Blob Thing Is Uninspired By A Visit To The Blue Peter Garden

My person promised that she would help me write a blog post today but it's the end of the day and she hasn't done it.  She's making some excuse about how her job list was very long and she just didn't have the time.  But I want a blog post and she's going to do it even though she's struggling to keep her eyes open.

So here are some pictures.  She's allowing me to share pictures but isn't allowing me to talk about my adventure.  I suppose they explain themselves.  And I think this might have been a more exciting adventure for her than it was for me because although I understand that there is a children's television programme to do with this, it's not one I've ever seen.  My person hasn't seen it for a long time either and probably may never see it again since it stopped being on a channel that she might sometimes watch.

But I stood and I posed for the camera and did what was expected of me.  It was a good day though.  I had lots and lots of adventures that day and one day I will tell you about them all even though it all happened a very long time ago - about 100 days ago.  My sister hadn't even been born then.

Okay.  Here are the photos.  Maybe tomorrow my person will let me write a proper blog post.

So that's it.  Me visiting the Blue Peter garden.  It's tiny.  It really is.  It's not much more than a couple of flower beds.  Anyone can go and visit it though and some people might get very excited by it.  I wasn't very excited.  There were much more exciting things that day.  Much more exciting.  A beautiful library, some roman ruins, a journey along a canal, playing in a sculpture park and a trip to see an actual tank.  It was an exciting and enjoyable day and I only got a bit wet.  Maybe the Blue Peter garden was the most boring part of the day for me.  Maybe it would have been more exciting if I had heard of Blue Peter before visiting the garden.  Maybe.

My person says she wants to go to sleep now.  I will be kind and let her.

Blob Thing Looks Back on September Adventures With His Meany Bum Person

[Excuse weirdness in presentation.  We typed the whole lot.  Then the software died and we had to copy and paste it back from Open Office where we had saved it.  But then we had to redo all the photos and it all got difficult.  It's not as neat as we wanted it to be.  Apologies from Blob Thing.]


It's been a long time.  I keep trying not to get cross with my person but there's no getting around the fact that it's been a long time.  And she keeps making excuses.  First she says that she can't manage to type my blog when we're away from home so much.  It's true.  We have been away quite a lot.  We're away from home again now but she's agreed to try to type something for me so I don't think it's a particularly good excuse.  But then when we did get home for longer than a few days she still wouldn't type my blog for me.

My creator called my person a meany bum yesterday because of something my person wouldn't let her do.  Well my person is a meany bum for not getting on with my blog.  There's always been some excuse or other.  First she's too tired.  Then she's too stressed.  Then she says she would have typed my blog but she had to type something else.  Then I catch her just sitting watching television sometimes.  Yes.  She does that.  When she could be typing my blog for me.  It's not as if I can do it myself.  My creator says that my person should make a big strap on pointer for me so I can attach it to myself and use it for typing.  I bet my person doesn't do it.  She's such a meany bum.

It's been twenty-three days since I got the chance to type a blog.  Twenty-three.  When my person promised me that I would be able to do it nearly every day.  Meany bum.  My creator is such a wise woman in designating that title for my person.  I'm surprised she is typing this for me but I've told her that if she doesn't do it I'll get in a strop tomorrow in Southport and tell everyone how meany bum she is.  I'll tell the woman at the ice cream shop.  I'll tell all the staff of the chip shop.  And I'll even tell the people in the liquorice shop.  And everyone will know what my person is like and she wouldn't have a very good day.  I probably wouldn't do any of that of course.  I'm too nice.  But the threat is there.

Anyway.  It's been a busy time.  Today I just want to share some photos of some of the things I've been getting up to during September.  There are still adventures from July I haven't told you about.  Lots of them.  But all of these are from September.  My life has been pretty busy even though there was one day on which my person promised Winefride and me that she would take us to a special forest where we could walk round lakes and go and see lots of animals.  And then she didn't take us at all.  Instead she went for a lunch with some people and didn't even take us out of her bag and introduce us.  We would have much preferred to walk in the forest.  I think that she would have preferred it too in retrospect although of course she wouldn't say that.  She didn't treat us well that day and put herself first.  What a meany bum!

I think October is going to be a busy month for us too.  I hope so anyway.  Yesterday we got to row a boat across a big lake.  Today we've been to visit Jesus and Mary in their special shrine.

My person.  Meany bum.  She got to that point in typing my words and then she claimed to be too tired to continue and that she needed to try to go to sleep.  Where did that leave me?  Yes.  Unable to finish.  And now three more days have passed. [Blob stressed the word three a lot when he spoke just then.]

She hasn't helped with my blog.  At all.  I suppose I shouldn't moan entirely because it's not all been bad.  And she hasn't been totally terrible.  On Monday we had a day out to Southport.  Winefride and I didn't get to adventure much but we did play on a slide and we did try to watch the sun setting over the sea.  That was very nice.  Yesterday my person took us out walking.  First we visited a big graveyard because for some reason my person likes visiting graveyards.  There was a massive church there which I wanted to go in because it looked amazing and there were lots of holes but it was fenced off and there were big signs about it being unsafe.  Then we walked by a river and saw some pretty things.  I was glad that my person carried Winefride and me because part of the walk was very muddy.

Last night we got taken out to an autism event in Manchester and we heard lots of talks.  I was very very pleased at one point because I got mentioned and so did my blog.  I'd better get my meany bum person to help with it more often now if we're going to be mentioned at autism events in Manchester.  My person was given a few ideas at the event too even though the focus was different from the focus she wants to have in Newcastle.  And she met a person who used to live in Newcastle and really misses it.  Unsurprising.  Because Newcastle is a wonderful place.  She lived a few metres from a bus stop I will be standing at tomorrow evening.  Amazing.

