single overwhelming concern in your life, and that you feel in touch with it in a whole new way for that weekend. Then you still wont quite get how greenbelt is for me, but you'll be closer.
If you want to try to catch a quick glimpse of that world, of what I'm up to for the next week, you could have a look at the webcams - I'm not certain they'll be running this year, but I hope so. And I'll see you, as a different person, next week.
Power cut :-(
20/8/2007
The server was knocked out for maybe 45 minutes today (around 9:45-10:30) by a power cut. Many apologies if you were frustrated in your efforts to come here ;-)
This story has a happy ending
17/8/2007
I thought it was only fair to say that at the start, before recounting the emotional turmoil that came first.
In a very casual and off-the-cuff fashion, in the last post I touched on the impending A-level results: results which, as I mentioned before, I was less than confident of. And of course, spending the week before on a canal boat, an activity guarenteed to give you plenty of time to think about things, meant that it was impossible not to spend most of a week in terror...
The added bonus of being on the boat was that we didn't know how long it would take to drive to school - but it would certainly be a rather longer drive than usual, which isn't a promising start (given how tense both me and my mum get at that stage). So I set my alarm, giving us about two hours. Unfortunately, it only took an hour and ten minutes to get there, leading to possibly the most nail-biting 45 minutes of my life, sitting in a car at the bottom of the high street, trying to pass the time.
Even when I went into school, they kept the tension going for a few more minutes (now with the added thrill of lots of other scared students). But as I say, this story has a happy ending. I came out with safe As in all four subjects, not having really bummed up on any of the modules (not even Miss Denny's history paper). Perhaps the result that warmed the cockles of my heart most was in chemistry: for the final, synoptic paper I scored 120/120. 2 years of confussion and lack of understanding somehow coalesced there at the last minute :-).
But all of this is rather trivial, in comparison to the important thing: this means that I really, truly, no ifs and buts, do get to go to Cambridge! If found, please return to Robinson College, Grange Road, CB3 9AN in october 2008.
A quick note
8/8/2007
Just passing through, really, but I thought an update was in order. I spent the weekend at the Discworld Jamboree in Wincanton - imagine a smaller glastonbury/reading/other summer festival, then imagine that instead of being about music, it's about Pratchett and his books. Then imagine that everyone there is quite, quite mad :-)
So over the weekend I earnt badges, I played lots of Thud, I made new friends and caught up with old ones, I saw pTerry, a gang show, a masquerade, and a Witch Trials, I imbibed suitable quantities of ethanol, and just had an appropriately excellent time. Same time, same place in 2009, methinks :-)
But now I'm off again - for the next week I'll be on a narrow boat with my family, a prospect I was looking forward to until a couple of hours ago... And then it's results on the 16th. After that I should be around for almost week, before something truly important happens.
Good luck