A Bus Load of Americans

For the past 20 years I've been taking Americans (mainly high school students aged 15-18, but also sometimes adults) around Europe on educational tours.  I sit at the front of the bus, with my microphone, take them to Versailles or Neuschwanstein Castle, and do my bit for the European tourism industry.  I therefore thought I'd blog about it a bit!

Supporting European Travel in Pisa

Travel Free in Europe and Get Paid for It

So how on earth did I get in to this? I saw a poster at college: "Travel free in Europe, and get paid for it" it announced.  As someone who speaks 5 languages, loves Europe with a passion, and who was at that point prepared to cycle 3 miles to save 20p on a can of baked beans, this sounded pretty alluring to me.  I went for the interview, did the training, and got the job.

ZOMG I still remember the moment my first group arrived.  There were 48 of them.  I was at Frankfurt airport.  I nearly shat myself.  This was *seriously* scary stuff. I was just 20: some of the kids were 18 years old.  We were going on a 10 day tour ("Bavarian Spring") of Rothenburg, Munich, Innsbruck, Lucerne, and Heidelberg.  I'd been to erm, Munich once, for 2 hours.  The rest I'd spent ages swotting up on, learning maps, learning history, preparing notes.  In most places I got the chance to dash round before giving a city tour.... in Innsbruck I had to do it straight off, reading my encoded notes in Dutch (which I knew no one would understand...) "Turn right at the Golden Roof, that must be the Hofkirche in front of you."  I pulled it off though, and the buzz was enormous.

One of my groups at Hohenwerfen Castle, Austria

We'd been out on a coach during training, but the first time I picked up the microphone I descended into a cold sweat.  Their little faces were watching me.  I was welcoming them to Germany: there was no escape: we would be together for days.  Anything could happen.  And oh, the things that have happened on these tours.

After my first two tours I moved company.  The new one is much better quality, much better organised, and they were far less likely to send me to places I didn't actually know.  I've been with them since 1993, over time moving on to interviewing and training people to become tour managers, representing the company at PR weekends, working for a time in Atlanta, being part of a tour manager focus group, actually designing new tours, - this all through my career as a City Solicitor and my current job.  I just *love* it.  It's my part-time thing: I squeeze in tours and commitments when I can, but I don't think I'll ever stop.  It's the most challenging, exciting, enjoyable thing I've ever done.

Musicians of Bremen: a group of young kids from Harlem

What's the Job Like?

So what IS it like being with a group of young Americans?  Well they're up for it.  They're up to have a good time, they're up for learning about the places you're going to,  they're fun, they can be loud, they are confident, warm, lovely.  I adore them.  They aren't cynical and whiny as I imagine British teens might be.  They want to have fun, and they will tell you when they are doing so.

Me and my mike on the coach!

I must have taken around 2000 Americans on tours of Europe: small town kids from Mississippi, street-wise New Yorkers, laid back Californians, Bible Belt Ohio kids who held a church service on the bus - I've had them all.  Any "Anti-American" feeling you have vaporises in seconds.  You realise just how stupid prejudices about a nation of 300 million individuals can be, and indeed are.

I've been to 18 countries and a grand total of 160 cities, towns or places with my kids, from Bergen in the North, down to Rome in the South  They're not "rich" kids, but they're the ones who place an importance on travelling: at 16 they could just have had a new or fancier car: instead they or their families choose to spend $2000 or $3000 on a trip to Europe.  Some have worked years flipping burgers for the trip.  This will be the only time they leave the United States in their entire lives.  A staggering estimated 80% of Americans do not even have a passport.

Goofing round on Mount Titlis... appropriate :)

I know I'm only in effect seeing the "good ones" - but my impressions of US kids genuinely give me a lot of hope for the future.  I'm a passionate believer in the value of travel: it opens eyes, changes perspectives, builds bridges and literally can change lives.

 Education, Education, Education!