This morning we are going back to Newcastle but my person said that there is just time to help me with my blog post.  I am going to post lots of photos now.  And just say a sentence or two.  When we manage to blog about these events I can tell you about my adventures in detail, the kind of detail only a blob or her person can include.

Here goes.  Photo time!

This is Winefride and myself from when we went hoop dancing.

My person wasn't good at it at all.  And the hoops were a bit large for me.  There weren't any blob size hoops.

Here I am.  Out of focus.

That's the evening I met the head of the Catholic Church in England.

Or the ex-head.  This head is a dead head.  He has ceased to preach.  Gone to meet his maker.

That was Humerous!  (sic)

 Here are Winefride and myself on a visit to Newcastle Anglican cathedral.

Newcastle has three cathedrals because Christians disagree and keep having arguments and used to kill each other lots over those arguments.

At the graveyard yesterday we saw how even in death the Christians have to be kept separate from each other.

Maybe they go to different heavens too.

Here's Winefride.  She's my sister and I love her.

This was the first time she rode at the front of a Metro train and got to look at the view from the front.  She liked watching the rails and sleepers as they went under the train.

My person likes the numbers on all the bridges and posts by the track.  She keeps telling my how the number on the first bridge out of Jesmond is a square number and how that makes her happy.

Another number we pass is the sum of two squares.  If she halves it it's still the sum of two squares.  If she halves it again it still is the sum of two squares.

That makes her happy too.  My person is a bit strange.

Here are the two of us on another train.

This one didn't have a driver at all.  How does that work.

It's the driverless train at Gatwick Airport.  We went to see the airport when we were in Sussex.  The train was amazing and we actually got to go on it again later.

Here we are on the south downs at a place called Ditchling Beacon.  We took lots of photos there and it's a place that now has a special meaning for my person.

This is one of lots of pictures that my person took of me and Winefride when we visited the museum in Market Lavington.

We enjoyed our visit there a lot.  It's a very good little museum.  My person and everyone with her enjoyed it too but they all seemed a bit sad because of something very sad that happened a few days earlier.  I think my person is still sad about it.

This was absolutely brilliant.

I spent three days helping here.  It's the Autistic Fringe yurt which was the best thing at the Autism Europe International Congress.

My person had a very good time too and Winefride was free to be herself in a safe autistic space.

Here's Winefride and I.  We're sitting on the head of a snow dog.  It's tempting to go and find all the snow dogs because there are lots of them scattered around Tyne and Wear.

In the background you can see an actual real life river god.  You can tell that they are powerful because they are sitting on the side of a wall and they don't fall off.

Here I am sitting on a melodica.

I went to a brand new choir with my person.  It's a women's choir and my person was really happy because she could hit the lowest part without having to drop and octave.

I know that she's looking forward to tomorrow night because she can go to the choir again.

This time she will take a head torch.

Final picture.


Here's Winefride being a bit too Winefride like.  She didn't understand how dangerous it was to stand so close to a caiman.


I was pretty scared.  But it turned out okay.  And we got to see dinosaurs too that day.



There you are.  A little glimpse into some adventures I had during September.  I have an amazing life for a small pink toy.  Absolutely amazing.


In a while we will leave for Newcastle and I'm sure we will do lots of living while we are there.  And then we will come back to see my creator for a few days again.  I love my creator.  I am very proud of her indeed.  I am proud of Winefride too.  She's pretty amazing.  She's severely autistic and doesn't talk but she's so full of joy and life and exuberance and I love her very much indeed.

[1741 words]

Blob Thing Was Happy To Be At Greenbelt But Has No Time To Write About It

Blob Thing does not have time for a blog post this morning.  It's a very strange time.  He keeps going away from home and being busy.  This is the strangest of the three recent times away.  His person seems far more subdued and worried by this time.  She's not showing it to the world and is masking some things about herself in a way that Blob Thing thinks is a bit unhealthy.  Blob hopes that his person will be back to normal soon.  Okay, not back to normal.  Some people would say that Blob's person has never been and will never be normal.  But back to what is normal for her.  Blob wonders whether there will be hoop dancing for his person next week and whether she will get herself a decent hoop and practice until she has at least one basic hoop skill.

No time this morning.  Blob and Winefride are being taken to a little place in Wiltshire soon.  They're quite excited about it but Blob's person seems quiet today and unable to smile quite as much as Winefride or to be able to happy flap the way Winefride was earlier at the prospect of another car journey.   Winefride isn't used to cars.  She hadn't ridden in one until a few days ago.  Blob can't remember riding in one either but he thinks that a car is a bit like a bus except for having less people in it and it stopping at houses rather than at bus stops.  Blob is looking forward to the view from the car.

So today Blob can't write a proper blog post.  He hopes that he can tomorrow but there seems to be so little time just recently.  Humans are so busy.  Why can't they just do important things like help soft toys to write about themselves?

Today Blob is going to share just one photograph from Greenbelt.  It's from the Sunday afternoon.  Blob's person was busy chatting with people.  Blob was happy about that because she kept telling people about him and Winefride and he got to meet lots of people.  Winefride got a bit overwhelmed by all the strangers and had to hide away in the bag for a bit and look at some of the free things that Blob's person kept collecting.  Blob has to say that his person collected a lot of nice free things at Greenbelt.  He was quite impressed by how much there was and how she was still able to fit everything into her bag when packing up - including two new coats and three new hats which will look completely stylish in winter.  They might be the style of a crazy person but they'll be stylish.

One photograph:

This picture is of Winefride, not of Blob Thing.  Blob wants to point that out in case anyone gets confused.  She is his sister and he loves her.  He wanted to say that too.  The picture sums up the overall Greenbelt experience.  Happy to be there.  Blob, Winefride, Blob's person and Blob's creator all want to go again next year too.  Blob also wants to point out that Winefride is not a unicorn but that it's fun to pretend sometimes.  They didn't meet any real unicorns at Greenbelt so maybe someone else was pretending too.   Isn't Winefride gorgeous?

Blob Thing hopes that tomorrow - or whenever he can write a full post - he can tell you all about the rest of that Sunday.  Some of it was difficult.  Some of it was blissful.  It was to be a day that was hard to cope with but which then didn't end until nearly two o'clock in the morning which is far past everyone's bed time.

Wiltshire beckons.  Another county for Blob to visit.  He doesn't think he'll ever visit all the counties of England.  His person has been to them all - although she doesn't remember Norfolk because she was only a few months old and she only entered Cornwall for a few hours.  Blob wonders where his future will take him.  He had never expected to be visiting Wiltshire or to be doing all the other things he does.  He's still hoping that before leaving Sussex he has time to go to a big park and see animals there.  Blob's person hopes they can do that too.  Winefride is wild about the idea and hopes that they can see the baby meerkats.  You can just see her face light up when Blob mentions them and she squeals so loudly with delight that everyone has to laugh.




[761 words]

Blob Thing Meets Giant Refugees And Enjoys Art And Free Tea At Greenbelt

Blob isn't going to write much today.  He's finding it hard to focus being down in Sussex and at this point would much rather be with his friends.  Winefride is finding it hard too.  She's getting quite bored and it's left to Blob to do the looking after.  Blob hopes that she can come out on an adventure soon but his person keeps being busy and doesn't know if any of the busy people would want to go out on adventures with soft toys.  Blob also hopes that they can all escape soon and go out and see the animals.  Maybe today after all the other silly human jobs are done.  Blob says that humans spend a lot of time worrying about meaningless things and collecting meaningless things.  He doesn't understand humans sometimes.  Then again, his person doesn't understand them either and she is a human.  Blob and Winefride are very glad that Portal is here too because Portal brings a little bit of soft toy sanity in the place.  Even Portal is looking forward to being somewhere else.

Greenbelt was going very well but it was Sunday morning.  Everyone knew that would be a harder time due to the lack of things going on.  Grief.  Blob is finding it very hard to write while here.  It's not a comfy writing place for him.  Not comfy at all.  He's not going to go into the reasons why but you can probably guess some of them.

Blob said in his last post that he didn't want to go to the big communion service at Greenbelt.  Lots of people did go and they seemed to enjoy it.  But Blob didn't want to go.  However, on his way to breakfast that morning he and his companions met some very friendly people who were on their way to the service.  They were incredibly tall for humans and were from another country.  Blob and Winefride didn't quite take in what country they were from but they had their pictures taken anyway.

He thinks that the two people were refugees who had come to the United Kingdom not so much to find a better life but to escape a terrible one.  He knows that refugees have often escaped from horrendous situations.  None of them wanted to leave their countries.  They just felt they had to because their lives were so bad.  Not just through poverty.  Oh no.  If they were just poor people coming to Britain to get richer then that would be an entirely different situation and Blob would have preferred them to stay in their countries and some help given to build better financial and economic lives there.  That seems sensible.  It's not that simple though.  Refugees aren't refugees from poverty even though many of them were very poor indeed.  They are refugees from war, hatred, oppression, injustice and a whole range of awful things.  They had to leave their homes, their lives, and head off on a long and difficult journey.  Blob Thing is very glad that he has never had to be a refugee.  He might moan about how hard it is to write a blog post today but that's nothing compared to the lives these people have lived and the lives many still live due to not having been granted refugee status.

Blob had met refugees before and he was very glad to meet some more at Greenbelt.  They were ever so friendly and smiled almost as much as he and Winefride does.  Blob doesn't know how much Winefride understands the refugee situation.  She was pleased to meet the people and swung wildly on her reins as she was held and she giggled so much it's a wonder that the entire Greenbelt festival site didn't hear her.

After breakfast, Blob, Winefride, Blob's person, and his creator had a plan.  It wasn't mentioned in the main programme but Blob's person had seen that one of the tents would still be open and that they would be able to sit there and do some art things.  It was ever so good.  The people in the tent gave them all free cups of tea.  And then someone from another tent passed by and gave them all more free cups of tea.  Out of fairness to those people Blob has decided not to say which were the better cups of tea.  He was pleased to have received both drinks.

The tent contained lots of information about something called Iona.  Iona is an island off the west coast of Scotland.  Blob is now asking when he and Winefride can be taken to Scotland because it looks really close on the map from Newcastle and they have never been.  Blob's person says that it's quite expensive by train and takes a long time to get to on the bus but one day they will get up early at the weekend and go all the way.  Blob's person says it's more than a hundred miles to Edinburgh and even going by train would take quite a long time.  She hopes that one day early next year they can all go there on the train for free because she hopes to have a medical appointment there.  She has been hoping to have that appointment for a very long time but the powers that be keep not allowing her to have it even though she has been legally entitled to it for well over two years.  Blob's person has to be very patient.  Sometimes she doesn't care about it all.  Sometimes she's pretty unhappy about the whole thing.  Sometimes she doesn't even want the treatment that the appointment would eventually lead to and wonders what the point of it is.  Blob wants her to stop talking about it now.

Iona contains a Christian community.  They always seem to be quite nice people and they sing lots of nice songs.  Blob wouldn't want to be part of the community though.  They all have to read the Bible a lot and they have to keep praying and praying and praying and using liturgy addressed to the sky God he doesn't believe in.  Maybe some of the community members don't believe either.  They just use the liturgy.  Blob keeps reading about such people and he met some more at Greenbelt.  People who don't believe in a sky God but use long prayers addressed to the sky God.  Blob doesn't quite understand how people can do that.  He knows that there are ministers who don't believe in the sky God and lead prayers in every service addressed to the sky God.  Blob doesn't think he would be able to cope with doing that if he was a minister.  He would have to use prayer forms that removed the language of such forms of theism.

Iona people are nice though and later in the weekend Blob and his person would attend two Iona services.  Blob's sister and his creator would be at the second one too.  There was ever such a lot of singing in that and it was enjoyable.  Blob's person likes singing and it makes Blob happy to watch her enjoying herself.

The piece of paper Blob's person had read was true.  There was art to be done in the tent.  It was called the Northern Lights tent.  Iona is a long way north.  It was a bit confusing for Blob though because he got taken a couple of times to a church in Newcastle called Northern Lights and the tent didn't have anything to do with that church.  Blob's person had to explain that more than one thing can have that name.  Blob met a few people from that church at Greenbelt.  There are people from that church there every single year and they're all pretty nice too and some of them don't really believe in a very orthodox Christian God.  One woman in the congregation does believe in a sky God but not in the normal Christian story and she rewrites all the prayers and liturgy as she goes along and says different words to everyone else.  Blob's person has been known to do that too.  Not that she goes to church much now.  She attended more church things at Greenbelt than she had in the previous six months and she didn't join in with a single spoken prayer in a service.  It's lucky there isn't a sky God who created an eternal hell or she would be doomed and Blob would be doomed too and his fur would keep getting singed for eternity.

The Iona people had a plan.  They had a lot of spare boxes.  And a lot of pens.  The boxes and pens would be combined.  People could decorate the boxes with things to do with justice and inclusion.  That sounded like fun.  More fun than listening to sermons and sitting around while a thousand people shared bread and wine (or blackcurrant).

Blob's person and his creator got to work and they managed to create some nice things.  Blob's creator managed to decorate an entire box which she left behind for the display in the tent.  Blob's person only managed to decorate half a box and she took it away to complete at home.  She hasn't completed it yet.  But in part that's because she isn't at home.  Blob hopes that she will finish her box when she gets back there.

 After their time in the tent the four companions moved on.  Blob's creator and Winefride went off to do some things and Blob and his person went off to do other things.  Blob's person still needed to change into clean clothes and that seemed the most urgent thing to do.  As they passed the Big Top and the communion service, which still hadn't finished, Blob heard Justin Portal Welby talking.  He must have said something very funny because everyone laughed.

So that was the start of Sunday.  It was going to prove to be a difficult day.  Blob's person wasn't coping well for quite a lot of it and he had to look after her a lot.  By the end of the day things were wonderful again and that was a big surprise.  Blob's person would be totally surprised by her own actions and by how things turned out.  But that's a tale for another blog post.

 

 

[1720 words]

Blob Thing Gets Up At Greenbelt And Goes To The Airport

Note:  All the photos are random ones taken on the Saturday of Greenbelt.  They aren't connected with the events told in this post.  There's a reason for that which Blob Thing will explain at the end.


Everyone is feeling very tired this morning.  Nobody slept that well.  It turns out that Blob's person has developed some kind of allergy to Crawley, the town their staying in.  Yesterday her eyes kept stinging and her nose kept running.  Maybe it's not Crawley to blame.  But it feels as though it is.  It was a problem last night though because every time Blob Thing or Winefride was falling asleep, Blob's person would blow her nose loudly and they would be wide awake again.   Blob wishes that his person's nose was designed in such a way that it could be blown silently.  If he was an intelligent designer we would have built the human body very differently.  Forget all that argument about the design or evolution of eyes.  He would have sorted out human spines.  He would have made everyone immune from the common cold.  He would have made noses silent.  And then, just to please everyone, he wouldn't have designed a creature at the top of the pile and given them hiccups.

For Blob Thing, hiccups is a good argument against intelligent design.  Stupid design maybe.  He's happy to agree that the hiccups argument doesn't remove God or a super intelligent alien race as designer.  But he does think that it's an argument against God being a good designer.  One classic argument from design spoke of a watch and how you knew it could only be there because it had been designed and made by a clever person who had studied watch making.  Blob asks whether anyone would be all-knowing and all-powerful and still design a watch that got hiccups?  You can tell that Blob is tired.  He wouldn't come out with his hiccup argument if he was full of energy.

Back to Greenbelt.  He's not going to write much because he's coming to talk about Sunday and that was a more difficult day.  Blob says:

Yes.  It was hard.  Yesterday was hard too.  Maybe in a week we won't be here.  Yesterday also had some good bits.  Winefride and I got taken to look round an airport.  My person has been promising that she will take us to see Newcastle Airport sometime.  We could go there almost whenever we wanted.  It's not hard.  Just stay on the Metro until the end.  But she hasn't taken us there yet and we haven't even been on any really long walks in a while and I would want to.  Yesterday was different.  We went to an airport and it wasn't Newcastle.  I think she only took us because she had to go there anyway.  She wasn't taking us as a treat or anything like that.  I don't suppose we'll get many nice treats while we're in Sussex.  She won't even take us to the Brighton Pavillion and that always looks so pretty in photos.  [Now, now Blob.  I haven't even taken me there.  Ever.  And this trip isn't for you two to be tourists.  It's for practical purposes.]  Today she might not take us anywhere at all she says.  Meanie person.  I'm only joking.  She's not mean to us at all and we have excellent lives for little soft toys.  And we got to go to Gatwick Airport yesterday.  We got there later than planned because we had to put up with her photographing a cemetery first.  She likes doing that.  I like it too when I get to pose on all the gravestones but that didn't happen yesterday.

