Driven to Madness

(Or: some other half-baked pun for a story that still makes me gag a little)

(Or: some other half-baked pun for a story that will make you gag a little, all the rest of your days)

(Or: Seeing Red)

The four of us piled out the sticky, dirty air of whatever Bangkok street it was and into the taxi, with our wet fringes were clinging to our foreheads and the balls of our feet less than half a mile from crying ‘go on without us, lads!’ and crumbling to dust. Our little group looked to our driver - or, as we were near to calling him, Champion - with a mix of thankfulness and quiet awe. The man was lean, somewhere in the fifties, with a few wisps of beard straggled out from his chin under a thin nose and lips. A half-finished bottle of coke was sloshing beside snack wrappers and dustballs in the car door pockets. Our driver didn’t seem nearly as keen to study us - his left hand drummed the wheel in an annoyed getonwidit kind of way, head flicking from road to us and back to the road again.

“We’re looking to go to the grand palace?” Justin, eldest of our little band of travelers and leader by virtue of being able to navigate his way towards anything other than failure or a Big Mac, ventured. The wispy man with the annoyed gedonwidit gesture looked back, his face making it clear he didn’t understand a word of English (how dare he).

“Grand Palace?” Justin tried again. He brought out our map, then jutted a finger towards the Palace, which probably would’ve been helpful if the map looked less like a mix between a theme park guide and the Game of Thrones title sequence. It also, helpfully, didn’t speak Thai.

At first, our Champion still seemed nonplussed on where these ignorant tourists he’d picked up wanted to go. A few seconds passed, then, just as we thought he might give up and bustle us out his car, he thumbed the button on his cab meter, shrugged his shoulders slightly and set off to join the rest of the traffic.

This shrug, in retrospect, should have been thought of as a ‘massive clue’. 

At the time, we were too exhausted to really notice anything beyond a vague Ohlookthingsaremovingthatsnice feeling, watching the neon yellows and pinks of the signs and cars clashing against the grey buildings rather like a clown cartwheeling around a politician as he's in the middle of discussing tax reform. Slender trees sprinkled themselves along the kerb between shops and street-vendors. Stalls, with offers ranging from mostly-innocent to entirely obscene - including special ‘toys’ wrapped in cellophane - clustered in with each other, giving some streets an artificial, if seedy, canopy. 

‘Massive clue’ number two: the seedy stalls and shops were becoming more the standard than the exception. By the end of the ride, it seemed the guys who owned them were setting up shrines to viagra.

To our shame, it was only Justin who was beginning to wonder if things were perhaps not going as we had hoped. Under his breath - “I’m not sure he’s taking us to the Palace.” Out loud, in an awkwardly high voice, as what little hope he’d put on reserve from the earlier conversation was spilled out - “Grand Palace, yes?...yes?”

Our Champion didn’t seem too happy with our questioning him - all at once his foot punched down on the accelerator; he lifted his left hand off the wheel and slapped the flat of his wrist against the dashboard, pointing angrily to the road (which was now feeding itself under his cab rather quickly) as he started shouting, quickly and loudly ‘Grahnpalass! Yes! Grahnpalass!” His wrist did a little flick towards Justin as though brushing off a fly. “Granplass Shhh.” 

‘Massive Clue’ that our Champion might not actually be such a Champion number three: picked up on. Well, at least a little. Despite his fiery response, despite the almost definite fact that we were heading nowhere near the Granplass, none of us made any move to leave the cab. The man was our driver, after all. We were paying him. He wouldn’t, we felt sure, take us to any old place just to get a few extra Baht. 

“I think he’s taking us to the red light district,” Justin muttered out in his quiet low voice, presumably in case there was a danger the driver might suddenly have absorbed a Merriam-Webster’s.

Clue four, received.

It’s a running joke that a lot of men who come to Bangkok would have responded to “I think he’s taking us to the red light district” with “Oh, good! Which one?”. Not us: we resolved to leave the taxi as soon as the traffic was clear and our Champion/Anti-Hero had put his car back behind the sound barrier. 

Fate decreed, however, that before we got out there was to be one final, awful trial by taxi. We stopped under the traffic lights in the middle of perhaps four or five lanes of cars. Ex-Champion/Anti-Hero was finishing the last of his coke and we were discussing how best to continue our journey:

“Right,” one of us in the back said,  “he’s probably been taking us in the wrong direction, but-”
“Wrong direction? He knew exactly where he was taking us.”
“Guys...”

“-But it shouldn’t be too hard to get back on track.”

“Guys...”
“True. We can probably walk some of the way or get another cab.”
“Guys...”

“That or just take the subway-”
“Guys, he’s about to pee.”

Justin was speaking in the mutter again, barely audible. His entire face was staring, unblinking straight ahead like someone had stuck it there with an invisible vice.

Then, we heard a zipping, then a grunt. An unmistakable shloshing noise came, the sound of a recently emptied coke bottle being filled  back up.

“Oh, mercy,” said Justin. 

We could only just hear him over the sound of that shloshing and our own miserable internal wailing.

