This is going to be a long blog entry, so I hope that you read it all and are sitting comfortably when you do.

So, here I am back home from Greenbelt and rested (at least a bit), now looking forward to a visit from an American friend of Niki’s who’s coming to stay for the weekend with her husband as part of their tour of Europe (but more of that later maybe).

Greenbelt was great!! I suppose I should add a little more detail to that really.

Alright let me start off with the bad points about the whole Greenbelt weekend / experience. The journey down there was a bit of a nightmare (uncomfortable and I was stressed out as I always am whenever I go out anywhere these days); the weather was awful (it rained for most of the weekend, although it was too sunny and hot on the Friday and I managed to get a sun burnt head); camping was uncomfortable (I am just not built for camping any more, don’t know if I ever really was); the porta-loos were dirty and the ground in front of them like a lake (although Niki was quite amused by the fact they were called AndyLoos); I felt very out of place for the first 2 days (part of this was due to my normal paranoia / stress and partly due to my own inability to separate people from stereotypical group identities); our tent was a long way from the main festival (village) site (although having said that there were tents much further away from it than ours); there was so much going on in so many different places that it was sometimes hard to be were you wanted to be on time (it was also a bit difficult to find some of the entrances to some of the places); and lastly, the merchandising for the event (t-shirts) only went up to an XL and I (and I saw quite a few others of whom this is also true) need a slightly larger size than that (I know some will say that this is a problem of my own causing and I agree but it is still a problem).

Alright, now let’s have a look at the good points about Greenbelt. The people are fantastic (everyone was getting on with everyone and chatting and having a good time, and accepting of everyone); I met one of Niki's friends called Julia who was very nice; there were some excellent bands on (although there were a few bands that I wasn’t into, some of the smaller bands on the 2nd stage were brilliant); there were tons of interesting and informative and thought provoking talks, seminars and events going on (and nobody was excluded from any of them, so long as there was space to get in); a lot of the things going on were indoor (this meant not having to worry about the weather); there were proper indoor toilets in the main festival site (village) and all of the toilets (porta-loos as well) were cleaned and re-stocked with paper every day (such luxury I have never known at a festival); there was very little alcohol on sale so this kept related problems to the barest minimum (no drunkenness, well maybe a little towards the end of the weekend, and no where near as much mess in the toilets and porta-loos); people actually cleaned up after themselves and put their rubbish in the bins (although sometimes this wasn’t true last thing at night when empty drinks and food containers would be left on the tables outside some of the food places, but other than that it meant there was hardly any rubbish anywhere on the floor); there was a huge variety of food and drink places and none of them were ridiculously expensive (a great mixture of food from Afro-Caribbean through Thai and Mexican to bacon rolls and fish and chips); there was a 24 hour café (this meant that when you couldn’t sleep due to the tent being uncomfortable you could walk up to the main festival village and have a coffee and a muffin at some ridiculous hour of the morning); I felt so much like I fitted in and was accepted without any kind of judgment for the last half of the weekend (once I got over my stressed out, stereotyping, paranoia and actually relaxed and got to know some of the people and understand more about the festival itself it was great).

So there you go, some bad points (many of them more to do with me than anything else) but many more good points.

So now I’m going to go into a bit more detail about what I actually did and didn’t do. I didn’t get to see Maria McKee (although I wanted to) but did hear her and she sounded good; I didn’t get to see Courtney Pine; I didn’t get to see Candy Staton (sorry Jake) but again heard her and she sounded good too; I did see Daniel Bedingfield and although he's not exactly my thing he was good and puts on a good show; I did get to see a really good band called Hey Gravity who reminded me of a cross between Garbage and any one of a dozen or so British punk bands; I saw a band called The Cedars who, although a bit too preachy for my liking lyrically, were a good band with a good sound; I went to a talk by a Sci-Fi author about writing and had a chat to him afterwards which was interesting; I saw a man called John Bell give a talk and was blown away by how charismatic but also ordinary he was; I bought a few things from some of the stalls around; and I watched lots of buskers (they set up busking points around the site for people who had brought instruments along to play at, although not for money), drummers, jugglers, and generally people having a good time. Although I didn't actually see them I got CD's by two bands that I heard and thought sounded good, one was called Crave and the other was called Electralyte. I also met some incredibly nice people who made me realize something that I had always thought I already knew, not everyone in a group is the same. I know that might sound a bit cheesy but I can’t think of any other way of saying it.

Having just read though what I’ve already written I realize that some people may not be aware of exactly what Greenbelt is, so for those people I will explain and to do so I will start by saying what it isn’t. It isn’t a music festival like Reading (although there is a lot of music there); it isn’t a festival for only young people (although there are a lot of young people there). It is a Christian arts festival. Now I know that the word Christian may well put a lot of people off reading anymore, and I can assure all of those that know me that I am no more a believer in Christ as the son of God now than I was before I went. It’s an arts festival with a Christian message for Christians, and anyone else that wants to go no matter what faith or lack of faith you subscribe to (although I do think that Satanists probably wouldn’t be welcome)

I know that some people have a very definite view of Christians and what they are (just like I did) but let me pass on to you a few things about the Christians at Greenbelt that some of you may not be aware of and I learned by observing them.
1. They come in all shapes, sizes, colours, from all classes, from lots of different places and in both sexes.
2. Some of them like music and even rock music (and not just Christian rock music), some of the band and music related t-shirts I saw people wearing over the weekend included:- The Foo Fighters, Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Bullet For My Valentine, My Chemical Romance, Coheed And Cambria, Blink 182, Green Day, Thin Lizzy, Sepultura, D12, and also t-shirts from the Ministry Of Sound and Cream.
3. Some of them skate – in fact there was a skate park set up there for the people that wanted to use it (and many did).
4. They are basically just like ordinary people, except that they believe in God and Christ and all that goes with that.

Having said that I don’t believe any more now than I did, I would say that the weekend has changed me to some extent, it made me think more about a lot of things (both in my own life and in the world in general). It made me think a lot about music and just how dismissive people are of bands that wear their beliefs on their sleeves but are perfectly alright with other bands singing about God and Jesus. It also made me think about my place within the world and what I want that to be (I’m still not sure about that but am working on it slowly).

I know that a weekend at this kind of festival won’t be everyone’s thing (and in some ways I’m glad about that), all I would say is that I enjoyed being in the company of people who cared about the people around them and weren’t afraid to show it. I know that back here in the real world not all Christians are non-judgmental and forward thinking, as the ones at Greenbelt are, but I now know that there are many more that are than I ever thought there were and that can only be a good thing.

So, we’re sorting out the flat ready for Niki’s American friend and her husband who are arriving a day earlier than we were expecting, and hoping everything goes well for their visit. I’ll probably post another entry at some point over the weekend, until then, see y’all!