At Gatwick we did a particularly exciting thing.  We got to ride at the front of a train that didn't have a driver.  I want to blog about that when I get home.  It was amazing.  A bit like riding at the front of the Tyne and Wear Metro trains but even better.  The whole of the front of the train was a window and we could see everything.  We could even see all the aeroplanes on the ground.  There was a man who talked about it and called it a flight.   Silly man.  It wasn't a flight at all.  We were riding on a train on a rail and the train wheels ran by the rail not on the rail so it was a crazy kind of train.  He told us that we were flying at a height of thirty-five feet and we weren't.  We weren't flying.  What kind of fool does he take me for that he thinks I might believe him?  Or maybe he truly believes it because he said all the same things on the way back too.  That would be sad if he is that deluded.  He's not harming anyone unless they believe him about a flying train.  But he could get some help to not be deluded anymore.  There are more dangerous delusions.  My person isn't allowing me to talk about them right now.  I am tired and I want to talk and talk and talk but she knows that if I am allowed to let my words fly this morning then I might say things that people don't like even more than they might not like some of the things both I and my person have said in the past.

My person says I should talk about Greenbelt.  Because that's what this post is about.  On Sunday morning my person got up before my creator.  She got herself dressed.  That didn't take long because she had slept in her clothes and didn't bother changing into new ones until later in the day.  She then went back to the all night cafe.  Winefride and I were able to stay in the tent so we got more sleep.  She got practically none.  At the cafe she bought tea.  Two teas.  The cafe was very useful for tea drinking.  They sold a spicy chai tea.  My person and creator appreciated being able to drink lots of it.  By the time Sunday evening came the people in the cafe knew my person's regular order.  Maybe not many people ordered the spicy chai.

Sunday morning was going to be a challenge.  Most things at Greenbelt stop on Sunday morning for a communion service.  It's hard to find things to do because the festival people think that you'll probably be at the service.  But my person and creator didn't particularly want to go even though an important man would be speaking.  At least, he's an important man in terms of church hierarchy.  Whether he's more important than anyone else is another matter.  He's just got a posh job.  The man was the Archbishop of Canterbury.  He seems nice enough but we didn't go and hear him.  My person didn't want to sit (or stand) through two communion services in twelve hours.  She doesn't go to church normally and is very glad to not go.

She used to go all the time.  For a while she went nearly every day and would very often arrive before the church was even unlocked because she was so eager to pray to her God.  What does she feel about that now?  I know that all the order and the rules and the certainty helped her cope with her brain and gave her some stability.  But does she regret quite a lot of it?  That's for her to talk about.  It's not a thing for a post about Greenbelt when it's my post.  The most exciting thing about the Archbishop of Canterbury for me is that one of my very good friends got named after him.   Portal's name is Portal.  Named after the archbishop.  His name is Justin Portal Welby.  I love Portal and we're all very glad that he came to Crawley with us.

So we were at Greenbelt and the programme didn't list that many events for Sunday morning except for that giant communion.  My person and creator didn't know quite how they would fill the morning.  They had a few plans but didn't quite know what to do.

Plan one was breakfast.  The Christian Aid tent had advertised a big fry up and while none of us wanted a big fry up we did fancy some toast and so we went to that.  It wasn't a very exciting thing and the programme had got the time wrong so they hadn't get cooked the frying food anyway.  We all really enjoyed the toast though and were pleased to have successfully eaten some food.

I'm going to stop now.  My person has just received some bad news.  Right at this moment.  All of a sudden she isn't up to helping me write my blog.  That's okay.  We can write it together tomorrow.  It's going to be a strange thing while we're away.  I don't know how much time I'll have for blog writing.  Well, I'll have lots of time but I need my person's help otherwise typing would be very slow indeed.

We'll just add a Greenbelt photo somewhere above to give you all something to look at and my person can then get on with the day.  Sorry that we didn't talk much about Greenbelt.  I promise that we did all find something nice to do.  Don't worry.  But the news is sad and my person might be a bit sad about it too.


[1576 words]

Blob Thing Meets Rumi And Fails To See The Stars At Greenbelt

Blob Thing didn't manage to post anything yesterday.  He and Winefride had a very long day which got longer than they had hoped.  They had to accompany Blob's person to Sussex.  She is visiting her parents' house which needs to be cleared and sold and she is very anxious and stressed about the whole thing.  She was much too tired to help Blob with anything last night so he couldn't write his blog.  So he missed a day.  Blob wants to apologise but he stresses that it was entirely a circumstance not of his creating or his control.  He hopes that he will be able to blog every day while he is away from home but he doesn't make a promise.

Blob's first day at Greenbelt had been very exciting.  He had done lots of fun things and met lots of people who he would probably never see again.  And he had survived a storm.  Now it was time for Blob and his person to be reunited with his sister and his creator.  They had half planned some more activities to do once they had eaten food.

Before food Blob's person and creator met up in the Playhouse.  His creator had been watching a performance called Smash It Up.  Blob's person might have seen it all had she not been sheltering from the storm at the other end of the festival site.  As it was she only saw the end of it which wasn't enough to understand it.  But that was okay.  She was glad to have been able to find Blob's creator again in time for dinner and the planned evening events.

