Anyone who’s spent any length of time as a Christian in Britain – especially if you’ve worked for a church – is likely to have spent a certain amount of time at Christian conference centres. There are many of them, of varying qualities, but the more time you spend at them, the more adept you get at dealing with their eccentricities – of which there are also many.
Such places are either as hot as an old folks’ home, or as cold as a polar bear’s bedroom. There is never a happy medium. They frequently have interesting bathroom arrangements – particularly challenging when they involve scampering down cold corridors clad in nightwear hoping not to bump into the virtual strangers with whom you’re sharing the facilities. Sometimes their bedrooms are time warps – taking you back to a time when mains electricity wasn’t frequently available. On one memorable occasion, my room had no plug sockets and neither did the rest of the corridor – after much logical thought I concluded that the carpet in the corridor must need vacuuming, thus requiring power, and hunted high and low for a socket. I was successful and located them above every other bedroom door. [Hair had to be tried in next door’s room while standing in the doorway…]
As part of my training, I get to spend six weekends a year in such establishments (and a week in a French monastery, but more of that anon). This past weekend was residential #1 – at a former Catholic convent in the middle of nowhere (yet remarkably close to the M25) – and a venue I’d not yet experienced. In some ways, I’m rather sad that it’s closing down at Christmas and that we’ll only get one more trip there. It’s rather lovely, with an impressive chapel (lit with beautiful chandeliers rather conspicuously involving energy saving lightbulbs); beautiful quadrangle garden; excellent (compared with other places) food and plenty of eccentricities…
It was excessively hot almost everywhere, except places where you have to spend prolonged periods of time (like the chapel and lecture room). Mentions of the chapel on the schedule were met with with scurrying trips to bedrooms to pick up extra layers, and I rued the absence of my arm-warmers on several occasions.
All my lectures took place in the Great Hall, cue much Hogwarts comparison – though sadly the only wearing of robes took place during Sunday’s eucharist. My first glimpse of my cell, sorry, bedroom’s leaded window brought back memories of The Worst Witch, while the arrangement of North, South, East and West corridors was rather Mallory Towers-esque. [I may have resorted to using the compass in my phone in order to re-find my bedroom on Friday night.] All in all, it was rather like being at boarding school.
Things people have said: