Ding Dong Merrily on High

Good day to you all! How are you in blogland this fine day? At this moment Bob is making fun of me for typing so fast - he reckons that I'm not really typing anything, just hitting random keys. About right really.

This weekend was The Gathering in Birmingham - a Christian youth conference with 2000 kids/youth leaders coming together from around the country. Fifteen of us went to the event - thirteen in the minibus, and we met some up there. The whole thing kicked off at 9pm on Friday. The worship was great - it was really good to be able to just be in the congregation and not worry about playing bass. There were some bands there too - "Green Jade", "T-Girl", "The Band With No Name" on Sunday morning, and "Steve" on saturday evening. Steve were great - their bassist was amazing. During the weekend, they always got the youth to go to the front and form a kind of mosh pit for the worship and bands. I always stayed in my seat, because otherwise I'd just end up crushing/maiming/killing youth by jumping around. But when Steve came on, I couldn't see the bassist properly, so I gave in and went down the front...just to watch the bassist! He also had a MusicMan Stingray; the 4-string version of the bass I want to get (a MusicMan Stingray-5)...mmm....bassy.

Nigel and Esther skanked the whole of Saturday by going shopping, which left Rach and myself to look after the youth (piece of cake....it's just like hanging out with mates really). There were seminars, concerts, and an outdoor activity thing that had loads of inflatables and bungee-type-things...they even had inflatable Quasar (going around shooting each other with laser guns)!! I managed to get a little bit of sleep over the weekend, but on Saturday night I was so tired that I was acting really silly...and then we went for a late-night walk in the country. We walked up a muddy hill-path-thing, got blown about by the wind, fell over and looked over Birmingham at night, which was almost as nice as looking at the stars - millions of 'em! I love just looking at the stars. Sometimes you can almost get a clear night in Bristol, and I go out onto the roof terrace thing at the back of our house to just lie there and gaze. It's good because there aren't any streeet-lights in my garden.

We got back yesterday at about 3:30pm. I went home, caught up with my parents for a bit, and then went to church. Church was church (pretty cool). Andy preached and kept going off the point. At one point he was talking about why you don't have anything called "Chicken Ministries" (as opposed to "Eagle Ministries"). I can't really explain it, but the whole thing was very funny I can assure you.

Ooooh yeah, a cool quote from the weekend. Some australian guy was talking about being bold and standing up for Jesus and he was talking about how silly Political Correctness can be. He said:

"Political Correctness is the human equivalent of Mad Cow Disease"

I thought that was pretty funny cuz I tend to agree. Political correctness can be so stupid sometimes - I mean I'm not saying that everyone isn't equal, but people are inherently different. They were taking the mick out of it in Desperate Housewives last week. One of the mothers running the school play thought that Little Red Riding Hood was too violent, so she changed the ending; the reason that the wolf was angry was because it had a thorn in its paw, and instead of killing the wolf, the woodcutter would remove the thorn from the wolf's paw and he'd be happy! Stupid or what (one of the main characters managed to change it back to the original ending though - yay!).

Ahem - anyways - went to Pizza Hut after church. Lucy's mum drove my car back to her house so that I could sit in with Lucy on the way to Pizza Hut and then pick up my car when Lucy drove home (she hasn't passed her test yet). After that, Jacob and myself went to Lucy's, and I helped her re-string her guitar (she's had it for a year or two and has never put new strings on it!). It was stupid really, because it meant I didn't get to bed until 1am :-S grr...need morrrrre sleeeeeeeep.

Tonight there's no worship practice; instead we've got a bit of a social. Most of the team are spending time with their spouses because of Valentine's Day, but us singletons are going bowling. Should be a good laugh. Right, better get on with work now...I'm sure I get paid for something ;) plus I think I've chatted enough rubbish for now. Sorry it was all a bit of a random order, but I think you'll understand most of it, so that's ok.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Listening to: Franz Ferdinand - "Auf Achse" (Franz Ferdinand)