The first of these was in a place called Canvas, an open air area with a canvas roof.  They were going to a Sufi / Rumi session.  Someone was very kind and gave Blob's person and creator seats to sit on.  Both of them like Rumi and Blob's person has quite a few books of Rumi's poetry.  Blob wants to point out at this point that his person hasn't actually read the books yet, just browsed some of them and that she should stop buying books and read what she has.  Blob knows that the chances of that happening are nearly zero but he feels it would be a good idea.  Blob's person wishes that he would stop pointing out the silly things she does.  But she knows that the chances of that happening are also nearly zero.

The first part of the session was very interesting as the two people leading talked about Rumi and about Sufi beliefs and practices.  But then the session got a lot more practical.  Everyone was to chant one of the 99 Beautiful Names of God for a while.  And then another of them.  99 times.  Blob's person and creator weren't up to that.  Blob's person likes the names and Blob likes the few he has heard.  If he was using them of course he would have to change them because they are 99 names of a sky God and Blob doesn't believe in a sky God.  So where the names would say something like "God (Allah) the merciful"  Blob would have to say "God who is mercy."  That allows people to still be theists but also allows someone like Blob to move away from theism into nontheism, theopraxy, or even atheism.  Blob's person is quite into the theopraxy idea but may be stretching it even further to a statement of "whenever you are merciful you both express and create that which is God."  God thus ceases to be a being, and instead becomes Being, a way of being.

It's not a radical idea.  There would have been quite a few people at Greenbelt who said - or at least privately believed - quite similar things. Blob's person talked for a while the next day with an Anglican nun who said that she had given up believing in the sky God years ago.  Talk about radical!  The late David Jenkins said some things while he was Bishop of Durham that had conservative Christians up in metaphorical arms.  Blob's person didn't like those things at all and thought it terrible that such a man with such beliefs should be raised up to be a bishop.  Blob's person has changed a lot since then.  Blob is glad.  He would find it very difficult if she was to keep preaching to him about the need for conversion or about how Jesus died for his sins and only the blood and intercession of Jesus could ever keep him out of going to Hell.  Blob Thing may have been influenced by his person in this but he firmly believes that the whole idea of an eternal hell to punish people for real and imagined offenses and offensiveness in a single lifetime to be one of the most horrendously disgusting religious ideas ever.  Thankfully a lot of Christians don't believe in that idea any more or in the idea that every single person is inherently sinful.

Blob didn't want to sit and chant the names either.  And Winefride was obviously very impatient to leave.  So the four companions just got up and left.  No guilt.  Nobody should ever feel guilt about leaving a religious thing.  And that's another topic Blob could talk about and which his person could express from her own experiences.  Not today.  They left Canvas and didn't know what they were going to do to fill the next bit of time.

But then they passed Grove, where Blob had learned about the Jesus Fellowship earlier in the day.  A dance workshop had started and it looked.  The man who was leading it, Andy Raine, lives on Lindisfarne and helped found The Northumbria Community.  So he's connected with two of the nice bits of British Christianity.  The dances were simple and friendly and they were very fun.  This was far more Blob's kind of thing than chanting the 99 Beautiful Names.  Blob's person enjoyed it too and decided that she needed to do more dancing in Newcastle.  There's a wonderful dance event happening there in a few days but unfortunately she won't be there and will have to wait for another.  Newcastle has quite a few wonderful dance events for people who have no flexibility, no stamina and who have no clue about dancing.

Everyone enjoyed the dancing in Grove.  They didn't mind that the ground was a bit muddy from the storm.  Everyone smiled except when they were meant to be expressing pain and brokenness and dancing to one of the more depressing songs of Leonard Cohen.  That was the first time that Blob's person has ever danced to a Leonard Cohen song.  She has listened often.  She has sung often.  But never danced.

After the dancing Blob's person and creator had a definite event booked in their diary.  On the way Blob spotted a forest sculpture.  Some people make pictures and art from found materials when they're out and at Greenbelt there were some interesting pictures and patterns in some places.  Blob thinks that most of them were done by people involved in Forest Church or by people who went to workshops led by Forest Church.  He really liked the one he found and asked for his picture to be taken.

They left Grove in a hurry because they wanted to join the queue to go back to Playhouse.  There was going to be a play called Grandad and The Machine.  The was billed as a "brand new steampunk fairytale for adults."  It was very enjoyable and Britain was not destroyed.  There was music and chases and Zeppelins and all kinds of good things.  Blob and Winefride enjoyed themselves a lot.  Winefride hasn't been to proper theatres before.  Blob has been several times and likes it.  He saw The 39 Steps which was very funny and he saw The Night Watch which wasn't very funny at all.

After the play Blob's creator was tired and wanted to go and rest.  Blob's person refused to rest.  She had bought a festival ticket and was determined to use it as fully as possible.  After sharing a cup of tea, Blob's creator went off to bed and took Winefride with her.  Winefride had enjoyed the day a lot but she needed to rest too because at times it had been quite overwhelming.

Blob wandered off and took some photos, continuing to explore the site.  A brass band were playing some great music in the Big Top but Blob's person knew that she would never be able to get in there and enjoy such loud music or dance to it.  Oh no, she would never be able to do that.  Her head told her that she wouldn't.  Blob doesn't necessarily believe in believing the things people's heads tell them.  Blob is wise!

Around the site there were lots of pretty dangly things and Blob wanted to experience them all that night just in case he didn't have a chance to experience them later.

Blob's person walked back to Grove.  A man from the Forest Church movement was going to lead a session about the stars.  The description said "put on the dark and see the stars."  That sounded amazing.  But it was still completely cloudy after the storm so nobody saw a star.  Instead the man led a talk which included quite a lot of science.  Blob's person didn't stay for the whole talk even though it was quite interesting and she learned that Ursa Major is not a constellation.