These are educational tours.  The kids are capable of going to Versailles, having a group photo and leaving again.  Alternatively, you can fire them up, interest them about where they're going.  You can stand there and say "I talked to you about the French Revolution... the cause of it? In large part it's behind me!"  You can bring to life Gothic architecture by building a church out of kids at Salisbury Cathedral to show them how flying buttresses work.  Try enthusing them about this back in a classroom in Kansas - I have a church right there and one of the kids will be my gargoyle.  They'll never forget the fun of being part of the demonstration in a place they don't know.

Education, but also chuck in some fun!

You have a *captive audience* to tell them about 19th century bastards: Napoleon, Metternich, Bismarck- you can enthuse, excite, share your love about European history and places with kids, many of whom have never been abroad and possibly never will travel again.

You can talk about European socialised medicine (it's not -actually- evil you know)...  point out that people on the other side of the Iron Curtain were as afraid of us as we were of them...  that history and politics are nuanced... and you can deftly run through 2000 years of architecture, politics, art and history in 10 minutes with the aid of Euro banknotes.  You can tell them why the Holocaust matters and what we can learn from it.  What's more, they're stuck on the coach as you talk, so there's NO escape. Mwahaha.

Making Mozart Chocolates in St Gilgen

We do all sorts of "cultural connections" too - they actually take a class in waltzing in Vienna, learn how to paint in Cezanne's style during a class in Provence, do a theatre workshop in the West End, or take a 20s style Berlin cookery class.  You get to be part of this very "hands on" experience.  It is magic, and I love it.

Logistics and Emergencies

Education is one part of the job; the other aspects are logistics and emergencies.  The company makes all the bookings: we stay in lovely 3 or 4 star hotels in superb locations and eat excellent local food.  However, I have to make sure we arrive at all the places, I double-check all the reservations, and I'm in charge of all the timings.  If I'm doing my job correctly they won't realise it, because it will all run smoothly.  If we turn up for our visit to the Pergamon museum in Berlin and the doors are shut that day, though, I've got egg splattered all over my chops.

The dreaded "Train Experience" with a big group

Emergencies can be mental.  Anything can happen: I've had lost kids, lost passports, lost suitcases, an adult who had a heart-attack, problems with coach drivers, home-sick kids, broken limbs, 22 hour days - on my last tour I had to on my own book train tickets from Warsaw to Cracow for the entire group of 30 with one hour to go because our driver was out of action and the tour had to go on, get them on the train with all their luggage, make sure they'd visited a supermarket for lunch, get them from the hotels to the stations without a coach, and all without speaking hardly a word of Polish.

You're a teacher, a diplomat, a problem-solver, a friend to the students and a sergeant major all rolled into one.

One of my lovely students @lilplushy on Herrenchiemsee

Music As Well

I also take music tours - my single highlight of 2010 was a Californian choir who on the way back from a concert outside Bratislava sang *me* (yes, little me) "Don't Stop Believing" as we drove along the Danube at night.  (Coincidentally) fire works were going off to mark the opening of the new Hilton Hotel.

IT WAS A WALKING SINGING REAL LIFE GLEE EXPERIENCE *passes out*

My "Glee" group on a boat in Prague <3

My choirs and orchestras have performed in the Haydn room of Esterhazy palace, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Tosca church in Rome, St Stephen's Cathedral in Budapest - these are world class venues.  What an amazing experience for the students.  The music tours can be huge: the largest group I ever took round was 167.  There were three of us tour managers working together.  I had 67 on my bus alone.  We ate in the same restaurant every night - imagine how long it takes just to get them from A to B and the loudness of your voice to try to "herd" them from place to place.

Recruiting Now

If you know anyone who wants a challenging, rewarding, amazing, fulfilling and fabulous job - the company I work for is looking for new tour managers for 2012 currently.  It's the best student job imaginable and is also superb for part-time freelancers who have a couple of weeks available a year. You can apply here.  You get your travel paid for, your hotels and food provided, and the remuneration is actually extremely generous (Americans take tipping very seriously, and the strictly adhered to amount is $5 per person per day. Do the maths on a big group on a 14 day tour).

