Mock Art Exam - Coughing

For the last two days, I've been sitting a 10 hour mock art exam, it's involved a lot more painting than I've planned to ever do in my entire life, and I'm not best pleased with the result.

Unfortunately, for the last two days, I've also been quite ill, by which I mean coughing a lot, and through the art exam, the frequency of my coughing stayed quite constant. Now, when you're sitting, painting for a long period of time, when people cough, that seems to be the highlight of your day. The thing is, after a while, you begin to notice a pattern in coughing - frequency and amount.

For example, what I noticed, was someone behind me with an infrequent but loud and long cough, someone across from me had a more frequent but shorter cough, perhaps a single or double cough. Whilst someone nearer and to the right of me coughed only occasionally, and quietly. Do you see the problem with this? No? Well, here it is... I shouldn't notice these things! 

This is the kind of thing that sitting a 10 hour exam drives you to, insanity. In fact, I noticed that after some people were coughing, there was an equal cough from someone else, and eventually I realised that he was in fact mimicking the coughing. A few times he mimicked mine aswell; one time, after I coughed, he coughed, but slightly longer and louder, I looked over at him, and he gave me this look as if to say, 'Beat that.'

As it happened, I wassn't being dragged into a coughing war... or was I? No, I wasn't.

I'll let you go.

Wordaholics

The other day, me, Dad and Jack headed down to London to be part of the studio audience for a radio recording for BBC 4. It was for a new show called 'Wordaholics', and whilst the name didn't grab me, a couple of the guests did - Milton Jones and Jack Whitehall.

I've been 'healthily' obsessed with Milton Jones for a while ever since I missed his show at Greenebelt, and since youtubed all his shows, including Mock the Week, which is where I've seen Jack Whitehall.

Even though we had the tickets, we weren't definitely going to be able to get in. This is because the BBC give out more tickets than there are spaces, because inevitably, some people with tickets wont be able to turn up, and that would leave some seats empty, making the BBC look bad, and they don't want that. This meant that we had to leave school early so that wecould get there in time. As it happens, we left at exactly the same time that school had finished, and all that we'd achieved in the extra time was buying much too many sweets than we needed, and watching an episode of the inbetweeners.

Anyway, once we were there, and in the queue, Jack started tapping me on the shoulder. I looked around, and who should I see but Milton Jones walking past us in the queue! This was pretty amazing, but what I probably shouldn't have done was gasped just as he was walking past me, yep, a full blown gasp. He smiled at Jack, but I think he just gave me an odd look...

Anyway, the recording was good, it went on for about an hour and a quarter, which was good because the final edited show itself will only be about half an hour I think, so we got a lot of material! And in the words of Milton Jones...

I'll let you go.

When Not Leading Worship

I've been musing a thought recently about your role in a band when not leading worship, here are some of my thoughts...

Recentlyish, I went early to church to rehearse the puppet sketch that I was in; when I got there, I heard the butting-in voice of 'someone I shall not name' (SISNN). I looked round to see that band rehearsing, and SISNN paused the practice to say that the guitar was supposed to start that part.

Now as a suggestion, it wasn't awful, although as the band consisted of 2 guitars and a piano, and electric guitar intoduction where the bass and drums were supposed to kick in - but obviously didn't - didn't sound brilliant. But my query was with the way that he said it; rather than suggest that the guitar started it, he more seemed to demand it, and as he wasn't leading, this seemed out of place. (although, even when leading, demanding something would be less than helpful)

And recentlyer, when I was in the band, we played a song that I'd suggested adding, 'Saviour of the World' But when we started playing it, the tempo seemed a bit fast. I didn't think it was noticeable enough to point out, but then a friend made a signal to me, showing that she thought the same; but still I said nothing, recalling SISNN and how he sounded when he interjected.

Now, whilst the story of a slightly too fast song may have been the least exciting possible, my point and query was whether I should have made the suggestion or not. I later thought that I should have, and regretted not doing it, and realised that whilst SISNN sounded a bit big-headed and arrogant to me, I could have still suggested lowering the tempo, but making sure that it was just a suggestion.

And this to me is how people should act in a worship band, if they have a thought on how something could be improved, don't hold back suggesting it, but keep it as just that, a suggestion.

I'll let you go.

Cups

I've recently returned from an amazing weekend away with Space. But rather than go into detail about the whole trip, I think I shall just focus on one incident. The cup war.

It all started when at about 1 in the morning, we were all in our dorms, when Dan spots something out of the window at the top of the door. It turns out that two of our youth leaders- Matt and Sarah - were in the corridor lining up cups of water into neat rows. It goes without saying that we were a little confused. So then about 5 minutes after we checked that the coast was clear; we snuck outside, and Sam had the idea of rearranging the cups to spell 'Lol'. It took a few minutes, but finally it was done. We also decided to leave a note, in a polite way.

A time a bit later, we noticed that they had returned, and looked rather perplexed; I don't think that this was what they were expecting. They disappeared and then returned again a few moments later to rearrange the cups and reply to the note. We decided it was time for action!

There were a double set of fire doors at the end of the corridor, and as it was dark outside, and light inside, I imagined that if we were to hide between them, we could see them perfectly, without being seen. Ben and I decided to undertake that mission, taking with us some beanbags for extra comfort, as we were unsure how long we would be camped there. Sure enough, about 30 seconds after we closed the doors, Matt and Sarah popped around the corner, Matt giggling even more than Sarah... unsurprisingly.

They started rearranging and popping back around the corner, as if they were trying to lure us out, then we realised, as we left the dorm, we had left the door open! This was starting to turn into a bit of a war. Luckily, I had my torch with me, and tried shining it in the open door to alert the others, they never noticed. Then, Matt and Sarah quickly ran around the corner, Ben and I exchanging a quick high-five. At the point where we were deciding that the coast was clear, we readied ourselves to dash back, but suddnely, there was a loud crash on the door behind us! That was enough for me, I sprang back into the dorm instantly!

This was the final straw! This had gone on long enough! At this point, there had been maps drawn, plands made, and action taken, it was time to go from defensive, to offensive. But just as we thought this, hands appeared on the window which we'd been looking at, terrified, we ran outside to chase them down, we caught them at the stairs, and all six of us burst into fits of laughter, this had gone on for three and a half hours, it was now half four in the morning!

I'll let you go.