So Blob and his person wandered again until they came to canopy.  They listened to the last part of a comedy night and during that time they spotted an old friend of Blob's person.  He was easy to spot because he was the only person still standing after a set of questions the first one of which was "Are you female?"  Blob's person doesn't think her old friend is female and doesn't quite know why he was still standing up.  But it made him easy to spot and it made people laugh.

Together they walked and talked and headed to a communion service.  Blob's person left the church this year and so wouldn't normally go to a communion service.  She wasn't going to participate in this one except by singing the hymns quite loudly.  She sang the last one loudly in Welsh because the service sheet said she could but didn't hear anyone else singing the original Welsh words.  It was a special communion.  The Outerspace Eucharist.  It was aimed at LGBTQ people.  Apparently they could come there with "no need to hide from God."  It's very sad that such a thing has to be said even at Greenbelt.  There is truly no need to hide from any God on the basis of sexuality or gender unless your God is a ****.  [Blob, don't swear like that!]

At the service Blob's person met some people from the church she used to attend and afterwards they went off together to the all night cafe.  Blob's person needed to eat something because she was quite hungry and she needed to sit somewhere for a while before attempting sleep.  It was then that she discovered the carrot cake in the cafe.  She would discover it again several times over the course of the weekend.

And so to bed.  Blob got an excellent night of sleep.  Blob's person did not.  Another day was coming and Blob wondered whether it could be as exciting as his Saturday had been.



[1927 words]

Blob Thing Makes A Prehistoric Friend And Shelters With Good People At #Greenbelt

It was just a normal British Saturday.  Twenty-four hours long.  Sandwiched safely between Friday and Sunday.  The sun would rise and set.  The earth would turn on its axis and travel nearly one degree through its revolution of the Sun.  The solar system would continue its long journey around the galactic centre.  People on the earth would be born and die, marry and divorce.  They would work and play, laugh and cry.  Among them would be oppressors and the oppressed.  They would practise their religions and live with their lacks of religions and some would feel guilty that they weren't practising their religions well enough.  Some would fight and die for the sake of politics, or land, or religion.  Some would be forced to flee the fighting and leave their homes and countries.  Some would marvel that humans fail to get along so often.  Some would pray or work for a better future.  British typists would note that spell checkers were imperfect and would get annoyed that software designers didn't seem to know that practise is spelled with an s rather than a c when it's a verb.  A normal Saturday.  A normal late August Saturday.  Thousands would watch highly paid men kick a ball round a field for a while.  Millions would watch the highlights of ball kicking on television and watch as four people at a desk laugh at people who can't sing very well.  A few would go to watch unpaid women kicking a similar ball round a similar field in a way often more interesting than the highly paid men.

It was a normal Saturday.  But it wasn't a normal Saturday for Blob Thing.  He was at Greenbelt and was having a nice time.  When we left him last he was walking around the site with his person.  His sister Winefride had gone off for adventures of her own with Blob's creator.  Blob isn't being allowed to dictate this post about his adventures because he got so carried away with other things yesterday.  Blob says that it's entirely unfair.  He is pointing out that this post is meant to be entirely about Greenbelt but that first paragraph didn't have anything to do with Greenbelt at all.  Blob says that he would have just got on and talked about the matter at hand if he had been allowed to.  He says that the post is meant to be about the festival not about the inequalities in the pay of male and female football players.  Blob's person has to admit that he is making a fair point and the things about football were entirely her fault.

Blob and his person continued their walk.  It was still raining but not too badly and the sky was looking a little more like a normal sky, suited for a normal Saturday.  Blob says that his person shouldn't start all that normal Saturday stuff again.  He looks like he might get a bit cross with his person if she keeps misbehaving.  She knows she had better behave because he is starting to get a bit melty and she doesn't want to have to deal with Blob Thing in a full meltdown.  He's usually a very joyful Blob but when he melts it's not a pleasant experience for him or anyone around him.  Blob's person promises to behave and together they can talk about his adventures.  First they can have a big hug with lots of pressure and Blob can curl up very small and the universe can shrink down.

Done.  Blob Thing is smiling again.  Greenbelt.  Blob's walk led him next to a couple of sheds.  One of them contained a video "exploring the ambiguity of a moving landscape in time and space."  That's what the description says anyway.  Blob could just see some shapes.  He stood there for a minute and by that time was bored and asked to leave.  Blob's person was happy to depart because she often isn't very good at appreciating abstract modern art either.

Blob walked into the other shed and found it a lot more to his liking.  The display there concerned an archeological expedition that had discovered all kinds of strange things.  It wasn't a real expedition but it was interesting anyway.  On display were specimens of lots of the creatures the expedition discovered.  A couple of the creatures had come out to play and Blob thing went to play with them too for a while.

One of them was so happy to be playing with Blob that it lit up and glowed at him.  Blob's person picked up a card from the exhibition which contained a model to cut out and make of one of the creatures, called Mechanism Number Five.  The card says that there's a website about it all and Blob would have included a link to the site here except that the index page just contains one picture and a link to a second page and the second page contains nothing at all.

Blob left that tent - The Allotment Gallery - and continued to walk.  He decided that they should go and look at some of the stalls near the entrance, run by different charities and Christian groups.  The first one they came to was run by the United Reformed Church.  They were friendly.  They were asking people to write down the things they would scrap about church.  Blob didn't participate but his person did.  Several times.  There is quite a lot she would like to scrap about church in general and a lot more she would like to scrap from the practices and attitudes of some of the churches.  Blob isn't going to allow her to make a list here because he says she could do that on her own blog.  The United Reformed people were giving away some pretty stars too and they had organised a special star hunt across the entire Greenbelt site.  All you had to do was find twenty stars and answer a question about each of them.  Blob thought it would be a fun thing to do and he took a copy of the question sheet.  It was a bit too wet to attempt it then but Blob decided he could do it on a dry day.  He didn't.  The hunt was never undertaken so Blob wasn't able to claim his prize.  He saw at least most of the stars though and they were all very different.