Cracow, Poland: LOOK at their little happy faces!

Imagine a job where you can have a profound effect on the way a young person will relate to their surroundings outside the comfort zone of the world they know.  Imagine the fun (and terror) of having a microphone in your hand.  Imagine explaining Impressionism to people who have never even heard of it, sending them into the Musée d'Orsay to look at the paintings, and asking what they thought of it afterwards.  Imagine an 18 year old New Jersey boy called Nick writing you a note at the end of the trip that simply says "Thank you, Peter.  This has been the best week of my entire life".  Don't know about you bunch of hard sods, but I cried.

I'm not even getting a kick back for this blog - I just recommend it as the best job I have ever done, by a mile.  If the above has interested you, give it a go!  People from all backgrounds do it: it is extremely challenging, but that is the reason the rewards are so great.  Again, I love it.

Lolz: Visegrad Castle in Hungary

Retrospect

In honor of my 599th post, I'm sharing the very first photo from my very first Iceland Eyes post on August 8th, 2004. Much has changed since then in all of our lives, but for me at least Iceland Eyes has remained a constant. Thank you to all of wonderful readers who wouldn't let me quit over the years. I dedicate this post to you!

p.s. Míó the cat is still alive, but has moved into a nice ground-level space under a deck on Baldursgata. He knows where we live now on Njálsgata but, coming from a long line of adventurers, has chosen the more rugged lifestyle conveniently located just behind the best fish restaurant in town ; )

Have you tried Dynamic Viewing yet? Five new views in all. Use the blue tab at the top of the view page to check them all out.

Pica

Pica, a disorder characterised by an appetite for non-nutritive substances such as rocks, sticks, bricks, house plants or light bulbs.


Recently it has been reported that a three year old girl has this disorder.

While her favourite delicacies are rocks and sticks, Natalie has been known to wolf down almost a whole brick, 'like it was a chocolate chip cookie'.

Her mother Colleen, 31, says every day is a constant battle of wills as she tries to stop her daughter eating something that could kill her.

Colleen said: 'She doesn't try to eat glass so much since it hurt her, but she will try and eat rocks and sticks she finds in the garden.

'I have had to call this poison helpline so many times that it's on my speed dial. You name it Natty's tried to eat it.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2041931/Toddler-addicted-eating-munches-LIGHTBULB.html#ixzz1Z6evUB59

Living "in the sticks"

Two ever-so slightly contrasting stories:

LONDON

I'm at the Friendly Society: a slinky, trendy Soho basement gay bar. There's a hot boy.  He actually talks to me.  The conversation goes something like this:  "So whereabouts do you live?"./. "Spitalfields" ./. "Really? Me too - just off Middlesex Street"./. "Yeah, same here. I live on Strype Street"./. "No?! So do I.  Brody House"./. "What number?"./. "Number 306"./. "Hi, I'm apartment 307..."

We'd been next door neighbours for 18 months.  I hadn't even SEEN him.  Not in the hallway, not on the stairs, not at the mailbox downstairs.  I wasn't convinced anyone was living in the apartment, actually.

[Editor's Note: Peter would *so* have noticed aforementioned hot gay boy neighbour.  This no doubt goes without saying for anyone who knows him.]

THE STICKS

I'm at a Christmas party in my new home county.  I haven't actually moved into my cottage yet: it's being refurbished.  A Tory wearing a flashing Christmas Tree brooch approaches me.  I think, gulp, I wonder if they hunt Socialists up here with dogs?

The conversation goes something like this: "Hello I'm Peter, I've just moved here"./. "Yes, I know.  You live opposite us"./. "Oh okay"./. "I gather you're doing a lovely job on your cottage"./. [Pause and think: that's interesting as precisely NOBODY has been inside my cottage] ./. "Really?  Erm, who told you that?"./. "Michael" ./. "Michael?" ./. "Yes, the carpenter who fitted the new locks to your front door."

