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.