Greenbelt: Thoughts and Discoveries

Last weekend was my first outing to the festival known as "Greenbelt". In fact, it was my first real festival outing anywhere.

Greenbelt is a music and arts festival. But it needs a little bit more categorisation than that. I shall explain.

A note on sub-cultures

Now, I'm always careful about talking about "Christian" stuff in a way that makes it sound like there's a whole faith-based sub-culture around. But the truth is that there IS. There is music that you won't have come across if you're not a Christian. There are books and magazines targeted at those of the faith. There are websites and organisations and a whole host of other things. I think that, to some extent, this is OK and helpful. It's the same with cycling. It's probably the same with Kung Fu and plumbing and...well, every specialist activity probably has some sort of specialist media targeted at it.

What I think is important is that we don't get so wrapped up in the Christian sub-culture that we ignore everything else, or worse, label everything else as bad or evil in some way.

With that in mind I'll try to describe my impressions of Greenbelt.

Impressions of the festival

Before I went to Greenbelt I was under the impression that it was mostly attended by people who would call themselves Christians of one sort or another. Yet I was led to believe that it was not an overtly "Christian" festival. You'd fit in quite well if you weren't a church go-er at all.

To some extent those initial impressions turned out to be true. However, when I arrived, I found myself swinging the other way. There seems to be LOTS of stuff targeted specifically at Christians. As time went on I found myself swinging back to the middle ground. You can't miss the stuff that's overtly Christian, but I reckon you can safely attend and enjoy the festival without having any of this forced upon you.

I did enjoy the festival, though I struggled with the social dynamics of trying to get a group of people to meet up at certain times when they all had plans that changed by the hour. I think next time I'll go with the aim of being more independent and if other people want to arrange to meet me at certain times then that's fine.

The weather for the festival was fantastic. Sun and warmth and dryness for a few days with it clouding over for the last day. As an introduction to festival life it was a very good one. The company was excellent too and we got to meet up, catch up, and generally have fun with some of our best friends who had gathered from around the country.

Festival Discoveries

We probably didn't actually see or do as much as I thought we would. We were quite selective and, often, got turned out of full-up venues. Though we did discover, or re-discover, the following artists:

• Michael McDermott - American accoustic rock guy with an edgy voice and some great tunes and songs. Probably my highlight.
• Martyn Joseph - We're already big fans and he's a Greenbelt regular so of course he was there and of course we went to see him. He was mostly running a show where he interviewed other singer songwriters, but he did play a short set in the music shop tent. He seems to be having a bit of a mid-life crisis; he's started playing up-beat rock and roll (as opposed to his usual hard political folk). But I like this. He's releasing a new album called "Vegas" in September and the stuff he played from it sounded really good. Looking forward to a proper gig in November!
• John Bell - One of the leaders of the Iona community, gets a mention for being a REALLY good speaker. He did a great talk looking at how we can interpret stories from Genesis and apply them to our faith that we live today.
• Kathryn Williams - Referred to by one of my friends as one of the few "proper famous" people at Greenbelt. I love this ladies voice and songs and dry wit, but I thought the overall performance needed polishing. I think she was very nervous about performing a solo live show.
• Core Magazine - who look like an attempt at an english version of Relevant Magazine. Compare the straplines "God, Life, Progressive Culture" (for Relevant) and "Life, Spirit, Adventure" (for Core). I think this is a worthy venture and I wish them every success. Unfortunately they don't seem to have updated the website since April, so who knows what the status of it is.
  
• Iain Archer - who's one of those artists (like the Shins) who sounds a bit dull on CD but, as I've just found, does a great live show. Perhaps I'll look up some of his newer stuff.

Book: Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell

A friend of mine used to keep notes on books she had read and films she had seen. I hope to occasionally jot down what I think of books, films, maybe music here. Not reviews, but reminders to me of what the thing was about and what I thought of it.

I've just finished reading "Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith", kindly loaned to me by a friend.

It's a book about...well, I'm not sure what. It's a general overview of what the author - the "pastor" of a large, fairly liberal church in Michigan - thinks about Christianity I suppose.

