Aber-Ga-Venny!

*deep breath*

Disclaimer: What follows is mostly true - I may exagerate some aspects slightly for humourous effect. Any similarity to persons living/deceased is purely because it's about them. Based on a true story.

Well, it all started on a Friday night. I had a bit of a sleep after work and then got up, packed, phoned this girl that I'm seeing and then drove to meet with everyone that was going on the weekend away.
Got up to the church around 18:15...traditionally the minibus is the best place to be on a trip cuz it's the most fun, but I would have to say that driving is quite fun too. The minibus was driven by Nigel and all of the bags were put on the roof-rack and secured by Luke (Radford). His expert knot-tying is second to none, and legend has it that his father passed down the secret of "unbreakable knot" to him when he was but a babe, and therefore young master Luke has been practicing for many moons.

*back to reality*

We set off and just before we went over the old (rusty) Severn Bridge, we got a phone call from the minibus requesting that we follow a bit farther behind. The reason being that Nigel had been transporting some kind of mattress earlier in the week (without the expert knotting of Luke) and it had fallen off of the back. farther back indeed we dropped and we carried on over the bridge. As the motorway re-joined the M4 (which goes over the new (shiny) Severn Bridge) we noticed someone jumping from the top of the minibus...

"Nooooooo" I cried.

Then I noticed that it was (in fact) a bluey-coloured duffel bag, which exploded into a cloud of clothing as it hit the motorway. I dutifully checked my mirrors, and my blind before indicating and changing lanes in a timely fashion. If I hadn't dropped back a bit more it probably would have been a wild swerve into other cars/lanes/minibuses/ducks as I tried to get out of the way. Anyways, it turned out that nobody in the minibus noticed the bag falling off of the back, so there was an abundance of hysteria when we phoned them a mile later and informed them that a bag had fallen off. Nigel and myself disccussed the situation (and laughed a bit because it wasn't either of our bags!!) and decided it was all Luke's fault. Luke went on the roof and declared that a rope had snapped which is the only way to break his legendary "unbreakable knot". We let him off. In my car was Lauren and Wendy, and we drove back down the motorway to get "the stuff" that had fallen off. Unfortunately, due to motorway regulations, we weren't allowed to drive the wrong way down the motorway, so had to go back to a previous junction, turn around and come back the way we came to get on the right bit of road. The involved going back to Bristol over the new (shiny) Severn Bridge because I forgot to go back the way we came. We then returned over the old (rusty) Severn Bridge and had to pay *again*, even though we had a reciept. Grr. Then we drove to the place where "the incident" happened and picked up various bits of women's clothing. Fortunately the police had spotted "the stuff" and dragged it over to the side of the road for us, so there weren't really any tyre marks on "the stuff".

After that hour-long distraction, we continued to Abergavenny (ish) to Fedw (the place we were staying). When we got there we found a lost (and slightly crazy) Simon who had been searching for the past hour, but couldn't find Fedw. We got (vague) directions from a very helful welsh guy in the local garage, drove half-way up the mountain and found the place! We found a really old converted farm house which was massive! It had a big lounge area, bunk beds, kitchen/dining area and outside toilets. Everywhere was stone floors and there were thin rugs placed over them. Paper might have worked better. We didn't have any firewood, but luckily there were electric heaters in the bedrooms. We ate food and then had some praise-and-worship. At this point it was about 11:30pm, so a bunch of people decided to play Uno. I didn't, but did attempt to teach Luke (Dean) and Tom (Turrell) a couple of chords on the guitar (pronounced gooey-tar).

01:30 - Bed time!
Yay, some sleep. Our room (Tim, Luke R and myself - male leaders) was right next to the lads' room and could hear *every single word that they said*. It was most revealing I can tell ya ;) LoL

Wakey wakey
At about 8am we were woken up by the lads. They (mistakenly) thought it was 9am and that they should be making brekkie and made a heck of a noise waking up, freaking out, and then complaining when they found out that it was too early! They got up early anyway and we had an early breakfast. Mmm, toast & (Asda Cheapy) coco pops. Then we went to Abergavenny for a bit and had food/tried to get into the fully-booked leisure centre. When we left Fedw my car was stuck in the mud! I had parked facing down a slope, and when I tried reversing up, the wheels just span! It took all the youth getting covered in mud, and Nigel's ingenuity to get me out of it. I thought my car was a-gonner!
The idea for the afternoon was that we would split the youth into two teams, and get them to do some dramas later. The dramas would be Christian versions of some TV shows (soaps, reality TV, talk-shows, etc..) and had to include three scriptures.