Still nowhere to stop, we four had a choice - (a) leave the car and hope the traffic lights didn’t change, or (b) shout at the man until he stopped. We opted for (c) be very British, look out the window and pretend it isn’t happening. He had been going for a good while, surely

slosh

It would have to to stop soon. We would, we thought, be

sloshh

laughing about this in ten, fifteen minutes.

After four or five seconds of the Ex-Champion/Anti-Hero/Worst Enemy emptying the Niagara into the plastic the red light flicked to green. For a wonderful second the man was forced to stop and take off the handbrake. Once he’d got the handbrake off, though, he was back to business 

(“Guys, I can’t look”
“Keep it together Justin”
“Easy for you to say you can’t see it”)

And back en route to what probably wasn’t going to be the Granpalahss.

Right to left: Justin, Michael, a sex-crazed monk we met (story for another post), Jonathan.

“Say, look at that building!” One of us in the back cried, pointing through the passenger window at a random slab of a structure, away from Ex-Champion/Anti-Hero/Worst-Enemy's side of the car. Those in the back agreed in high, appreciative sobs, then Justin took up the appreciation from the front, slapping his head to the left with a “Yes, look at that! Wow!” Meanwhile, the traffic was beginning to slow again. Our driver, without stopping - car or bladder - slanted his face to the left to see what we were all looking at. Failing to find what was animating us so (try looking down, buddy), he flicked his gaze from the scenery 

Slosh 

to Justin and 

Slosh

Stayed there. Though it came several bales after it should have, we finally reached our last straw. “We’re getting out now”, Justin said.

We waved for the driver to stop, pointed at the kerb, tried to hold it together for a little longer. Worst Enemy/Very Bad Man looked surprised. He lifted the bottle out and placed it beside the wrappers in the door pocket, lid still off and flies still unzipped. He shifted his vehicle to a closer lane. Worst- Enemy/Very Bad Man, after getting over his initial surprise that his passengers wanted out, turned a little angry. He started barking at us - we for once found ourselves very grateful for the language barrier - and screwed his face up into a scowl.

I took out a few dozen Baht, hating myself for feeling guilty. He took the money. For a brief second, our hands touched. We opened the doors and left the taxi.

 Though we’d met horror at one kind of red lights, we’d still managed to get out before the other kind really made its presence felt in any other way apart from the frequency of the questionable stalls. Still, we opted to subway our way out this side of town before taking a shower, arranging some therapy then calling our family to tell them we loved them very, very much. 

And just think. Somewhere, on the other side of the world, some innocent, tired tourists could well be piling out the sticky, dirty air of whatever Bangkok street it they’re on and into the taxi...

Oh mercy.

For a similarly written escapade concerning paying large sums of money to dance stupidly at clubs, you might want to visit this link,

Or here for my recent observations of Christians, as a Christian,

Or, if this one was all too much for you, click here to see a nice sunset.

Observing Christians

Warning - Partially Flippant

Christians are, generally unintentionally, funny - a fact often found true not in obvious cases of stupidity or in wince-some biblical puns, but rather in simple observation of the redeemed masses. The simple, everyday quirks of the average Christian are more colourful and undeniably funny than a preacher doing a one-man reenactment of Jesus Christ Superstar. On rollerskates.

With this in mind, I present to you some of the more bizarre tendencies of, as well as a few tips for, the average Christian (most points are things the writer has caught himself doing, and all can be read faster than your child usually says Grace).

(1) If the original Greek or Hebrew is made reference to in a sermon, it means (a) the point of the passage is made more clear by explaining a specific word (b) the preacher is pandering for time.

(2) Inter-faith dialogue always seems like a good idea until it turns out that the other person knows more than you.

(3) Children's talks are rarely only beneficial for children.

(4) Psalms should only be sung by those who have a tune in mind before they begin to sing.

(5) Many Christians harbour the suspicion their life would be a lot easier if Jesus had actually said 'love your enemies, apart from that one guy. Man, he's such a jerk.'

(6) It's often possible to identify the worship song coming next from the prayer beforehand ('And help us remember, Lord, that our God is an awesome God. That's you. You're an awesome God. Amen.)

(7) Friendships between denominations usually operate around the unspoken premise You're family in Christ so I'm willing to overlook the fact that you're very, very wrong.

(8) It is widely known a Spurgeon quote a day keeps those heretics at bay.

(9) Not everything should be attributed to spiritual warfare. There are probably no angels and demons playing tug-of-war with your lost scarf.

(10) 'Is Justin Bieber really a Christian?' Should not be one's most pressing theological question.

(11) 'Bible-based fun' often amounts to 'Hour-long lecture'.

(12) Ten years later, many Christians are still struggling to let go of Bruce Almighty as a source of conversation in youth groups.

(13) Tea and biscuits are the staple diet of every church member.

(14) Everyone secretly enjoys the tense standoffs that arise when two people begin to pray simultaneously.

(15) Occasionally, Baptists dance.

(16) Many pious deem 'How can I pray for you?' as a substitute for 'What's the gossip?'

(17) Struggling to bring in the youth to your event? Bring snacks.

(18) The affirming hum Christians make in response the prayers of others is actually a well-honed, delicate art, said by some to be passed down by the apostle Paul himself.

