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Wyre Forest Retreat, September 2005
Well, it was a little while ago, but I've only just found time to upload the images Nicky and Fraser took during our weekend in the forest.We had a great weekend. Amazing what a good time you can have even without TV, mobile phones, PlayStation, etc!
The Lewises got to the site in good time on Friday afternoon and got everything set up for the rest of us. Sarah and I had a bit of a rough journey over though. Having decided to wait for Louis, who somehow managed to pack his keys in his jeans in his bag in the car and then spend half an hour looking for them, we eventually got on the road at around 5. Mo got travel sick on the way to Bewdley - the first time we managed to get her out of the car in time, but the next 2 stops were unfortunately after the technicolour yawn.
After hastily putting up tents in the fading light we had a marvellous barbecue (thanks Mark for putting in a great turn there!) on Friday evening and great evening crowding round Fraser's firebox under the big tree. Bit of a cold night though, and the joy of working out who was snoring or talking in their sleep (sorry, everyone!).
Saturday was great. Bit of a bleary-eyed start to the morning (thanks Jarred!). The kids had a marvellous time playing in the stream, huge amounts of firewood was collected in preparation for a truly epic blaze, and food was seemingly brought out on a conveyor belt. Tim and Ria, Kelly and Sophie arrived mid-afternoon. And every now and then someone else would slink off for a few hours alone with God in the forest. I hope everyone found their own time as magical as I did - I spent the first 45 minutes dozing and then thoroughly enjoyed watching spiders making webs, listening to the stream and trying to spot the woodpecker i could hear, and reading and reflecting on Colossians 1:15-20.
Another bloaty barbecue and lots of log-chopping and hearth-constructing for that great furnace of a fire in the evening rounded of a wonderful day, with Mark crowned king of the Stomp Rocket.Sunday was beautiful for weather. We had great hare-and-hounds game as Fraser shot off into the woods (hammock in hand, of course!) leaving a trail of flour marks for us all to follow. The promise of chocolate was a great incentive, and Sophie and Leah dissappeared in cloud of dust and over the horizon at the first mention of it.
Lunch, bread and wine together and it all came to an end too soon.
A truly marvellous weekend! Thanks, dudes!
Photo gallery to follow. See also Tom's Flickr gallery.
September 15, 2005 - 8:53pm
...weekend. We felt like we might be intruding a bit, not being a normal part of you, but you made us feel totally welcome. It was good to meet again with people we’d not seen for ages, and some new ones. All very relaxed and unpressured, but also quite challenging. Saturday night makes my all time top five beer-round-the-fire evenings. And the forest is pretty cool too – you get to marvel at God’s creation in the day and then burn bits of it in the evening.
Given the public nature of this site, though, I reluctantly need to correct your reporting concerning the Stomp Rocket. My reign was brief, alas, the crown finally going to, I think, Louis. I managed to partially repair the resulting dent in my masculine identity by spending a lot of time doing macho things with big logs.
Tom, your pictures are fantastic.
September 16, 2005 - 9:35am
Ah, yes, I had forgotten that Louis refused to be out-done! Thanks for the note of correction, Mark. And thanks for signing up, too!
September 16, 2005 - 12:22pm
He reached the top (but then had to stop). And that's what's bothering me. I wanna be just like other men. I'm tired of monkeying around.
I dare you to work that into your Gender and Identity essay. Sara wrote a paper a long time ago about masculinity and unemployment that drew heavily on Wham Rap, alongside lots of interviews with people in job centres, which was published somewhere quite posh (too old to be on the publisher's website, but lots of references to it here). So you'd have a precedent.
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