I turned THIRTY with Greenbelt. It was in the little bar on the island of Iona, at the very end of our first 'pilgrimage' there, 1992. The bar was still buzzing at midnight, with Greenbelters thrilled by the experience we'd shared together on that innovative, challenging, inspiring week away. And with many other customers on that surprisingly vibrant island, Community staff and volunteers, local boatsmen, tourists on overnight stays, wanderers and wonderers of all descriptions including a real-life cool-dude druid.
It felt significant, turning THIRTY. Felt big. I would have felt cocky about it were it not for the beery, leery, cheery atmosphere of that place that night. Pure Scotch malt whisky - a great leveller. It would perhaps have felt energising had it not been for the sheer ache of tiredness in me then, just the sort of tiredness you get at the end of any Greenbelt event - satisfied tiredness. It certainly felt significant, turning THIRTY surrounded by Greenbelters, because it'd largely been Greenbelters who'd sustained me in traumatic times through my twenties. Felt like turning a corner, of sorts. A new start in the best company.
I got THIRTY, the book, through the post today - thanks, GB staff - and turned its pages looking first (vainly and in vain) for a namecheck, secondly for references to stuff I'd done (there was re:Generate, various 90's worship events, 24-Hour Cafe, but no mention of God's Game) and thirdly to see if I recognised the festival from Paul Northup's whistlestop tour.
At first I hardly recognised the festival at all. THIRTY, the book, points up to me just how much at Greenbelt I've MISSED over the years. Not just U2 (I was in me tent snoozing), not just the big stuff, but so many other bands unseen, speakers unheard, theatre missed, late-night-cabarets unlaughed at. When did all that happen? Where the hell was I?? It read like someone else's event.
But then I returned to the Introduction and Mike Yaconelli's description of his experience of one Sunday morning Greenbelt Communion service, of "being moved to tears looking over the crowd". And it struck me deeply, once again, that I've been there, and had precisely that experience, felt what he'd felt, a sense of wonder about that gathered community and the values and vitality they share.
The year I cried the most - in joy - was the year I watched the group of young people I'd brought with me, a raggedy crew, sharing bread and wine at the back of Castle Ashby's arena. The year I cried the most - in pain - was the year I watched from the platform as the rain fell relentlessly on the congregation and the bishop just kept preaching on and on and on and on. At the end of that service, I returned to my sodden tent via the finance office where nowhere near enough money had been taken that weekend. It felt like the end, to me. But meanwhile hundreds stayed in the arena singing well past the cut-off time; even then a GB spirit prevailed.
Turning THIRTY you realise you're a complicated mess of good'n'bad, a product of both joy and pain. You realise how much you've seen and how much you've missed. How you've succeeded and where you've failed. And, struck by a sense of the fullness of life in it all, you might just shed a tear. Though you might just blame that on the whisky.
Some years back Billy Bragg infamously wrote a song entitled A13 Trunk Road to the Sea – kind of an Essex version of Route 66.
I’ve never had cause to travel the A13, but I live just off another great A road, the A6 which runs between Manchester city centre and Stockport. The delights of this stretch of highway and its communities have also been captured for posterity by some of the voices that make up the A6 poets.
There’s a fantastic range that together sum up much of the experience of living in the A6 corridor. Comments about the 192 bus, the God of Albert Road or the delights of Topkapi’s obviously need a local knowledge to be best appreciated, but altogether I think they give even an outsider a taste of our world. I think Bill Mitton sums it up in his poem Roadsong (A6)
More than just a thoroughfare
It’s histories and lives
It’s the threads of a community
where diversity still thrives.
Oh Stockport Road, oh Stockport Road
you ain’t Chorlton
but at least you’re not Gorton
and that’s all right with me.
Apologies obviously to our neighbours in Gorton ;-)
On Saturday I stumbled upon another gem on the A6. The ImiTate Gallery is located at 623A Stockport Road in a formerly derelict old shop. Side by side with works by professional artists, hang the impressive results of a local urban arts projects.
The gallery won’t formerly open until later this month, but anyone is welcome to drop in as they get it all finished. I was given a guided tour of the works (some still propped on the floor) and was stunned by the diversity, quality and sheer joy of the pieces.
Many people would write this area off as decayed, deprived, violent and poverty stricken and certainly all those accusations carry truth, but living here for ten years you come to see that this is far from the whole truth and in amongst it all is the sense of community and innate creativity that are reflected in the formal projects such as the A6 poets or the ImiTate Gallery.
From the decorating of Wheely Bins by local women and children to form blockades as part of their grassroots campaign for traffic calming, to the paintings that appear on the boardings of burnt out buildings or the decision to hold an ad hoc street party “just to stick a finger up at the criminals”, the finger print of a creator God is evident everywhere you look.
And you’ve got to love the idea of a 2up2down multiplex cinema…