Cue mild panic attack and consideration of how long it will take to sell up, get my ass back out of here, and to somewhere in Zone 1, where I could die in my apartment and peacefully lie undiscovered until around 2078.

Wind forward around 8 years

It was my dog Oscar's birthday on 23 September.  He was 9.  That date also happens to be the anniversary of my completing on my cottage, a year later in 2003.  The mutt's first two months with me had been spent at best friend @dominic_uk's house.  In fact, ALL of this is Dominic's fault.  In his ever so random way he had seen his now home for sale in the Sunday Times property section.  He didn't even look at another property anywhere else in the country, let alone here.  He bought it and moved up from Central London.

Because our business was run together, so did I.  I'd seen a little run down cottage with 6 foot high nettles in its garden in the neighbouring "town" and thought let's give this country thing a go.  Neither of us had the slightest connexion to the place: it was completely random.  On 23 September 2003 I obtained the keys to my cottage.  Michael the Carpenter later fitted the new locks some time later, as we've already established.

Chocolate Box? Much!

I put the word "town" in inverted commas because anyone else would call a village.  It's an absurdly pretty little place with a Norman castle, beautiful English Gothic church, thatched cottages, little local shops, and a bizarre 19C town hall.  However it is technically a town and used to return two MPs.  A nearby handsome Georgian house was (I'm told) used in one of the Miss Marple movies *and* had 5 suffragette sister inhabitants who would travel down to London and cause all sorts of mischief.  Fabulous.

And I've been here ever since.  I've been to 63 countries and have lived for varying lengths of time in 11.  This is the longest time I've spent anywhere.

The Former Guild Hall

What's it like?

Well it's surprisingly wonderful.  First my cottage: it's thatched, tiny, but is the snuggest home I've ever lived in.  It's listed as being 18th century - however clearly the council don't know their arses from their elbows. The builders found the chimney is all Tudor brick and they discovered some kind of wooden thing up in the roof (please note my precise architectural terminology).  Smoke was let out through this when the place was still a one storey structure.  My  hippy historic builders told me brick chimneys made it to this area in the late 1400s.  Until then a fire on the dirt floor would have been the main source of light, heat and for cooking.  It's almost Monty-Python-Esque.  Their guess is therefore the place is older than 1450.

That's amazing!  1450!! This place was probably at least 130 years old when the naughty Spaniards tried to invade.  180 years old when the Pilgrim Fathers set off to open the first Starbucks.  Over 300 years old when Captain Cook set foot at Botany Bay.  Almost 450 years old when Bertha Benz borrowed her husband's new invention (the car) to drive to a Schnell Imbiss in Pforzheim.  It's seen some history that's for sure.  And poverty of course.  Real poverty of a type we cannot imagine: hungry mouths, infants dying, possibly plague, famine.  It's just a little worker's cottage.  At night I often try to imagine all the people who have lived here: their fears, their joy, their toils, their hardship, the changes as events in both history and their personal lives unfolded.

The cow-poo and stick walls of the cottage are not thick, but they are incredibly dense.  The roof is warm.  By putting in secondary double-glazing the place has become really snug and so cheap to heat.  The BBC ran a story on this type of construction and the Prince's Foundation, ever champions of learning from traditional building methods, commented on what I have noticed: "The smartest way to save energy may be to live in a Tudor house and insulate the attic and repair the windows."

But what about the Locals?!

Well, they're for the most part absolutely lovely.  I was really worried about curtain twitching and what on earth they would make of a homosexual, Labour voting, half-German, Europhile, vegetarian in their midst.  The Tory with the flashing Christmas tree broach wasn't being nosy: it's just inevitable that people take an interest in a small place.  She was being friendly, which took me some time to grasp properly.  People look out for each other: that's quite remarkable and not something I was used to.  I've been invited to all sorts of events, dinners etc. Warm, welcoming, not in the slightest snooty, and not at all judgemental is how I'd describe it.