(19) Make sure you know your audience well enough before shouting a triumphant 'can I get an amen?' 

(20) When a typo appears in the hymn lyrics, all those singing undergo a fierce inner debate whether they should sing the error or the actual word. 

(21) Bible-based cartoons and films are always entertaining for nearly always the wrong reasons.

(22) The sentence 'Oh, you're a Christian are you?' doesn't necessarily imply 'please, let me help you evangelise to this oncoming Land Rover'.

(23) If someone opens a conversation by addressing you as Brother/Sister expect an intensive  loving rebuke to be inbound.

(24) One mistruth is continually told in churches across the world: 'no-one's watching you worship anyway.'

(25) In a sermon, the use of the phrase 'one last point' is usually code for 'I hope you brought a packed lunch to this gig'.

(26) When the preacher says 

'if you feel like the Spirit is speaking to you personally through tonight's message, raise your hand',

you will often find yourself fighting the urge to scratch your right ear.

(27) It's disrespectful to watch the congregation member getting frustrated that their final drop of communion has, once again, evaded their tongue and has decided to remain camped out in the glass.

(28) It's disrespectful to watch them, but they're always there.

(29) "It is known that name-dropping and quoting Church Fathers will boost your sanctification levels to somewhere around Augustine's" - Tertullian 

(30) When an awful worship lead says "And we'll get to spend an eternity in heaven like this!" it's within the bounds of orthodoxy to wonder if he hasn't got heaven mixed up with that other place.

Time to Summer Down

The funny thing about Summer is that it seems to be the Best Thing Ever(TM) a week before it kicks off. When students are (ideally) funnelling their waking hours into past papers, staring at lecture notes or wondering wistfully if Armageddon has been pencilled in for anytime soon, scores of hours of free time seem like the best thing since people stopped saying YOLO. And, to start, it is, even if you don’t do much. There's a lot to commend days that revolve around C-List Youtube videos and the eternal question how late does it have to be before breakfast is really lunch?

Such stretches of nothingness, however, can begin to grate - even if you’ve got a fairly busy social schedule these kinds of days can stack up on each other quickly and do weird things to your mind. Personally, so much time spent in purposeless isolation can cause my tolerance levels to drop faster than the fan base of Heroes. During summer, pet hates balloon into mortal sins; little quirks of everyday living become unforgivable slights. 

Think I’m kidding? Here are three quick examples of holiday-specific aggravations.

(1) Fun-sized snack bars

Now this is more like fun-sized.

‘Good things come in small packages’ is what we’re told, usually at Christmas by someone who thinks you’ll be made made whole by another pocket sized Filofax. 

Sometimes the cliche is true - when I’m sent a document to proofread and end up after two hours drowsily blinking through eyelashes that feel sealed with wax, small is definitely better. When Samwise Gamgee is getting hitched to a nice lady-hobbit after all drama in the film ended half an hour ago, less is more. When someone asks how you’re doing, they don’t want to hear anything longer than ‘Pretty good. You?’.

Not always, though, is the smaller superior. Imagine: I’m rummaging in the cupboards for a snack. My fingers clasp around the thin wrapper of something that feels deliciously fattening. I pull my hand out of the cupboard and (to my unimaginable horror) see that the chocolate bar is small enough to make my thumb feel like a Titan amongst mortals. 

Such an event would be upsetting yet forgivable had the designers of the packet not had the evil within their hearts to tauntingly label the food ‘Fun-sized’.  Fun-sized! Is anyone actually persuaded by this move? Is there anyone with the capacity to read who looks at the fictitious adjective and exclaims “Oh, score! I thought I was having a plain old Mars Bar but I guess today’s my lucky day!” Hardly. 

Though I understand slapping “The Over-Compensating Snack” on the wrapper instead might not sell as well, I reserve the right to be mildly irritated.

Some Cola out in plain view. Rookie mistake.

(2) Refrigerator Hide and Seek

Say for the sake of argument that after some smashed windows and flipped tables, you’ve regained your cool. You’ve gone to the shops, bought some honest consumables and, now home, are in need of some fridge space to store the things that need cooling. Not so fast! You’ve forgotten that the fridge is the preferred hunting ground of that ignoble species: The Family. 

What’s that, you say? You’ve written your name on your purchases? Words can be easily overlooked in the face of hunger. 

What’s that? Parents wouldn’t take take your things without checking? Ah, you forget the “We’ve been feeding you your whole life anyway” response, the ultimate shut-down and worst possible afterward to all apologies. 

No, young novice. Best hide your purchase behind something less appetising - say that cabbage that decides being green is too mainstream - and avoid the tastebuds of Sauron sweeping over and devouring your property. 

Refrigerator Hide and Seek: saving over 50,000 cakes per annum. Thank me later.

What’s that? There’s a sandwich already stashed behind that cabbage? Dibs.

(3) Gratuitous Nicety

Now, it’s pleasant when you’re trying to turn onto a busy road and some other driver decides to decelerate a bit to let you in. This is actually called by some ‘being nice’. When the same road holds only one person and (s)he still drops twenty miles an hour to let you in first, this is ‘being unnecessary and a bit strange’.

