Gospel Choir sings at the asylum centre

You might have heard of the Oakington Immigration Reception Centre on the news. A few weeks ago there was a major incident there. This week there was a minor incident when the Ridley Hall Gospel Choir (of which I am a member) visited to give a short concert. The Gospel Choir meets every Friday lunchtime for an hour, and we've given three or four concerts, usually in churches, as well as a couple of shorter performances in shopping centres. Our last major concert was on Saturday night in the village of Comberton, but before term finishes there are three smaller events, of which Oakington was the first.

For such a notorious place it's really hard to find. It didn't help that we hadn't been given a precise address to head for, nor that the roadsigns to it have recently been removed. So a 15 minute journey took us an hour. And I had to take my passport - as Oakington houses asylum seekers I guess it's useful to be able to prove that you are a UK resident to be able to get out to go home!

It's quite a depressing place. It's an old military airfield, so it has the look and feel of such places, but drained of any personality. It's more secure than some prisons, surrounded by high barbed wire topped fences and heavy gates, but the area where people actually 'live' is a very small enclosure. I now have a sense of how animals feel in the zoo - they can see all that space outside but they can't get out. A grassy area has been converted into a sports field but that seems to be about all that's going on. It feels like this might have been a lively place once, but it just seems oppressive now.

We are shown into the canteen, which is to be our performance space. Rows of fixed plastic tables and chairs reinforce that this is not a particularly comfortable place to live. We start off with a small audience, but soon the sound of our singing filters out and more come in. We face rows and rows of men (women are kept at a different centre) of many colours and faiths. We are here at the invitation of the chaplain, but are instructed that we shouldn't preach, so our normal song introductions which explain the meaning and background to each song are out, and we have to let the songs speak for themselves. Much of our repertoire is based around old slave songs, and it's bizarre to be singing songs about being captive, wanting to be free, finding freedom in Christ, in such a place. We sing 'Rescue Me' and 'Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance' and these send shivers down my spine. After an hour the depressed faces of our audience have been transformed to ones of smiling and laughter - even if the God we're singing of is not their god.

Afterwards we meet and chat with the residents. I talk with 'Jim' who is from Albania, and has just received his place ticket home. He's in his mid twenties and since leaving Albania he's worked across Europe, spending the last five years in England. I can't get him to explain how he ended up in Oakington, so I suspect he's been working illegally, and the authorities finally caught up with him. But with his flight in sight he's happy that he only has to spend another three nights here. By now he'll be home, but others can stay there for months if they don't accept the Queen's kind offer of a free flight. Two hours there was enough for me.

End Times

Back at the ranch, college life draws rapidly to a close. With all the formal teaching over, and lecturers with their heads in marking our assignments it's time to amuse the students with some time fillers. Oh, and the clerical shirts have arrived!

Thursday 27th May: The Church Commissioners visit to talk to us about the essential matter of stipends and clergy pensions. Not the world's most thrilling topic, and much of it was duplicated with the superior talk we had from a private tax advisor earlier in the term. But I learnt (or was reminded of) several important points:

• I'm not going to be an employee, I'll be an office holder.


• I will not have an employer, nor a contract. But for tax purposes, I work for the Church Commissioners.


• I am not paid a salary, but a stipend which frees me up from the need to work in order to carry out my ministry (this seems to be a bit of a technicality - I give my working time to the church, they pay me a fixed amount of money at the end of every month - sounds like any other job I've had)


• I cannot claim for a duck-house on expenses.

Friday 28th May: Ecclesiastical Insurance presentation. After an hour of sales pitch about investments, ISAs and (more) pensions I ask the obvious question about when they are going to talk about house and car insurance. Which they're not...

Tuesday 1st June: 'Second Chair Leadership' - or 'how to be a leader in the church without being in charge'. An excellent insight for curates who are straining at the leash to be let loose on a church but don't want to fall out with everybody in the first week. In the afternoon we have a debriefing session with the Principal, in which we reflect on our time at Ridley and give constructive feedback.

Weds 2nd June - Fri 4th June: Funerals, Death and Dying. An aptly timed course on what we could be asked to do within our first few days in the parish. We look at the intricacies of the funeral service, visiting the family, aftercare, and a whole load of other stuff. We each deliver a short eulogy/sermon on a fictional character - at the end of this session we all realise that the scenarios given were for tricky situations, all involving mixtures of early / tragic / sudden deaths, just to provide us with that little extra challenge. As I write I'm waiting to go off to the Funeral Directors, dressed appropriately smartly - I'm wearing shoes (rather than trainers) to 'work' for the first time in two years!

Meanwhile, it's half term, and the rest of the family is in the new house in Wiltshire, picking up where I left off last week, finishing the painting, laying floors and hanging curtains.

Painter Man II

I'm absolutely very tired! After six solid days of painting, during which my Mum, Dad and I started cleaning and/or painting before 9am and finished each day at about 10pm, with the occasional break for food, drink or to pop out to top up supplies, I've stopped and returned home. And now the tiredness is catching up with me - I nearly fell asleep in chapel this evening, but this wasn't a comment on the quality of the speaker!

But go here to see the result - a selection of before and after comparisons. Evidence of further crimes against tasteful colours was discovered in other rooms, lurking behind radiators. As you can see, the difference between the late 90's and now is bold and loud versus muted and cool!

Painter Man

Three weeks until I leave Ridley, and with all essays now handed in I am free for a few days. Those on other courses have exams (this time last year I was revising for Greek!) but I have nothing on the timetable for a whole week!

