Thursday, April 20, 2006

Scream Harvest

I have just got back from my annual trip to Butlins for Spring Harvest (Skegness again this year). Zoe and I spent 2 weeks with the 8-11 year olds first with Dave Godfrey's Omega Zone and then with King's Kids.

Here are my top 10 highlights...

1) If it was a kids birthday then they got to choose a leader to have their picture taken with and the day 1 evening the first 2 kids picked girl band TBC but for some unknown reason the 3rd kid picked me (in yer face TBC!)

2) Bumping into Ishmael (inspirational children's worker) at the Sun and Moon pub (also known as backsliders bar) and getting him to do a radio interview for me.

3) The session we had of Easter Sunday evening was awesome. We didn't follow the schedule at all and spent the whole evening in praise and worship and ministry. Some of the kids' testimonies were sooo powerful.

4) We entered a team into the 5-a-side football competition in the Omega Zone week and before each match we performed the chorus of one of the songs we did cos the actions were very similar to the New Zealand Haka. I scored the winning penalty in the first match after 1-1 draw went to sudden death penalties against a team far younger than us. We lost 2-0 in the next round.

5) Met up with lots of friends I hadn't seen for a while including Simon from Horsham and Alex from Mersey Fest.

6) The kids were grear (especially the first week where i had 12 to look after and between them 2 had published poems, 1 had been in a film, 1 was a Palace fan and another was a brilliant artist)

7) I have changed my view of both puppets and mime from hating them to appreciating them when used well and sparingly. Billy the Boom Mic was a personal favourite - Woooo! And my favourite quotes include: [to Ishmeal] "Dave Godfrey says you are an inspiration to childrens workers through the centuries" and [about D.G's old youth leaders] "Who are they, I thought we only had famous people on the stage".

8) Daniel Bedingfield turned up one evening - ran about and shouted a lot - he also wore Zoe's t-shirt.

9) Some of the talents the kids put in the bin to win their team points were classic.
- I can almost do the splits.
- I can do ballet. (a boy)
- I can lick my eye. (this involved pretending to take eye out and put in mouth then replacing it)
- I can make my self go red in the face.
and by far my favourite...
- I can wink 2 holes in my leg.

10) Spending loads of time with Zoe - including jointly leading a team for the second week.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Match Of The Day

On Friday I am taking Zoe to see her first proffessional football match: Leicester versus Crystal Palace. It will be my 12th match.

SOUTHAMPTON 2 (Hall, Le Tissier) ASTON VILLA 1 (Houghton)
Season: 1994/1995 (Premiership)
Venue: The Dell
***** Le Tiss scoring a 30 yd free kick in the last minute in front of the goal we were sitting behind - cant get much better than that.

CRYSTAL PALACE 0 ARSENAL 3 (Kiwomya 2, Merson)
Season: 1994/1995 (Premiership)
Venue: Selhurst Park
*** First time to see Palace and they were easily beaten. Ian Wright was injured too.

ENGLAND WOMEN 0 NIGERIA WOMEN 3 (Nwadike, Nkwocha 2)
Season: Summer 2004 (Friendly)
Venue: The Madejski Stadium
* Strongest memory was being critisised by a little girl for having an out of date England shirt on.

LEICESTER CITY 0 SUNDERLAND 1 (Caldwell)
Season: 2004/2005 (Championship)
Venue: The Walkers Stadium
** A Fat Kevin Pressman let in a sloppy goal. Both sides were pretty poor.

CRAWLEY TOWN 1 (Burton) STEVENAGE BOROUGH 2 (Elding, Goodliffe)
Season: 2004/2005 (Conference)
Venue: Broadfield Stadium
*** Crawley pulled a goal back and then had a perfectly good goal disallowed. gnrr.

COVENTRY CITY 2 (McSheffrey, Adebola)
NORWICH CITY 2 (Davenport, Flemming)
Season: 2005/2006 (Championship)
Venue: The Ricoh Arena
**** 2 goals in 10 minutes for the home side but had to defend for 80 minutes.

COVENTRY CITY 1 (Jorgensen) MILLWALL 0
Season: 2005/2006 (Championship)
Venue: The Ricoh Arena
** First sending off, first referee substitution.

ASTON VILLA 0 MANCHESTER UNITED 2 (Van Nistelrooy, Rooney)
Season: 2005/2006 (Premiership)
Venue: Villa Park
** Too easy for Man Utd. Saw Rooney score though.

ASTON VILLA 0 ARSENAL 0
Season: 2005/2006 (Premiership)
Venue: Villa Park
*** Pretty close match and end to end but no goals.

ASTON VILLA 0 FULHAM 0
Season: 2005/2006 (Premiership)
Venue: Villa Park
** Both teams were pretty poor.

COVENTRY CITY 0 PRESTON NORTH END 1 (Whaley)
Season: 2005/2006 (Championship)
Venue: The Ricoh Arena
** Preston were just too good on the day.