If I’m walking through someplace with my rucksack open and someone taps my shoulder and points this fact out to me, I appreciate the concern and thank the stranger. If I drop a pen and that same person from miles away charges forward to pick it up for me, I wonder if they are trying to be kind or if the makers of Cluedo could have been a bit more comprehensive in their identification of weaponry.

When an aquaintance gets you a present and the tag reads ‘Happy Birthday, Melvin!’, it shows they care. If your name's Melvin, anyway. When a friend gets you a present and the tag says ‘Happy Monday! (present one of seven)', you might have to set set your social media to appear offline for a few years.

At this point, belief in the essential goodness of humanity being slowly drained with every sentence, you hold your head in your hands and wonder how somebody could get annoyed at such triviality. “Maybe”, you say, “He can get along on a day to day basis without being such a grump?”

Maybe.

Then again,

Probably not.

Things High School Taught Me, Part one: A Waist of Time

Back in March, I uploaded a quick list of things I’d learnt in my Primary school years that hadn’t managed to make it to the official syllabus. The post was fairly well received. Not in the usual X-Factor ‘I’m know I’m good at singing because my friends and family tell me I am’ sort of way, either. 

In the weeks following the post’s online life, I’ve been asked by some to write a sequel about my years in secondary education. To start, I wasn’t all that keen to do so - partly because I found high school rather an unpleasant period, and mostly because my alter-ego at that time would have to have been named Bland-Man or something along those lines. I had at that time of life, for example, a favourite vegetable; I had an unhealthy obsession with my Runescape persona (purely platonic, you understand); phrases like ‘outside world’ would all too easily strike fear into my innermost being.

As time has frittered away in the past month or two, however, I’ve found myself caught up in snippets of memories and quirks of my time at secondary school that hopefully merit a strongish post. Sit down, then, relax, never say the word ‘chillax’ in my presence, and enjoy part one of Things High School Taught Me.

Lesson one: Johnny B. Goode has been ruined by overzealous PE Teachers

Each year, between the annual downpour of sleet and the hallowed Christmas break, there existed a stint of several weeks where ‘Physical Education’, a grueling class that showcased my failings and flailings at sport, was swapped out for ‘social dancing’: a grueling class that showcased my failings and flailings at dancing with members of the opposite sex.

Every week, the classes would be marched into the games hall and the genders would establish themselves at either side of the room. Only the most beautiful and confident of souls would ever strut across the no-mans-land for a chat, while those at the other side of the social spectrum would watch these human peacocks and very much miss our virtual crossbows. Most, somewhere in between the extremes, stuck to their side waiting (perhaps a little nervously) for the teacher to bellow ‘Choose your partners!’ like some kind of failed gameshow host and, only then, venture across as a team.

If I had to choose one part of my whole social dancing career I really did enjoy, it was this ‘choosing of the partners’, which involved the entire group of puberty-suffering youngsters trying to toe the line between scoring the person they wanted to lock hands with while still pretending not to care about anything much, ever. Such a ritual usually includes deliberately positioning yourself within a ten-foot radius of your target; absent-mindedly/deliberately catching their eyes, then asking if they would like to double up - normally with as few words as possible:

“Want to dance with me?”

“Hi. Partners?”

“You?”

As time went on, actually, these lines of questions became an increasingly honed art - by our fifth year all it took was an eyebrow twitch and you had three weeks’s worth of dancing and a prom date all lined up. 

After maybe a minute or so, ninety percent of the student body would be coupled and lined around the perimeter; the final ten percent were assigned a partner (though by their faces they may as well have been asked to read out a stack of ‘yo’ momma’ jokes to a firing squad), and one way or another I’d be facing a girl in my year and fighting the urge to apologise in advance. 

Now came the dancing itself: a terrifying prospect filled with all kinds of woe. For one, where was I supposed to look? Should I have watched my shoes? Should I have kept my neck snapped away or stared straight into her eyes as like I was about to whisper “and what became of your lamb, Clarice”? Usually, I ended up flicking between them all in three or four seconds like the star of a low-budget sequel to the Exorcist.

Another obstacle for the 13-year-old myself was the business of placing my hand round the girl’s waist - a move that at the time seemed next door to impregnation. I had no desire to become one of those underage fathers you read about on the news and so I always panicked, placing a closed fist on my dancing partner's side instead. 

Worst of all, these kinds of problems usually went by unanswered and piled up on each other. Doing my best to look like I was enjoying myself, attached to my peer by a single pair of joined hands and a few knuckles, I’d spend most periods of social dancing snapping my neck to the side, down to my shoes and then straight into my partner’s soul; all the while pondering why people were so anxious for Johnny B. Goode to go away in the first place. 

To this day, my favourite part of a ceilidh is when the nibbles come out.

Lesson two: Every pupil has their own ongoing skirmish with the office

You may recall that my primary school post featured a faction of pre-pubescent midgets joining forces to meet a shared goal, namely, the acquisition of the hallowed Hill. A high schooler’s War with the Office is generally of a different sort - each student is forced to carry his/her fight and shoulder his/her burdens by him/herself.