It's a controversial book for some. I agreed with most of it but had problems with some things. I'll just give a very quick overview of the chapters (or "movements" as he calls them). Forgive any use of church jargon that you don't understand, it's hard to talk about these things in a brief way without using words that either mean nothing or are loaded with meaning.

The chapters have names, not numbers, and are as follows:

Jump is about the building blocks of faith. He touches on "creeds" (statements of faith) and explains how they are useful but need to be flexible (like springs, not bricks), and why it's OK to have questions and why joy is important.

Yoke is about different teachings, truth, and how it's important to interpret the Bible. By this he means both understanding what the writings would have meant to their original audience 2000 years ago, and in terms of re-applying what is said to our culture today. His biblical, historical and cultural knowledge shines through the whole book and is very interesting.

True. I suspect this is a controversial chapter and I found it difficult myself - especially his notion of finding truth around us. I agree that you can find elements of truth outside of what's written in the Bible but he seems to think that, if it seems OK to you then you can call it truth. I'm a bit more fundamental in that I think there is an ultimate truth to find, and that you can find things that are "good" outside of that truth, but not all the "good" things are "true", or indeed helpful. I do agree that we are too inflexible with our beliefs and application of truth and that this is bad, but I found Bell to be too soft with the general notion of truth itself.

Other bits of this chapter were good with stuff about how God is everywhere but we don't always recognise it, and about taking our faith with us into our whole lives...good stuff!

Tassels is about being real with ourselves and healing of the soul. There's some of Rob Bell's story of how he came to lead this huge church and then have a bit of a breakdown and what that all meant for him and how God helped him through it. He explains how we also need to go through a similar process sometimes. Pretty nitty-gritty stuff that's easy to read and hard to actually be real with, but full of great truth. Includes a great section about the sabbath!

Dust is about "discipleship"; that is, being called by and following in the teachings and life of Jesus. Again, lots of historical and cultural background make some very interesting reading but other then a good feeling about being chosen, I didn't feel it challenged me much.

New is about grace and the process of being "made new" which happens when we believe in Jesus. Essentially about how we get forgiven for "sin" (the wrong stuff we've done)
and how, if we believe in Jesus, this happens by what God has done and not by anything that we do. It's about being who we were meant to be and making the world more like it was meant to be. There's a call to action in there somewhere and a challenge to be people who "bring heaven to earth".

Good continues the theme talking about renewal and how heaven isn't somewhere that we will be going, but rather somewhere that the earth will one day be. It's coming here, rather than we're going there. Rob Bell's real frustration seems to come out here as he talks about what the "church" should be. This is what it's all about. Creeds, teachings, truth, healing of the soul, discipleship, grace, all leading to us - people that follow Jesus - being people who lead a life of serving God and serving others in order to bring the goodness of heaven to earth. Phew.

I enjoyed the book. It was a good and easy read. Rob Bell writes in a very conversational style and obviously is a very knowledgeable and wise man. I'd love to read more of his explaining of the Bible and the Jewish culture and traditions.

A few things I didn't like - aside from where I didn't necessarily agree with him.

I think he overuses metaphor. Bricks, tassels, velvet Elvises, superpastors, tour guides. It peters out after a while but at the start he really overdoes it, stretching the analogies further than the springs on his trampoline.

And I think he's not challenging enough. He makes some good points but, as I said before, a warm feeling is about all I got. Maybe it's the conversational tone? It made me want to think about things, not to actually change them.

The overall feeling I'm left with is that he should be writing a different book. Perhaps if he focussed more on the history and less on the philosophy I'd find him a better read? But then, if he did that he'd be writing a completely different book. And I think I quite liked the book. But I might need a second read to be sure. Martin, can I borrow it a bit longer???

You didn't cycle in today...?

The rain is back, and so I'm once again faced, upon entering my workplace, with the statement "Surely you didn't cycle in today!"

I do sometimes question my own sanity, and I ask myself how I would respond if someone asked me why I did it. I reckon I could get between 10 and 20 good reasons...so here goes:

1. It improves my strength.
2. It improves my fitness.
3. I'm likely to live longer.
4. It takes a car off the road (reduces congestion).
5. It's less polluting.
6. I breathe in less pollution.
   