Chat Show
The first team (Team Abergavenny) did a chat-show and interviewed the characters from the book of Esther. Sam played a bimbo Esther, Dan used my bogey-coloured hippy-hoody and was Mordecai, Alicea was the chat-show host, and Justin was Haman.

Quotes (in no particular order):

Duane: "..untimely death of Michael Schumacher.."

Dan : "beeeeeeeeeeeep"

Sam : "What problem? Look at me, I'm beatiful; I don't have problems."

Sam : "Ohhhh, *that* problem."

I'm A Finger, Get Me Out Of Here
Last year they did a talent show and there was a puppet/finger show which (I hear) was very funny. This year they (Team Jebus) did a mick-take of "I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here". It was great...had us all in stitches.

Quotes (again, no particular order):

Luke : "Luke Eighteen, Chapter Four...uh...verse four."

(all fingers) : "Nooooooooooooooooooo"

Fat Andy (wandering in the jungle) : "I need chips"

(all fingers) : "Awimba-wa, awimba-wa..."
Fat Andy : "..in the jungle, the mighty jungle.."
Nami : "...aaaa-OOOOOOOOOOOOOO..."

Classic. You *definitely* had to be there. Or you could watch the video we took of it, LoL. If you could get your hands on a copy!

The weekend was generally great fun - lots of laughs and stuff. Too much to put here really, so I'll just leave you with some quotes (for many of thme YHTBT)...

(Loz is interviewing Luke R with a video camera)
Luke: "Apart from the shower - it was freezing!"
Loz : "Yeah, it was really cold when I got in too!"
(outside voice) : "You and Loz were in the shower together?"

(Tristan grabs camera from Loz to interview her)
*Tristan zooms in on her nose"
*laughter from those that can see the screen (Loz can't)*
Tristan: "This is 'Up Close and Personal' with Loz"
Loz : "Tristan, have you zoomed right in on me?"
Tristan: "Uhh. No?"

I'll add more as I remember them in future installments.

Stayed up till about 12 and then went to bed because I had to be back early for church. This meant leaving at 8am.
Apparently after I went to bed, the girls invaded the lads' room and covered them in toothpaste and other such things. I didn't hear a thing! Yay! Sleep!

Got up early the next day, drove back to Bristol (via Maccies...mmm...Maccies brekkie + muffin *dribble*), and got to church *just* in time for the sound check...phew!

Sleeeeeeeeepy sleep
In the afternoon I went to Adam's for lunch. The idea was that I would go there, eat lunch quickly and then go home and sleep. Lunch didn't end up happening until 1530! This meant we didn't finish until 1630, by which time it was almost time to go back to church! D'oh.

Dead things...
I got home to change for church, and it was all dark. I stumbled down the hallway and flicked on the lightswitch. To my horror there were hundreds of little black things scuttling around my feet covering the hallway! I jumped back in fright and, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I realised that they were feathers. The cat had killed a blackbird and dragged it into the house. I've seen our cat "playing" with its kill before, and it usually involves throwing it around the hallway. After I got over the shock of it, I stuck the dead bird in a black bag, threw it in the outside bin and got changed and went to church...I didn't have time to vacuum up the feathers, so I did it later when I got home.

Church...
Church was good; it was our monthy evangelsim evening - "Let Us Entertain You" where we do a few praise/worship songs, some testimonies/dances/drama and then a little bit of an evangelistic message. It then finishes earlier than our normal services and there's tea and CAKE afterwards! We chilled for a bit and then went to "Brian's" house. After getting hopelessly lost (Tom claimed to know the way..which he did until we got to the estate, but then got lost driving around an infinite number of cul-de-sacs) we phoned "Brian" and found our way there. We chatted for a bit, discovered that sucking your thumb gives you buck-teeth and then I went home. I had been a bad boy and forgotten to reply to a text from earlier, so I tried to call Jen who was away from her phone making tea at the time. I sent her a couple of texts instead and then went straight to sleep.

And now I'm at work!

I've got worship practice tonight. Praise God that the month of equippers is over..it means I finally get to practice at worship practice!! Yayyyy!

Listening to : Something Corporate - "As You Sleep" (North)