We've packed up my mum and dad's car with paint, dustsheets, food and tools and tomorrow I'm off to decorate a vicarage!

I've never bought so much paint in one go (the picture only shows half of it), but then I've never tried to paint a whole house at once. I'm particularly looking forward to neutralising the orange lounge and the purple bedroom.

My target for the next week is to get the house to a state where the rest of my family can visit in half-term week to worry about carpets and curtains.

So it's off to bed, then off to Wiltshire.

Revenge of the 5ith

I'm now the proud owner of a load of clerical garb - cassock, surplice, preaching scarf, vicar's hoodie and a Jedi / Scottish Widows cloak.

The cloak has an inside pocket, which fits a toy lightsaber. It arrived on Star Wars day (May the Fourth be with you!) and was tried on for size on Revenge of the 5ith day (that'll be May the 5th then). And it's amazing, but I must discipline myself not to quote Yoda at the graveside.

Sorry there's no pictures yet, will follow up with that once I've got everything - still need to order shirts and dog collars.

When Ali met Sally

I've been quiet here for a while - but the first two weeks of term have been hectic! I've been mostly trying to write an essay on the book of Judges, but other stuff kept getting in the way. Ridley has a habit of doing that - there are just some days when you have to accept that you aren't going to achieve anything progress-wise...I've had two of those already.

We had double rations of New Testament lectures this term, which needed a LOT of preparation, meaning little progress on writing assignments, but now that course is finished, and we're down to five hours of lectures for the next couple of weeks. Meaning that I can finally put my foot to the pedal and get some serious writing done.

Today I had a good day - the essay is now written and is in that 'simmering' state, where it's been printed, waiting for Mrs Didley to proof read it and for me to have a brainwave about a very important point that I've left out. But to be honest she's never corrected anything other than grammar, punctuation and half deleted sentences, and I've never had a major rethink at the last minute. So it's now 99.9% complete, and I have another 2.5 essays to write in the next 2 weeks. That will be fun, as for two of them I haven't started the reading for them yet. There might be a few late nights coming up, and I'm not counting election night, which will be far too exciting in TV to be able to read anything.

Having completed one essay there's a quick lull, and time to reward myself with a bit of blogging, time to try to remember what else happened since term began. I know there's something I want to blog about but it's fallen out of mind...but there's something I haven't forgotten - Incumbent's Day.

For the non-technically minded, my 'training incumbent' means my boss-to-be, Rev Sally Wheeler. She's the vicar of Lacock, I'll be her curate/apprentice/Padawan learner. Last Tuesday about half of our incumbents came up to Ridley for a day, where they heard about what Ridley has been trying to teach us and had a meeting with our tutors (hence the title!). Both Ali and Sally promise me that they didn't discuss anything that I hadn't already discussed with Ali previously - nevertheless it's a bit wierd knowing that somebody is meeting and talking about you. Obviously, 30 minutes was insufficient time to talk about my many talents and skills - I don't know how they crammed it all in.

After that, all students and incumbents were encouraged to spend time together talking about our hopes and fears for the curacy, our working relationship etc. We had a good chat - we seemed to spend all afternoon sitting on a bench by the croquet lawn - all very civilised!

Sally was bowled over by the stunning setting and the peacefulness of Ridley - I guess we don't necessarily appreciate what a special place it is until somebody points it out. But there's not much of it left - it's now less than 6 weeks until we leave.

End of the holidays

We're just coming up to the end of my last holiday period while at Ridley - from here on it will be back to that more normal pattern of booking time off like most people have to do.

Actually holiday allowance isn't that bad - the equivalent of 6 weeks off a year, and no more than 6 Sundays. And this year I'll arrive in the parish after ordination and we'll be almost straight into the summer holidays!

But what have I been doing for the last 4 weeks of the Easter break? A bit of everything really!

Much of the first week was spent on a mission in Rugby. This is part of my course requirement, and as I'll be writing an essay for assessment I can't say too much here because, bizarrely, if I post details on my blog and then write similar sentences in the essay I may fail an on-line plagarism checker, causing myself to fail! All I'll say is that a team of 8 spent 5 days working with a team of 3 churches in Rugby, supporting them in their aim to reconnect with their communities - it was 'interesting', busy and tiring, but worth it.

After that my parents visited for a few days, then we spent the Easter weekend in Dorset. Along the way we met up with old friends, old churches, visited our new house, and our old house, and ate too much chocolate.

Upon our return we realised that I go back to college on the same day that the kids go back to school, so we had to replan what we had thought would be children-free days to later dates. A few lazy days at home, a few days out, and hey presto, it's suddenly the end of the holiday. I wish I could show siginficant progress on my 4 essays which are due in next term, but that would be tricky. I guess the mission one is half written, and I have at least chosen what the other ones will be, and even started a bit of reading for my Old Testament one, but the weeks ahead are going to be busy, especially as I need to hand some in a few days early in order to be able to go and decorate the new house in late May.

That in itself is a major distraction - when I'm reading a worthy book I'll realise that I've been thinking about paint colours, floorcoverings or electrical applicances. On the upside, we have spent quite a lot of time in retail therapy, disposing of some of the relocation allowance that I receive, and most of the purchases have been made.

From today it's just over 8 weeks until the removal van arrives, 11 weeks until my ordination. 4 essays, a house to decorate, a whole pile of forms to fill out, and a croquet tournament to win!!