SATURDAY

What for most people will be remembered as “the day England were knocked out of the International Plate of Soccer” was for me the day the OUT THERE project finally hit.

I picked up the paint, brushes and cakes that church folk left at Broadway in the morning and made my way to Little Spring School to meet with the other LOVE IN ACTION organisers and the Teacher who had arranged all the work for today. There was plenty to do….and on “the hottest day of the year” to boot. First up about seven of us lifted up a wooden playhouse and moved it to a new spot on the other side of the playground. It was too big to go through one gate and too heavy to lift over the fence. We had to carry it around the playground. It might not sound like much but this was some achievement and it needed all seven of us to strain and tough it out together. Once it was moved two parents of children at the school and Derek from The King's Church Chesham got to stripping off the old felt roof and replacing it. They looked pretty manly I can tell ya!

Some of the LOVE IN ACTION team got to work on sanding down and painting chalk boards and targets for the nursery children to use in the playground. Carl from Emmanuel painted a pretty swish dolphin (he got a handsome shade of grey going from some old emulsion remnants) whilst Natasha worked with Imi from Emmanuel on painting some shapes and a rather fed up looking thundercloud. Some how I always imagined it would be fun to be a thundercloud, shows how little I know about precipitation. One of the boards is the silhouette of a goalkeeper and Sarah from Emmanuel draw around my hands to finish it off. That’s right folks, my very own hands! Crooked little fingers and everything! I hope it doesn’t scare any of the more fragile kinder.

Most of the rest of the LOVE IN ACTION team worked on digging two vegetable patches in the middle of a lawn. I can’t properly explain quite how difficult this was. Janet and Carolyn (representing Broadway Baptist Church AND the nursery where they work, go girls!) had a tough time marking out the spaces with some attractive peach coloured wool (as soon as wool was mentioned I knew it would be a peachy tone. Scary huh!). The bone-dry ground and the over enthusiastic team members made it a real challenge to keep the markers in place. The ground was dry to dig so we had to recruit a team to go to and fro from the grass to the sinks buckets in hand. We recycled the unwanted grass my making a turf bench for the children to sit on. It was hard going and we did really well to get it finished in time.

It was an excellent day. It was great to see the LOVE IN ACTION guys in their red T shirts with the “Jesus working for you” cross logo working along side school staff, parents and children. I would like to give special blog salute to a man called Stuart who brought a box full of ice, soft drinks and bottles of water. You sir are a true gent!

In the evening Lydia, Natasha and me joined the Emmanuel mob to go down to the BBQ at Latimer Park together. They introduced us to some truly odd but fascinating and difficult ways to entertain yourself with nothing but a table and some empty plastic cups. Oh and Imi put hot dog sausages in her friend’s handbag. I mention as it outranks the time I spat in a sleeping Henry Deverux’s ear as the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen one friend do to another. I should point out that I was 18 and at a sleep over at the time and wanted to see what he was like when he got cross.


That's Henry when he's awake incase you were wondering.

On the way home Lydia sang some very strange songs in French with lyrics that when translated included the following:
Walking 1 kilometre hurts my feet, Walking 2 kilometres hurts my feet, Walking 3 , etc etc
Planting cabbages with my ear, Planting cabbages with my elbows
My head hurts, I better go to the GP’s surgery.
They confused me so much that I’m starting to wonder if French isn’t a language that is made up on the spot.

Hope you had a good Saturday

Ben