This is my week - Tuesday

Tuesday is a slightly more relaxed affair than Monday.

Into college for 8.15 Morning Prayer, which from Tuesday to Thursday is a community event, in the chapel. The chapel was built for Ridley's original intake of (I think) 20 to 30 young men, so we're doing quite well to squeeze in the current population of 80-ish students plus staff. Week by week a different staircase group leads this 30 minute service, which is based on the Morning Prayer service in Common Worship - there's so much flexibility in the liturgy that we're unlikely to ever have 2 services the same.

At the end of Tuesday's service it's ''Principal's Notices" - where today we learnt the arrangements for this evening's American party. Apparently The Colonies are having an election which Lewis Hamilton's twin brother is going to win.

And then to Greek - which day by day gets a little clearer, but just when it does you learn something new and it gets a little murkier again.

By 10am the formalities of the day were over - the lecture program complete I had some unstructured time, during which I returned books to the library, printed off some lecture notes, caught up with e-mail, started preparing for Thursday's New Testament lecture, tried to ring the plumber and went to lunch.

Lunch done, I returned home. Tuesday afternoons is when I do my Social Context Placement - I have chosen to do this with Romsey Mill - a Christian run organisation which aims to "overcome disadvantage, promote inclusion and develop well-being". Their main programs are for children with autistic spectrum conditions, for disadvantaged 13-21 year olds, for under 5's and their parents, for young parents, and "Transitions". It's the last of those that I'm involved with.

"Transitions" aims to help 10-14 year olds who are struggling with the transitions that adolescence brings - physical & educational - through a mixture of out-of-school groups, outdoor activities, peer mentoring, one-to-one work, and literacy support. My 2.5 hours a week can't possibly hope to cover all of that, but I join the weekly afternoon after-school session, along with professional leaders Gavin* and Ruth and another student Michelle**. We have about 10 members of the group today, and any hope of structure soon goes out of the window. Youth-work is often mood dependent and this is no exception - the group has an extremely short attention span, and while Gavin is trying to hold order I find myself engaged in a debate about the point of school uniform with Gilbert***.

Ninety minutes of badminton, punchbags and Wii follow, and it's over all too quickly. The leaders convene for a debrief, and then it's time to go home. I'm sure I'll write more about Romsey Mill in future weeks, but in the meantime you can visit http://www.romseymill.org/ if you want to find out a bit more about their work - it's a fantastic place which every town should have.

A brief return home - The Mill is just around the corner from my house - and then I'm back on the bike, to Federation Worship. This is not some bizarre Star Trek cult, but a joint fortnightly service held by the Cambridge Theological Federation, the combination of all the theological colleges in town. Over the course of the next two years I'll benefit from this ecumenical endeavour, which enables me to experience worship led by Methodists, URC-ists, Orthodox-ists, Catholic-ists, and two different flavours of C-of-E-ists. Today, we assembled in The Church of Our Lady and The English Martyrs (that'll be Catholic then..) and were led by Wesley College (err, Methodists I'd guess from the name). The church itself is amazing - ornate but without being distasteful, well lit to highlight the architecture, and fantastic acoustics. Even on songs that weren't familiar the building made us sound loud anyway. And I even listened to the sermon, unlike last time where people were commenting on a sermon that I have no recollection of at all.

And once more I returned home, where I consumed the jacket potato that was in the microwave, just in time for Tasha to return demanding to know what had happened to her dinner. Oops. See you tomorrow.


*Gavin - look you're on t'internet - I promised I'd write about you, even if it is just to stop you whining on about it.
** Names have not been changed to protect privacy. I couldn't be bothered, and they like the attention.
*** Name of group menbers have been changed - don't have much choice about group members. Cool substitute name though!