I have to admit that my personal conflict with the school office was kicked off by (A) my desire for a temporarily free lunch and (B) my tending to thrust all my problems on a future version of myself. At least twice a week for a large part of my second year I’d treat the room beside the school entrance as half office, half bank and ask the increasingly irritated woman at the window for a lunch slip intended for who’d forgotten their lunch money, and not for those who’d blown theirs on Jaffacakes the day before. 

I would always uncategorically swear to pay my debts the next day, though was fascinated by how ‘next day’ and ‘next wednesday’ could be so easily conflated.

After several months of taking advantage of the school in such a way, I realised my system wasn’t the most selfless of actions. Repentant, I turned over a new leaf, paid my dues and began to buy my lunch like any other. I thought, insodoing, I’d stopped any conflict with the office before it had started. I was rather surprised, then, when one morning I showed up with a single note to pay two seperate (and not lunch-caused) fees. Apparently, this was a heinous sin and very much not to be done. Instead of asking me to come back the next day with two seperate payments, the lady’s face in front of me puckered into a giggle before she turned to a colleague still at her desk. 

“Hey, guess what?”

“What?”

“This boy” - I would have preferred student, pupil, gentleman, but I let it pass - “wants to pay for two things with one note!” 

Said colleague shook her head back and forth and began to chortle.

“We don’t do that”, she said.
“We don’t do that.” The woman at the window said, turning back to me, shaking her head and still snickering.

Maybe it was a running joke on that side of the glass, but if there was it was lost to me. Embarrassed, bewildered, and having not yet fully understood the concept of ‘turn the other cheek’, I fled back to class and prepared myself for the next round of war.

To be continued, etc, etc.

If you want to see the original primary school post, go here.

If you want to read about my long-winded day out in London, go here.

If you are interested in acquiring a black belt in the ways of the dish towel, go here.

The Author, the Arguments and the Overpriced Sandwich: My day at the Unbelievable? 2013 Conference

Surprised by Clive?

One of the few things perhaps more comic than watching a group of people politely, strategically edging past each other in one queue is watching a group of Christians politely, strategically edging past each other in another. 

This fact, while amusing, was easily the most useless bit of information gleaned at this year’s Unbelievable? The Conference, held last weekend in London. The conference - based on the radio programme of the same name - was a one-day event dealing with various strands of apologetics (a clever sounding term defined as a rational defense of Christianity. Some apologists, of course, are more rational than others, but that’s probably a different point).

While keeping the annual focus on apologetics, this year’s conference was also bit different from the previous two - it had been given a rather sizeable C.S Lewis-edged theme. Actually, three of the nine seminars on offer in some way linked to the late, great and very clever writer. 

Incidentally, did you know C.S stands for Clive Staples? I’d probably have abbreviated that too. As it stands with the middle name Munster I'm more likely to sympathise.

Although I’d missed the past two years of conferencing due to my own various failings, 2013, I decided, would be different, and so on the Friday my friend Claire and I shouldered our rucksacks; found them rather heavy; dropped them; rubbed our shoulders a bit; picked them back up and hopped on on to a nine-hour bus ride to London.

In some ways, traveling so far to hear arguments for theism a little pointless - the bus journey made the existence of hell, at least, pretty darn clear. Repent and believe, for Megabus desires to sift you as wheat.

Somehow, we survived. Claire and I wandered into the The Brewery, the locale of the event (very posh - bowler hats and all) the next day, still smuggling in some of the residue from our Tesco breakfast. We took our seats at the front of the auditorium and began to sweep the room with our eyes, looking for some of the speakers with largely the same subtlety as Lazenby’s Bond. We watched the conference room began to pack out.

Keynotes and Queues

A little after ten, Justin Brierley, the presenter of the whole thing, took to the stage and  thanked us all for coming. The powerpoint above his head wincingly proclaimed that it was ‘unbelievably good to see us’. 

(Justin hosts the aforementioned Unbelievable? radio programme  - a weekly show on iTunes that generally takes the form of a ninety-minute dialogue on some aspect of the God debate. There. Recommended.)

After giving us his words of welcome, our beaming anchor invited the keynote speaker Alister McGrath to switch places with him and give his opening address: “Joy, Meaning, and Purpose: What our culture needs to hear from Christians”. 

Alister has debated  Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett (to differing degrees of success, in my un-learned opinion); he’s written books both theological and apologetical, most recently, the biography the weekend's best friend: C.S Lewis: A Life.  Here, he was on form. after telling the crowd it was ‘unbelievably’ good to see us - this time the wincing was mostly mine - he then began to work through his material cogently and thoroughly.  

I did have one criticism, it has to be said: I found myself continually distracted by the fact Alister seemed to be addressing a patch of air several feet above our collective heads.

Such a minor foible of his address was, however, exactly that. After Alister was finished and then applauded, he switched places with Justin again who started to tell the crowd where the seminars we could choose from were located in the building. His choosing of words were at his peril: the final syllable of ‘limited spacing’ had barely escaped his face before the assembled Christians began to rise from their chairs and, very civilly, started to storm to the room of their preferred speaker. 

It was only to be expected, in a way. One of the perks of being interested in a fairly niche area is that it’s easy to meet your heroes and only slightly more difficult to make a fool of yourself in front of them.