7. It reduces the need for parking.
8. It's cheaper.
9. It's less stressful (I'd much rather cycle in the rain than sit in a traffic jam).
10. It wakes me up.
11. It burns calories (OK, so I take them in again by eating more!).
12. It makes me feel good.
13. It's fun (in a strange way).

13 without much thinking! There must be more...

Customer Service and Trust

Back in this post at the end of June I mentioned that "[our car's] engine has developed a nasty rattle which the garage want £200 just to take apart and diagnose (and then another £200 to put it back together)."

I wanted to reflect on the process we went through to get this fixed.

The garage mentioned was actually our local Peugeot dealer. A company that I've gone to in the past to get work done under warranty and to get servicing done in order to get the "Peugeot" stamp in the book. I also had no reason to think that any other garage was going to give me better service.

Having said that, the service was pretty bad. In the past they have:
- failed to diagnose a serious fault;
- charged me vast labour charges for trivial jobs that I could have done myself;
- consistently not called me when they said they would - I always have to chase them on the phone;
- generally not shown much interest in customer service at all.

I THINK that some of this is because they're just too busy, but it leads to a complete lack of trust in their ability to do a good job.

So, on the recommendation of several friends, I took my car to Cross Street Garage in Swindon. I explained the situation, that the Peugeot people wanted to strip down a cylinder just to diagnose my rattle - which, in my opinion didn't seem to be coming from the cylinders - and charge me upwards of £400 for doing it. They said they would take a look and give me a call later on.

And...true to their promise, they took a look. The guy on the phone was actually the guy that took a look, and he said the rattle was coming from the top of the engine and that it was probably a spark-plug or an injector loose. I gave him the go-ahead to do some further looking at it and he said he'd call me back.

And...he called me back. It WAS a loose spark plug. He's tightened it up and would charge me about £30 labour for doing it.

Now, that is what I expect from an "expert". This man not only saved me over £350 by taking a sensible approach to diagnosing the fault, but he's done exactly what he said he would. He may well have lost some money by not doing the bigger job, but he has my trust. And my trust will win him more work in the future.

Reflecting on this then; I work in the customer service industry - OK, I'm third line, which means that there are two layers of people our customers need to go through before they get to deal with me - but I have the chance to set, meet, and exceed, my customer's expectations. I'm incredibly busy, but doing these little jobs for people gets their trust, and makes them come back for more.

There are probably loads of stories out there like this and it's important to those of us that deal with customers that we're constantly challenged by them.

In the mean time - I think out car's due a service now. I wonder which garage I'll be taking it to?!

To Cholsey!!!

As I'm becoming an bit of an avid cyclist (can you tell?) I felt compelled to watch a bit of the Tour de France this year. Something was said during the TV commentary for the "prologue" (the time-trial around London to establish the leader before they properly set off) that sounded a bit weird. They said that the cyclists were doing a two-hour warm-up on a turbo trainer before doing the time trial to get their heart rate up to optimal levels.

This sounded weird because my heart rate shoots up pretty quickly when I start exercising so why it would take those guys 2 hours was a bit baffling. And wouldn't they be knackered after 2 hours?

Well, today I did my longest cycle ride to date, to the village of Cholsey near Didcot, clocking 34.4 miles in just under 2 hours - a more than half-decent average of 17.7mph over the whole 2 hours!). And what was weird was that I kinda got used to working hard and going fast. After about an hour, I felt great - not tired as I thought I would be, and was able to sustain some pretty high speeds (for me) on the flat. It was like, after warming up for some time some extra strength and energy kicked in.

Now, I'm a novice sportsman and I don't know what phenomenon caused this, but I certainly see how a long warm up period can really set you up for a longer ride.

I'm pretty chuffed today. I set out expecting to average about 15mph. My goal was to get there, not to get there quickly. So do do under 2 hours was great - even with a tail wind and with it being more downhill than up.

I might even be up to getting to Bath in a couple of weeks time?

For those that care, the route is here. Great weather, great scenery. Oh, and I chickened out and got the train home. Not ready for 70 milers just yet!

Cycling update

Not done much longer distance cycling recently - though some would say I've never ridden a "long" distance, my 30 milers are as good as it gets. My excuse: the weather's been awful this summer with LOTS of rain. But it's finally getting better, so it's time to get out and trying to build up the distances again.