I love putting my "vote Labour" signs up in my window.  A former high profile Tory MP (who live 2 villages along) is a frequent visitor to the house opposite, along with various other Tories.  The owners are both Tory councillors and the husband (whom I occasionally love getting pissed on whisky with) was the chairman of the County Council.  I'm therefore *perfectly* placed to wind this lot up.  They're amazingly tolerant of me in the circumstances and said "We KNOW you just put those dreadful signs in your windows to tease us."  Hehe.

Preaching to the Unreachables

Of course occasionally you get the odd surprise of course: I was told by a former town councillor that London "has no British people left in it: well not whites anyway."  Erm, okay, let's look at that statement... *draws breath*.   A masseur in Norwich asked me what London "was like".  It's £6 if you buy a cheap ticket and two hours away by train, for heaven's sake.  This was a gay 32 year old man who had never been to the capital.  His reason was "I just never got round to it."  I was also told by two sweet old woman they would have voted for me in the election, but they just couldn't bring themselves to tick the box marked Labour.  They looked like they were talking about an unpleasant mess a dog had made on the pavement.

Then there's the odd surprise, such as meeting a lovely old woman in the local café (best café *EVER* btw).   Her heavy Central European accent immediately perked up my interest.  Classy, gorgeous, with the most wonderful accent when she spoke German.  She is the second Vienna Jew in her 80s I now know.  As a young girl Therese remembered the Anschluss vividly, and came across to England in 1939 with her parents.  She joined the Labour Party in 1948, lived in Islington before moving up here, and her home is full of wonderful modern art.  When two fish are similarly out of water, they make friends :)

CRIME and Other Things


I remember loving taking the piss out of the Local PC's crime report in the town magazine.  The first one said "There were 4 crimes to report in the last month.  The two most serious are as follows.  A man was seen trying to obtain a refund for a pair of shoes he had previously stolen in a shop on Broad Street.  A green plastic chair was also stolen from a garden in Victoria Hill."

THESE ARE THE MOST SERIOUS ONES?  What were the other two? One of those chairs costs about £1.99 at B&Q doesn't it?  As my friend Jamie joked, one day something really serious will happen.  CID will arrive and ask the local bobby "Have you had experience of a murder before?"  He'll answer "No, but we did once lose a green plastic chair back in 2003."

Caution: Crime Scene!

But think about this.  It is a rare, wonderful, incredible thing in this country that there can be anywhere that is so low crime (I'm actually only 90 miles from London).  Apparently it's one of the lowest rates in the entire country.  The weather is also great: we get 2 hours more sunshine per week than the UK average and it is substantially drier.  Winters are crap: I'd much rather be in the city when it's dark, cold and bleak here, but for the rest of the year, give me the country any day.

We also have proper local shops.  They're wonderful.  I was once charged 2p for a button in the fabric shop.  Does anything still cost 2p anywhere else?  Tesco is 4 miles away across the border in the neighbouring county.  People don't always carry their passports or have up to date visas, so it means that our townsfolk do actually use the two little local Coops, the greengrocer, the pharmacy, the baker, the hardware shop etc.   (Btw the hardware shop is sometimes a little like a scene from Cage aux Folles.  I am *so* not the only gay in the village).

Main Street: Rush Hour Gridlock

The last thing I love is the night sky.  This area is so sparsely populated and the nearest towns (Norwich and Ipswich) are each 20 miles away, which means light pollution is minimal.  I never fail to marvel at the star filled skies on my late night walk with the dog.

Twitter

The icing on the cake is Twitter.  It has literally transformed my enjoyment of living here.  I do huge amounts of travel at various times in the year because of my part-time "fun" job taking American kids on educational tours around Europe.  Without that it would drive me a bit mad if I were just stuck here.  London is also very possible for an evening out: I'm down in town some weeks twice a week.  I really need that, just for the life and variety.