“How rude!”, I noted to Claire, as we half-stormed up a ramp to the far left of the hall, therefore strategically avoiding the throng advancing up the stairs. “He hadn’t even finished speaking!” I vented, morally indignant, as we squeezed into an already crammed lift that cut a few paces off our journey and boosted us ahead of most of the crowd.

I may, as in previous blogs, be exaggerating a little. Despite all my valiant hypocrisy, we were still some of the very last few to throng into the Queen Charlotte room and land in a couple of chairs facing Peter S. Williams and his booted-up slides.

The title of Peter’s seminar, "If C.S Lewis met Dawkins", was really an offshoot from the second Lewis-orientated publication of the day, "C.S Lewis vs the New Atheists", an evaluation of the recent critiques of Christianity based from the writings of Clive (or, if you were his friend, Jack. I don't know why) himself. While admittedly I haven’t even gotten as far as opening a copy of William's book, his talk stood on its own, giving a rebuttal of Dawkins’ self-contradictory - from Peter's perspective - positions on ethics, free will and so forth. Regardless of what you think of Peter’s conclusions, it’d be hard to deny he has done his homework and then a little more recommended reading over supper. His quotes cited within the hour, for example, ranged from Dawkins’ most impressively-sized texts to a recent interview done with Playboy magazine. 

Stories and Studies

After some question and answer, seminar one closed and a coffee break began. After some tea and biscuits (I like to stick it to the schedule) the coffee break closed and seminar two began. 

This time, there wasn’t nearly as much of a rush for us. We’d decided to stay in the comfortably large main hall and listen to Alister McGrath take on round two with his talk CS Lewis, The Storyteller. 

I appreciated this one in an entirely different way I had Peter’s: as an English/Journalism/Creative Writing/Procrastination/Hot-drinks-consuming student, apologetics has always seemed cursorily at best linked to my studies. Alister’s point that Lewis would employ narrative and argument to drive his points home to different audiences was a good one, and one that had never really crossed my mind. 

"Using our imaginations", Alister said, if Claire's notes tell me true, "is not inventing faith, but faith has the ability to captivate imaginations"

Maybe not all that obvious when you peruse the fiction section of your nearby Christian bookstore but in theory still a valid point. 

 I’m not claiming McGrath's talk 'changed my life', 'blew my mind', ' 'turned my world upside down' or so forth, but in what he'd discussed lay some points I’d never really picked up on before - a feeling kind of like when someone gently points out the solution to a puzzle that seems horribly easy only ten seconds after it's been solved.

While my writing, not to mention this blog, dips and ascends in quality from a week-to-week basis depending on amount of time spent and caffeine in my system, it was nice to see something that linked to what I study and know I can do. Words, after all, is things I'm more good at than some stuff.

Seating and Sandwiches

After seminar two came lunch, which I won’t dwell on longer than to say that if an establishment charging so much for a sandwich that I can buy another ticket on the Bus of Doom after two and a half purchases, you should probably rethink a thing or two. 

There was another quick welcome back  from Justin in the main auditorium before the third and final set of seminars were set to start. As we walked back in, I had a stroke of what seemed, maybe not genius but at least genius' estranged cousin. I turned to Claire.

“Let's sit at the very back. When people start to rush we can stand and stroll to the door and still beat the crowd.” 

And so we sat squinting at the stage which had gone from being this close:

To this close:

Welcoming and announcements being again made, for the second time Justin got as far as something along the lines of ‘final set of seminars’ before the mass of justified saints began to stand and civilly bound for the door. Before I even realised what was happening, actually, there were a good a hundred people past us and out to our prime choices of seats. Darn it.

Still, we did manage to get to where we wanted to go. Since we attended all the seminars on Lewis thus far, we thought it would’ve been amiss not to complete our strange trilogy and listen to Amy Orr-Ewing broach her topic - C.S Lewis and suffering. 

Really, however, save from a couple quotations, Amy mainly stuck to the problem of suffering and left Clive out the picture. Both understandable and wise, perhaps, seeing as she hasn’t recently written several hundred pages on the man. Besides, the problem of suffering is such a huge discussion without him being mentioned and is seen by many as the strongest argument against theism. Instead, Amy walked through various responses of other world-views to the problem of suffering before giving a response from a Christian perspective. 

Personally, I found it the most difficult of the seminars to follow and could've done with a few slides, but this talk was, by far, the most well received by the audience. The murder in Woolwich earlier this week had already been brought up one or two points during the day already and both times the effect on the audience was obvious - smiles falling from faces, downcast eyes, collective sighs a hundred people. What was to some people primarily ‘news’ was, to them, hurt. Here was a talk that while to me perhaps raised less points than the other two, yet the points raised were the ones most needed to be heard for many. To those same people this seminar undoubtedly the most important part of the day.

Panels and Presuppositions

For a final time, we were back in the main auditorium for a panel discussion, in which I would’ve perhaps liked to see more interaction between the speakers. From what I remember, questions from the audience were responded to in standalone answers, and made the thing feel as though if you had put each speaker in an isolated booth you would’ve been given the same answers which to me defeats the purpose of a roundtable conversation in the first place. 

