The Grove Is On Fire

How To Find a Shower At Soul Survivor

Mighty works of God aside, every year at Soul Survivor a vitally important question comes up, but seeing as I can't tell you how to get her number (and let's face it, that would be a mighty work of God) I'll settle for answering another top question; how on earth do you get a warm reliable shower without queueing at Soul Survivor? Because the campsite changes a bit each year, and because different showers are good at different times of the day there is no hard and fast answer to this question, but below are the rules to keep to if you ever want to get a decent shower on site (and don't have your own en suite).

RULE 1: Don't have a shower on the morning of day 2. Yes, I know you feel icky after camping, yes I know you woke up at 6.30 and couldn't go back to sleep because you were in a tent, and yes I know that you want your hair to look its best for the first day, but so does everyone else. Every shower on site is busy by 7.00 on day 2 and will stay busy till 11. Even when you do get a shower it'll be in a messy state, the water'll be cold, and the pressure will be low because everyone else is using it at the same time. Have a shower on the evening of Day 1 if you can't go 24 hours without showering.

RULE 2: Don't have a shower on the morning of day 3, 4, or 5. While better than the morning of day 2, all morning showers are busy. Instead, embrace three o'clock showers. You don't have to go to every seminar. Heck, you shouldn't as you won't get a chance to process any of it, so at some point before 4.30, have a shower. You'll find the water pressure higher and the temperature great.

RULE 3: Use hardstanding showers. Certain showers are built units that exist year round. These showers are properly plumbed in. The water is reliable, warm, and with decent pressure. These are your best bets. Sometimes you get hired-in power shower units installed next to these blocks. Sometimes these can be better as they have the solid water supply of the hardstanding units, but also more modern heaters and pressure systems. Only sometimes though.

RULE 4: Use the showers nearer to the centre of site. You know what they use the centre of the Royal Bath and West Showground for for the rest of the year? Farmyard type shows. And you know what farmyard shows in the centre of the site need? Loads of water to wash down the animals and all the effluence they leave behind. You know what they use the outskirts of the Royal Bath and West Showground for for the rest of the year? Car parking. And you know what car parking on the outskirts of site needs? Some flat bit of grass. The water pressure is much much higher in the centre of site than it is in the rest of the site. Generally speaking the further up you go, and the further away from the centre you go, the lower the pressure drops. It pays to walk down the hills to the showers.

RULE 5: Use showers where there are less people camped. Obvious this, but clearly the showers bordering Red and Orange, and the shower block in Silver are going to be a lot busier than the showers in the centre of site where no-one is camped. Momentum delegates can get extra points here by using the showers in half empty villages (the ones up the top of Purple and Brown and the ones between Blue 7 and 8 are pretty good for this).

RULE 6: Check when the showers are cleaned. Normally the showers are cleaned once a day, twice in the case of the hard-standing ones. They often post the times on the door when the shower will be shut (though I didn't see any signs this year). If you can time your shower to be just after they've been cleaned, all the better. Though bear in mind if you're queueing while the showers are being cleaned, so are other people, and the more people having a shower at once, the worse the pressure is.

So, all that said, which showers are generally the best? Probably, on balance, the hardstanding ones between Boogies, Café Uno, and the Sports field. They can get pretty dirty in the day, but they're the most consistent (generally) for temperature and queues and water pressure. Bring flip-flops though. Other good ones are the power showers situated between Gigs and Yellow 2, and the hardstanding block of showers on Orange 3 by the main gate. Also, it seems every year there is randomly one power shower block that is much better than the rest. This is never the block up on Pink or Silver though.

ASSOCIATED FACT: There are secret showers on site that are not available to the general delegates. Sucks to be you here, but there are a few units of hard standing showers in some of the main buildings that while not very modern or up to date, do always give consistently warm and relatively powerful showers. They also rarely have a queue. They are not though, the holy grail of all showers. The holy grail of all showers are the ones found in the little portable accommodation blocks you've seen dropped down on site, called Bunkabins. They are shared between two people and generally are hot and have a high water pressure. If you're busy enough on site to get one of these, or are lucky enough to be friends with someone who has one and will share the shower, you are a fortunate person. But even then the same rules apply, the ones placed nearer the centre of site are more powerful than the ones placed far away. Alas, the holy grail of these showers-the holy grail of holy grails if you like-does not exist any more. At one point, before fire regulations prevented it, there were a series of Bunkabins placed between what was last year Mr Boogies and Gigs. This is the area they normally use for washing down animals. It has more water pressure than the Hoover Dam. You had to stop these showers every five minutes and just stand and relax in the steam for a while to let them drain because too much water was pouring into them. They are sadly missed.

My Residential List Again

You know, after writing about losing my list of things to remember for residential weekends, you'd think I'd remember to write it again after last year's residential trips. Wrong. Things I have learnt since then that I can remember: Bring more ketchup than you think you'll ever need.

Hi! Aitus?

