Of frozen ponds and half-eaten rolls

Six of us spent a saturday in Luton a couple of weeks ago. Though sadly bereft of Ruth who was at 'the Junction' (passim.) we had a spiffing time.

We arrived just after midday, five came from Cambridge in a car, one from London on the train. After meeting at the station the more lazy amongst us (?) took a ride straight up to Jude's house, Laura, Mark and I began to walk that way.

It was a cold bright day, while Laura and Mark talked I became distracted by a long, frozen pond which I decided to throw stones into. At the round-about near the cricket ground we found some thick patches of ice that still hadn't been touched by the sun, so we played the sliding game - Mark outdoing us both by performing a skid on his hands.

We were picked up by Gav further up the hill and found that, while he had bought lunch at Tesco's, Fiona and Liz were having fun too - Fiona throwing herself on the floor in a field and getting her new pink gloves dirty. Piling in the car, with a great deal of complaint from the smallest and most anxious of our group, we drove on to Jude's house 2 minutes away.

What a great place to be, a lot of forming time has already been spent there by most of the people on the team, and to sit in the big sofas drinking tea and eating biscuits (kindly supplied by Laura, or maybe Jude,) gave me a strange perspective on the journey we've been on over the last two, three, four years.

We had come to spend some time in Luton and talk about how we saw relationships and their values in the context of church. We did a bit of meditation about some Bible narratives and then started chatting around a few themes. What was said I think is for somebody else to relate, but the afternoon was punctuated by lunch, a notable event of which was Mark selecting a sandwich from a plate, taking a bite and replacing it on the plate deciding he didn't like it. This behavior he termed 'acceptable'.

After talking further, and seeing the house's owner briefly as she came in and went out, we set off to do some prayer walking. Splitting into two groups we decided to meet down at The Moathouse where we would eat £4.95 carvery, mmm. Mark, Laura and I said we would tough it out again and walked there, while Gav, Fiona and Liz drove to the area and did some walking around.

The three of us chatted most of the way, arrived early and went out again to do some slightly more explicit praying. By the close of play I was cold and hungry, keen to hurry Laura and Mark to the pub where Liz, Fiona, Gav and three kinds of roast meat awaited us. Fiona caught the coach home, the rest of us were driven by Gav and we picked her up again at Drummer Street in Cambridge.

I quite forgot: I took the picture on the way to the The Moathouse. Luton you are beautiful.