That aside, the questions asked were varied, challenging and of a surprisingly high quality - to the annoyance of the woman to my right I kept murmuring 'ah, course' and 'good point' as the microphone was swept around the hall like the weapon of a serial approver.

Then the final question was asked, answered and the whole thing was over. We were for a final time thanked (no Punbelievables were made), then the crowd started to gradually stream out the exits. 

Claire and I wandered out of The Brewery and back to the hotel, chatting between ourselves about how we'd thought the day had gone. We’d both, like the majority of the crowd, had seemed to have gotten a lot out of the conference as a whole with a few personal quibbles that we'd have liked to bring up had we had more time. 

The fact that these quibbles were all so slight did raise for me a larger critique of the day. I am, as a rule, terribly biased and horribly aware of it, and it would have been nice if alongside speakers who I knew shared the majority of my views, there had been a track of seminars devoted to two speakers debating an issue, even if such an topic was an inter-Christian debate. 

While perhaps less straightforward to organise, it would have been more in the spirit of the Unbelievable show which bases itself upon the idea that truth can be seen in views being respectfully batted back and forth in dialogue. 

Also, it might have been be a good idea attach seat-belts to the chairs only to be unclipped once the presenter has finished with everything he wants to say. At least by idiots like me.

                     For more of my bus-angst, go here.
                                    To read about my journey as a coffee-wielding insulting maniac, go here.
                                                    Or, if you're still not out the studying woods, here are some entirely unhelpful personal tips.

Life as a Rubbish Catering Assistant (part the second)

Can I get you some verbal abuse with your cappuccino?

We left the first half of my adventures with my metaphorically building a crockery-fort that could shelter me from the difficulties of my new job - the biggest problem, frankly, being my lack of general competence. 

The reason for the fort, you’ll remember, was the OCD that seemed only to hit me during the washing and drying of dishes. Luckily, after a few nightmare sessions of such cleaning it was gently pointed out to me that my teaspoons didn’t have to possess the sparkle of Barry Scott’s molars;they had to be clean. At first I was unconvinced, remaining terrifyingly certain I was the heroic barrier between Mononucleosis and your grandmother.

"Bang!" And, just like that, Barry was gone forever.

As the weeks flitted by, though, I began to absorb the advice and put it into practice. Dishes arrived; dishes were washed; dishes were dried; dishes were stacked. I become one with the matrix of saucers and soup bowls and was able to operate a fairly tidy work area without crying like a little child. 

My washing/drying wasn’t fast to the point of uncleanliness, yet at the same time the Lattes no longer had the aftertaste of the industrial equivalent to Fairy liquid: in this area, my slow journey towards adequacy was close enough to complete.

We will, therefore, leave the dish-side of the job and wander back out to the counter to observe my progress there.

Which is lucky for you, reader(s)- although I was past the stage where every sale would set my heart beating until it wanted to tear out my ribcage and give the customer a strong piece of its mind, I still found talking to the average customer a bit of a hassle, mostly because I'm endowed with the talent of saying the wrong thing at exactly the best time. It should be stressed I mostly come across as awkwardly charming (or maybe one of those two), but things still often fall out my mouth that should really be thrown back in and locked away.

One sleepy weekday afternoon, for example, I was quietly wiping down some trays in a fairly vacant cafe when I was nearly swept away by a barrage of middle-aged faces that had suddenly stormed the place with the intensity of a military insurgency. One of the happier faces at the helm of the group smiled at me as I hastily began serving.

“Sorry”, she said, “there’s a lot of us, I know. We’ve all just come down from a prophecy conference down at central.”

“Really?”, the words spilled out,  “I never saw that coming.”

The helms-woman tilted her head. “Sorry, son?”

“I said can I get you some tea with your muffin?”

Here we have an accidental slip of almost-wit - generally when I say something stupid I’m the last to be know it. 

To demonstrate, i’ll give you a second example. One lunchtime, a fairly heavy gentleman and a woman strolled in together and took their place in line. When the queue had shuffled forward I took the pair as a couple and asked them what I could fetch them.

“Just a quiche, please.” The hefty man replied.

“Sure." I responded, "But we’ve only got the one left. Is that okay?”

The sparkle in the man’s eyes died, quietly. 

Quiche: lowering self-esteem since 14thC

“I only wanted one.” he said, this time in a far less jolly tone.

As it transpired, man and wife were ordering separately. Very modern, perhaps, but still was the root cause of my frantic apologising. Incidentally, it was difficult to say sorry while trying to not make reference to the rather weighty reason why this customer may have taken particular offense at my mistake. 

I probably failed in finding that balance.

However, insulting the Glaswegian populace (regardless of gender and age), couldn’t last forever - firstly because  I eventually reached levels of social acceptability. The days of dish forts and wanting to duck behind the counter gave way to the age of being able to exchange a few sentences without facial spasms. 

Second: I left the job almost two weeks ago. Yes, that’s right: I hung up my dishcloth and wandered out of the cafe and into the sunset where my bus had probably just taken off. 