Ah summer, the glorious wafts of sausages gently sizzling on the barbecue, the long late evenings, the endless, pointless refreshing of the BBC Sport website as you forget that the season doesn't start for another four weeks. As well as all the busy summer program youth stuff that happens, I'm using the rest of my time to write up a load of stuff for various long-term strategy papers and that what, some of which will trickle down onto this blog. That's not including being off to Soul Survivor in three weeks or so, for elevenish days of telling people to tell people what to do¹. At the same time as all this, I'm trying to be a bit better about resting in Jesus and not trying to be always with the doing of many things. So, if you haven't guessed where this is going by now, here is where I tell you; at best, I'll only be posting occasional links up until September, then it'll be back to normal. I'll sort out something with the front page of the site so it cycles old articles up that you might have forgotten about, but that'll be it for long format content for the next short bit.

¹ Which, if you are there, means you should say hello. And then if you're a youth worker you should ask me to interview you if you're a youth worker. I'll be wearing an orange jacket, it's relatively easy to find me.

Get the Men!

Josh Cousineau writing on getting young men involved. (This blog is my current favourite internet based hap'stance of a discovery.)

Female Circumcision In The UK

Harrowing reading but if you work with young girls from African, Middle-Eastern or West Asian backgrounds (ie everyone who works with young women in vaguely urban areas) you should be aware of female circumcision practices in the uk, if nothing else just so you're aware.

The Youthwork Summit Details

Here's a video about the Youthwork Summit giving you the score of what's going on with it. If you listen to the podcast it's the same information. (What's with this trend of putting everything out in audio or video format? Text is pretty concise people, and you can read it while listening to really loud music.) The gist is lots of different speakers from different areas and places speaking for small amounts of time, with time after each session to speak to the various people who spoke in those sessions. There's a strong emphasis on the collaborative, with built in Twitter feeds and suggesting a speaker, which is good because presumably it means you can heckle the speaker too.

Where Have all the Children Gone?

This is from data for American churches, but fascinating none-the-less. It shows where people have churchmanship as they've grown up. It's worth noting that this only gives information about current adults and also that Evangelicals seem to have a slight loss, not through not gaining people in, but through losing more.

God In The Classroom

A science teacher on how he's asked about God a fair bit in class.

Job: Lead Youth Worker, Colchester Road Baptist Church, Ipswich

Go work for my old church! Colchester Road Baptist Church is looking for a youth worker. The young people are quite lovely, and it's a great church, so you should go work there.

Colchester Road Baptist Church is a growing evangelical Baptist church in the north east of Ipswich, with a thriving and growing youth work (ages 11-18) and brand new purpose built premises. We are looking to employ a full-time lead youth worker to shape, strengthen and co-ordinate our existing work, to explore new opportunities and to develop our existing links with the local high school, local churches and CYM (Ipswich Christian Youth Ministries).

Closing date is the 29th June 2010, for more info contact .

Top Five Youth Residential Pranks

In the interest of concerned youth workers everywhere, not getting any sleep because of the worry about youth work pranks that might occur over the nights of their residential weekend, here are a list of the best pranks to pull things to look out for. I'm a big hater of all things messy, for me, the simplest ones that require the least to undo are by far and away the funnest.

• Not Writing On Their Face: Early in the morning, before your friend wakes up, go into their room and remove any mirrors they have. Then leave a note on their sheets on top of their still sleeping body saying "I didn't draw on your face" (preferably written in thick black marker). Wake them slightly with this, then run off. This works better the further they have to traipse to their bathroom covering their face.

• Placing Someone's Underwear On A Tree That's Slightly Viewable Through A Window From The Room The Talks Are Taking Place In Slightly Hidden So They'll Only Notice It Halfway Through The Talk: Kinda self-explantory really. Also works besides the football pitch so they don't notice it till halfway through the match.

• Happy Birthday: The bigger the camp, the better this works. When everyone is sitting down for dinner, stand up, ring your glass or bang the table and state boldly that it's a special occasion, and that it's your friends birthday. Point at your friend, make them stand up, and then get everyone to sing happy birthday to them as they have to stand there and turn red. This only works if it is not their birthday.

• Turning Everything Inside-Out: Best practiced while your mate is out playing football or trying to chat up that girl. Go into his room. Turn everything inside out. Sleeping bag, coat, trousers, rucksack, go crazy! It's surprising what you can get to turn inside itself if you try hard enough.

• The Hoover Manoeuvre: It's a good thing that all youth camps come equipped with a Henry Hoover for this, the pinnacle of all pranks. Find Henry, detach the nozzle and unwind the cord to its full extent. Head over to the room where your buddy is fast asleep and find the nearest power socket outside their room. Then, carefully! plug him in with the wall switch off, and flick the power switch to "on" on Henry's body. Get a partner to stand by the wall switch, and then, when he's ready, with one smooth move push the door open and slide Henry in Ghostbusters style. Your partner hits the wall switch and a trapped, enraged, Henry Hoover explodes during your buddy's deep sleep pattern.