Last night managed a measly-but-hilly 13.3 miles out to Wanborough (towards Uffington) and back in just over 45 mins, averaging about 17.3mph. I played squash before the ride and by the time I finished I was pretty knackered but felt good! My knees were OK, I felt pretty strong throughout, and my cycling shoes and clipless pedals made it a joy to do. There were times of riding on the flat at 24mph that just felt really good!

Oh, and I stopped for a while to rescue a little dog who was running around all over a main road too.

I'm encouraged about this short evening ride, but I do need to get the distances up. Let's hope for lots more good weather!

Buying a house

We've done it! We've had an offer accepted on a house!

Actually, it happened a lot more quickly than I thought it would. So quickly that I didn't get to write anything about the house-hunting process.

You build it up in your head as being this huge thing that's really hard and takes ages to do but no...despite the differences that Sally and I had about what we wanted from a house and a neighbourhood, the fourth place that we looked out got us both very excited. We put an offer in
on Saturday and it was duly accepted.

I had some hesitations. Does God want us to buy a house? How do the notions of borrowing and spending that much money fit in with my faith? Am I just following the crowd and the culture? Is this really something that we should be doing, or should we be stepping out in a different,
more counter-cultural direction?

I never asked those questions about renting. Perhaps I should have?

I did spend some time praying about the decision. I thought hard about a little story in the bible where a man goes to Jesus and, excitedly, says "I will follow you wherever you go". Brilliant, we might think. How good, we might think, to see someone making such a passionate statement of commitment to following Jesus' teaching!

But Jesus knows the man's true motives and replies by saying that "foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head".

What does this mean? Does it mean that if we want to follow Jesus we should never settle anywhere? How does that fit the theme of community that runs through the bible, of living, sharing, and serving God together? Is buying a house too much of a commitment to stay in one
place? Or should I be settling into a community and trying to make a difference there by sticking it out, making friends and serving others?

This story is followed by another about a man who wants to follow Jesus but has a few things he wants to do first. It's a story about priorities. We should be following Jesus first, whatever that may mean for us, and doing the other things alongside that.

As I prayed and asked God about the passage and about our move I felt God saying that the most important thing was to follow Jesus. Buying a house is fine, as long as it doesn't make you lose sight of what's really important. If the house, job, money, friends, car, holiday, wide-screen TV, or any worldly thing starts to get in the way of loving God and loving our neighbours, then we need to re-prioritise.

It's early days yet and there's plenty that can go wrong, but we hope that one day soon we will own our house. But doing so MUST be an activity that enables us to love and serve and follow our God, not one that distracts us from it.

Critters!!!

For a while now we've had cockroaches in our house! And I wanted to write up my experiences in case we ever get them again.

The Wikipedia article is pretty good and has been very helpful. My experiences are given below.

Finding them

It started ages ago when I found one in the bath. I then found another, and then we had little baby ones crawling around the bathroom floor at night. We eventually got rid of them from the bathroom but then we started finding them in the kitchen (downstairs) and the hallway of our house.

Finding them is not always easy as they only seem to come out at night. So, you don't necessarily know you've got them until too late. We eventually got rid of ours when we opened the back door late at night and found lots of them scurrying around on the patio. So if you think you have some living nearby, it's a good idea to go scouting with a torch late at night. Of course, if they're inside then they're very good at hiding and you'll just have to wait until they come out, or get caught somewhere with slippery walls that they can't escape.

Living with them

They're pretty harmless, and they don't like people or light so they're very scared of you and tend to run away. They're not aggressive or dnagerous at all, though they can be dirty and spread disease (apparently).

We've read that they like warmth and moisture (hence initially finding them in our bathroom). They also like food and we've read that recent research has shown that they leave trails of faeces around so that they can follow each other to the food.

We seemed to find that this was the case. We were cleaning the floor of our kitchen a lot but still getting them coming into the kitchen. So, we started cleaning the hallway and other downstairs areas too, that lead from outside doors to the kitchen, and this seemed to reduce their presence in the kitchen.

Dealing with them

As just mentioned, cleanliness helps. Roaches are omnivorous so will eat whatever's around. Keeping floors clean - not just around where you're finding them, but generally, and especially near entrances, seems to help.