At the end of that final shift, then, what had I taken away? The ability to multitask, for one; the ability to weave away from numerous near-accidents and spills;  the satisfaction that I had entered an establishment and walked away with a new skill set; and, not least, a best wishes card and a cake my quiche-inclined friend might be more than a little envious of. More important is what I didn’t take away: black eyes from accidental insults; a bill for all the equipment I annihilated over the months; the ability to serve coffee to a stranger without my left eyebrow twitching like Jack the Ripper’s great-grandson.

Now there’s an idea for a cheap paperback.  

If you missed part one, why on earth did you read this far?

Here if you enjoyed the quasi-joke about the myriad difficulties surrounding Glaswegian public transport

And because I’m still in exam period, I'm probably wearing something in here

By the way, if I don’t come across as awkwardly charming, keep that knowledge to yourself and let me live that lie.

Life as a Rubbish Catering Assistant, Part the First

The adventures of an undeserving employee

This just cries out for some googly eyes

Picture the scene: a little less than a year ago, I shuffled to my job interview at a cafe in the centre of Glasgow dressed largely like a Mafia henchman on Atkins. My suit (and by ‘my suit’ I mean ‘my brother’s suit’ (and by ‘my brother’s suit’ I mean ‘my temporarily commandeered formalwear’)) was far, far oversized and hung off my sweaty arms like a wizard’s robe. 

I was more than a little nervous - and being at the best of times endowed with the sociability of an Asperger’s-afflicted brick, feeling like the Coat-hanger Incarnate wasn’t boosting morale much. Nevertheless, I continued my bold shuffle to the till and squeakily announced my presence.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about the interview itself. Ushered over to a table at the corner of the cafe, the interview lasted maybe six or seven minutes; the longest question asked of me was probably a tie between  “can you work saturdays?” and “do you have any questions for us?”; and, best of all, both the friendly interviewers pretended to ignore the gathering puddle of perspiration that began to create a moat between us and the rest of the room.

I may be exaggerating.

A few hours later, I was given a call inviting me to take the job as a part-time catering assistant asking whether I could come in the next day for a ‘little induction’. 

And so it came to pass the anti-social brick was hired. You can’t help but wonder who else was interviewed.

Fast forward twenty hours, and I was on the other side of the counter and staring in wide-eyed horror as my first customer approached, whistling and grinning mildly to himself. 

“What if he wants a coffee?” I wondered, my eyes momentarily stopping flicking for an escape route and instead zoned in at the coffee machine (which may well have spent its spare time moonlighting NASA’s spare remote control). All the while, the man was meandering closer. 

My brain kicked itself into a frenzied overdrive: 

“That machine looks way too complicated to be a coffee maker- Maybe I could wield one of those filter handles instead - battle my way out - go into hiding - find a nice cave somwhere-”

Having worked myself to this panic, It took me a few seconds to realise the whistling, grinning man was now standing opposite and looking right at me. A few seconds silence. Some more. His grey-black hair were ruffled into a baseball cap and his knuckles were blithely rapping a drumbeat on the countertop. Some more silence. Why? It had suddenly struck me I had no idea what I was supposed to say to him. 

My mind seemed to be drawing a blank on one of the most simple questions posed.

“How can I help?” I mentally tested alternatives, “What can I get you?”. 

The man had stopped whistling, letting his fingers drum the tune off into silence, and it was here my mind decided and leapt into action. My lips parsed, and

“What do you want?”

Gloriously burst forth. 

It wasn’t, on reflection, the politest of enquiries. My eyes bulged at the blunder and I tried to smooth the rudeness out with a smile, but found my facial muscles had packed up and headed south for the next several decades.

The cap-wearing whistler, however, luckily turned out to be a regular - if ‘regular’ encompasses people who exist in a state of tea-drinking hibernation - and didn’t really notice my complete lack of social protocol. He grinned again absent-mindedly. “Tea please”, he said. Tea was served, the next customer hopefully felt a little less interrogated.

Serving drinks to customers, though, was only half of my new job’s requirements. Compared to my dishwashing, in fact, each muscle spasm seemed a BAFTA-nominating smile. Thus, after half an hour so of customer-intimidating I was steered back through the kitchen, acquainted with the essentials of a dishtowel, pointed to the little hole in the wall where dishes came through and was given a go at drying. 

The problem herewasn’t that the dishes weren’t being cleaned properly - it was the opposite. Engulfed with the possibility that I was the Guardian of Hygiene, the sole gateway between a customer and potential sickness, I entered a state of OCD where I made absolutely sure each cup and saucer and teaspoon had been blitzed enough that it was the cleanest utensil this side of central station. This is all laudable but meant the inflow of dirtied dishes weren’t making the outflow look bad as much as holding the outflow’s lunch money above its head and giving it a serious wedgie.

I may have, once, spent a few minutes wondering if I could build a happy place out of porcelain and plastic trays.

Thus ends part the first of my adventures - it is exam time after all. Tune in next week for part the second

which includes such highlights as prophecy conferences, dancing with milk, and accidentally insulting the obese.

In the meantime you might enjoy that time I went clubbing,

Or that time I ranted about busses,

Or you might enjoy another blog! - http://eilidhstewart.blogspot.co.uk