But Twitter... It has simply stopped me from being lonely and feeling isolated all the rest of the times I am actually up here.  I can connect with "my type of people", have social interaction and intellectual stimulation.  I've also found Twitter friends much more likely to respond to a tweet "I'm in London: anyone about for a drink?" than many 'real life' friends would be.  I can therefore have fresh air, night skies AND access to my buddies from my iPhone when here.

I'm sure some studies are required into the emotional benefit of social networks like Twitter - for me being "out in the sticks" it is immense.

A Closing Quote

My cosmopolitan, Hampstead residing, gay, Sydney, Jewish, musician friend Jeremy looked at me when I told him I had put an offer in on a cottage here.  He simply said in his splendidly withering tone "Peter. You move there to die."

I ROFLd of course... and I now have the quiet satisfaction of knowing that he has bought a little weekend cottage a few miles away.  Oh the delicious irony.

The sticks: there's actually quite a lot to be said for them :)

Lava

Almost completely airborne in Heiðmörk

Our trip out to Heiðmörk and Búrfellsgjá yesterday was very hressandi in the early autumn winds and steel-colored skies. Supplied with bananas and Kókómjólk, Óðinn and I set off for the volcanic crater along a path through the 8,000 year-old lava field just east of Reykjavik. We didn't make it all the way to our end destination but had a super fun time lifting and climbing lava rocks and picking the few remaining blueberries along the path.

We stopped to eat at an overhang that was used for hundreds of years as a shelter, and which had been partially walled up long, long ago with flat stacked lava rocks sealed together over time with centuries-old moss. Banana done, I became obsessed with photographing macro shots of the lava walls in all their minute detail and spent the next twenty minutes or so noticing more and more intricacy in them, and less and less what my son was up to. When I finally gave up on trying to shoot millimeter-sized drops of water just as they were falling, I realized that Óðinn had been rearranging the ancient walls of the shelter to make a separate kitchen area for our new cave home. I stopped him just in time, before any major damage to moss and old lava walls was done. We laughed about it, and made all necessary repairs. It nearly became a true historical landmark fail!

All in all, another amazing outdoors adventure in Iceland : )

Macro-berry

Evening

Night begins to descend in earnest upon the northern latitudes after one more season of bright summer nights. We've recently had some amazing displays of aurora borealis here in Reykjavik due to recent intense sunspot activity and earthbound solar flare coronal mass ejections. It's also been just crispy enough late evenings to help out: it's usually agreed upon that the best auroras happen in colder weather.

We've actually had to (been able to!) delay digging our mittens and hats out of the backs of drawers, though, because of an unusually mild start to September, windless and with bright blue and sunny skies. I have a strange sense that our seasons have shifted somehow since this year's winter was a long, drawn-out and tired affair, spring barely noticeable at all and summer all too often grey and windy. And maybe they have: there are enough unusual natural events, weather and otherwise, happening across the globe these days to buy into the idea that our once-reliable seasonal, temporal and atmospheric indicators are not at all what they used to be. Things are changing, for sure. But until worlds fall apart we'll keep enjoying lovely autumn evening strolls through the streets of our pretty little city.

Have you tried Dynamic Viewing yet? Five new views in all. Use the blue tab at the top of the view page to check them all out : )

Christians

This morning I attracted a new follower whose bio said "I am a follower of the Lord Jesus."  This actually mildly freaked me out and I made a joke of it by tweeting something like "What did I say?!"

However it has got me thinking.  I'm as guilty as the rest of us for something I've noticed a lot on Twitter, from plenty of left wingers, gay people, liberals and the like: the mocking of religion and its followers.  It's not unusual for this to overspill into quite militant and aggressive atheism.  It's worth a bit of reflection I feel.

The first thing to say is I am not in the slightest religious.  I was never brought up with it and had the usual British aversion therapy of religious school assemblies (surely these masterpieces of boredom are *designed* by anti-religionists?).  Although I have quite a strong set of personal moral beliefs, I am agnostic/ vaguely spiritual at very best.  I think that's reasonably typical in this country.