Near the United Reformed Tent was star number seven. This was the Selfie Star and the hunt said that you had to take a selfie at the star.  Blob wanted to do that.  And since at that moment the rain wasn't too heavy, his person agreed to take the picture.  So here's Blob.

Blob is pointing out that his person didn't take a very good picture because she cut off a point of the star.  Blob's person was hoping that nobody would notice that but now he's pointed it out.  So everyone will notice.  She's not happy about that but has still agreed to include this close up of Blob in the star.  Doesn't he look completely wonderful there?  Rainbows and glitter suit his personality very well.

And then the weather turned.  Blob's person took a picture of the mid-afternoon August sky.  The camera doesn't show how dark it was.  And then it got darker.  And darker.  And then the rains fell.  And the wind blew.  And the power supply struggled again.  Fences blew down.  Things in the campsite blew away.  Blob was worried about his own tent.  Would that survive the onslaught of the elements?  Would he have somewhere to sleep that night?  It was a worry.  If Blob Thing had an interventionist personal God to pray to then he might have prayed to it.

It rained.  And it rained.  And then it rained some more.  Blob hid under the cover of the United Reformed tent for a while and then he and his person dashed to another tent.  And then another.  There were nice people in all the tents.  They didn't get to visit many of them - but there would be time for that later in the festival and they would soon learn of the joy of the free fruit being given away by Quakers.  Blob confesses that he passed that tent quite a few times and every time took some more fruit.  As he writes this he remembers that he had been considering going to Quaker worship this morning.  It's too late now Blob.  You've missed it.  You'll have to go another day.

In every tent Blob's person talked to someone.  What else can you do when sheltering in a small space with people and the world outside is blowing away?  One of the stands was run by a few queer people.  Blob's person talked with a transgender woman there who was friendly.  She heard some sad stories of other trans people including the tale of a woman who had nine children, none of whom would talk to her since she came out.  There are lots of sad tales like that.  Blob's person has been very lucky in the last few years.  She is a bit worried at the moment because in the next week she may have to meet a range of people who don't quite accept her.  They include people who couldn't even look at her when he read the address at her mother's funeral two years ago, people who wouldn't speak to her afterwards or look at her, and people who tell her how wonderful they are because they haven't rejected her.  Blob's person would prefer not to have to meet any of those people ever again.  After the next week she will hardly ever have to encounter them and that will be nice.

It's great though that at Greenbelt things were fine.  She felt accepted.  Nobody stared at her.  It was a place of freedom.  That's not to say there weren't some homophobic or transphobic people there.  Someone was talking with Blob and his person during the weekend and said that a homophobic person had come to their stall, a stall run by an organisation standing for equality and inclusion.  But it was okay.  The homophobic person was honest about their views and wasn't looking to condemn anyone.  He was wanting to find resources and help not to be homophobic anymore, without having to read his Bible in any dishonest manner.  Even the homophobic person was pointing towards change and acceptance.  Greenbelt is a safe space for queer people.  And it's a safe space for change.

Blob liked this T-shirt.  He might have bought himself one of them but it wouldn't fit at all.  It's very hard to find clothes in your size when you're a small pink soft toy.  Even size zero clothes are far too massive.  It isn't that relevant anyway as his dress is sewn on so might be uncomfortable to remove.

Blob's person spent time talking with someone wearing one of those T-shirts.  She was very nice.  The person said that they had once been a strong evangelical conservative Christian and had come to Greenbelt anyway.  Lots of Christians see Greenbelt as a bad thing.  Including that person's church pastor who threw her out of the church for attending the festival.  When church leaders act in such a way, Blob says that they are acting in a way that has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus.  They're worse than the "brood of vipers" Jesus talked about and whereas he gave seven woes to the pharisees he would probably find seventy-seven woes for such church leaders.

Blob says that if the way they live and act is Christianity then Christianity deserves to die.  Now.   It's not just some things should be scrapped about church.  It's that church should be scrapped entirely and be replaced by tea drinking and appreciating nature.  There was an if there.  Because Blob says that the way some so-called Christians live and act isn't Christianity.  It certainly isn't following the way of Jesus.  Blob says that his person used to be that way too in some ways.  Blob's person agrees with Blob but didn't particularly want him pointing that out right now.

Time was moving on and the rain was beginning to ease.  If Blob was very superstitious then he might have given thanks to God or some other being for making the rain stop.  People tend to praise God for making nice things happen but they don't criticise God for making bad things happen.  Yay!  God made the rain stop.  People say that.  But they don't tell God off for making people's tents blow away, the fences fall down, or for worse effects of weather.  Sometimes believers can be very inconsistent.  Blob says that all humans can be inconsistent sometimes even if they don't believe in God.

Blob and his person decided to walk back down the site.  They wanted to meet up with Blob's creator and with Winefride and eat some food before being together to share some events that evening.  It was going to be marvellous and there weren't going to be any more big storms.  Tomorrow Blob wants to tell you about his Saturday evening with Rumi, dancing, Steampunk, comedy, a queer church service and late night carrot cake.  It was all very amazing.  Blob wishes that it wasn't another fifty-one weeks before Greenbelt 2017.  He's looking forward to it already.  He's also pleased because he doesn't need to pay for a ticket.  Soft toys are allowed to attend Greenbelt for free.



[2264 words]