Roaches are quite easy to catch, but hard to kill. I, personally, don't like killing big insects...I can do the small ones, but stomping on a 3cm-long, crusty cockroach feels too much like really killing something. Plus, we're told that they carry their eggs around so, if you do stomp on them, you often just release the eggs and end up with more of a problem than you started with (though this is probably an urban myth). Dropping them down drains in the road got rid of them but didn't kill them. The most effective non-crunchy method was drowning - catch them in a glass or tub, tip them into the loo and flush. Some of them float, but these can be sent down by placing some toilet paper on top of the roach to make sure it gets dragged down.

In terms of catching them...we did come across a thing called a "Vegas Roach Trap", which seemed like a good, organic way to catch the beasties. Sadly, despite use of the finest coffee grounds on several occasions, we never caught any this way. Though, this, and other similar methods, are cited in many places.

We ended up going to B&Q and buying some "Ant and Crawling Insect Killer". This is a bait spray. The cockroaches find it, eat it and it attacks their nervous system. This usually means that they go into spasm, flip onto their backs, and then can't get up again. It doesn't take effect immediately, and you won't get any joy spraying it AT a roach, but if you put it down they'll find it and eat it. You find them in the morning dead, or mostly dead, ready to be caught and flushed down the loo!

The ultimate plan is thus...

1. Eradicate them from inside the house: use bait spray (it could take weeks or months to get rid of them)
2. Stop them coming into the house: again, use bait spray - around doors and entrances to catch them as they come in from outside.
   
3. Take the fight to them outside:

• go out at night and find where they are
• spray the insecticide bait down outside
• go to sleep
• wake up, take your jar or tub outside, and collect up the half-dead critters
• flush them away!

We successfully removed them from our house, stopped them coming inside and then caught 14 in one day outside doing this and we've hardly seen any since!!!

Other interesting facts

Funny what you find when researching these things. Some people are very interested in roaches. Some even seem to keep them as pets!!! One man who knows far too much about them has a Cockroach FAQ which answers more questions than I could think of, from "What are cockroaches good for?" to "What would cockroach vision be like?"

The mountain biking, road biking debate

For my birthday, back in June, my sister and her boyfriend offered to take me on a "Mountain Biking Experience". As someone who's got quite into road cycling, but who also loves the great outdoors, mountain biking really appeals, however, you have to have a decent mountain bike before you can even start, and my cheap hybrid really isn't up to the job.

So the idea was that they'd borrow a decent bike from someone, kit me up, and take me out onto some proper off-road terrain.

This weekend, the moment came for the experience! And I had a wail of a time. The weather was great, and Sarah, Guy and another friend called Dave, took me out and around a hilly forest near Bracknell. Photos here.

Now, as I've got into cycling on my cheap bike, I've been thinking that I might spend some decent money (if Sally will let me) and buy myself a decent machine at some point. Which raises the question - what sort of bike would I buy?

At one end of the spectrum is a road bike. The narrow, slick tyres, aerodynamic riding position, and high gearing, all making it easy to travel long and fast. At the other end is a mountain bike. I've been recommended against full suspension (looks like more trouble than it's worth), so I'd get front-shocks, a wide range of gearing, an upright riding position, and some big chunky tyres.

Of course, there are points along that spectrum. Cyclocross bikes are racing bikes with a small amount of off-roadness built in - carbon forks to absorb vibration and less-skinny, and slightly chunky tyres. Hybrids are basically mountain bike frames with large, narrow wheels. Or you could do your own customisations, or have two sets of wheels?

A big dilemma. Of course, the best solution is two decent bikes - one road, one off-road. But I don't really see this happening. So what do I do?

The mountain biking experience has helped move this decision along somewhat. Much as I enjoyed it, it's a fun, occasional leisure activity. Road biking is something I can easily do around here during the week, and I can do a longer ride at weekends without having to go anywhere. It's my day-to-day fitness training activity, rather than an occasional fun day out. I think I'd get much more mileage out of a road bike and would use it much more often. And I can always hire a mountain bike should I want to.

So...now it's just a case of saving the money and finding the right machine!