Aversion Therapy? Religious Assemblies at Schools

What I'm noticing, though, is a level of intolerance, mockery and sometimes outright hostility towards anyone who has a faith and is prepared to announce it.  I have seen an intelligent, thinking liberal whom I very much admire put the word God in inverted commas on Twitter.  Why does he feel the need to do that?  We all recognise what is meant by God and have our own views on whether such a thing exists or not.

I saw another Twitter buddy putting out there today in a series of tweets the proposition that Christ was probably gay.  When I asked about it, he said that "ridicule is sometimes the best way to challenge intolerance and bigotry."

Another wonderful friend (who teaches classes on prejudice in the States) said she would borrow parts from a really good blog I referred her to but (in my opinion) somewhat pointedly added that she would "miss out the religious bits".

I've also no doubt many gay people used the word "Christian" as a by-word for homophobic, bigoted and plain nasty.  Describe someone as "Christian" with the right tone and you hardly need say anything more.  I'm not proud to say I've done it myself.

Prejudice Cuts Both Ways

My personal definition of prejudice is that it is lumping people together in groups and prejudging them on that basis.  It's not rocket science to suggest that this cuts both ways.  The type of stereotyping and ascribing collective views to some 2.2 billion people is the type of thing my open-minded liberal lefty friends would scream to high heaven about if it were done of all gay people or of all Muslims.

Who actually says that all Christians are intolerant and bigoted and therefore it's okay to goad them (or that it would actually make them less intolerant or bigoted if you did)?  Who says that because a message is framed in a religious way makes it any less valuable or applicable?  Who says that "God" should be put in inverted commas to make the point that the writer is a non-believer?

Twitter to the Rescue!

One of the things I love about Twitter is the contact I have with people who wouldn't ordinarily be in my life.  Talking to them constantly challenges me and at least makes me realise when I'm falling into this type of trap.  I follow an Anglican bishop (the kindest, most tolerant man imaginable) and two Anglican priests.  I never go to Church and therefore these contacts are invaluable in breaking down my own tendency to prejudge.  One of the priests holds personal and political views that are at 180 degrees to many of my own, but he has always been polite, kind and respectful in his interactions with me.  The other priest is simply a honey and one of the sweetest, most thoughtful women imaginable.  She also happens to be an open-minded liberal type, demonstrating again the fallacy of assuming anything solely because of a person's faith.

I've also found out over time that many of the people I interact with on Twitter have some form of faith, often to my surprise.  Only this Sunday one mentioned in passing that he was off to Church.  I'd never heard anything to suggest any religious belief from him.  These people don't appear to hate me or prejudge me because I'm gay and agnostic - actually they're quite lovely and friendly to me - so why should I dislike or prejudge them for their faith?

God Botherers

"WELL" you might say - it would all be fine if these god-botherers kept their views to themselves.  Yes... except they generally do.  Has any one of the people I mentioned above ever tried to teach me about the word of Jesus?  No.  Their religious beliefs might angle their views on something like abortion, but then there are people of no faith who hold all sorts of different opinions on this too and Christian teaching is far from universal on such matters.

Try also to think back to the last time you actually had a Christian try to evangelise or "convert" you and whether this is a regular occurrence in your life.  In all my 40 years *puts on flat cap and slippers* it has been limited to a couple of knocks on the door by Jehovah's Witnesses (always dealt with by a polite "no thanks" and mutual smiles).  Oh and then there was the REALLY CUTE GUY at the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, who I mistakenly thought was trying to pick me up when I was 18 (darn).

Given I live in a Christian country, collectively they seem to be pretty rubbish at going out at spreading the word - or perhaps this is just another negative stereotype we have about them?

Note the misuse of the apostrophe! :o

Yes, I've seen some Christians picketing events like Gay Pride.  I'm well aware of the views of the religious right in the USA and I've little doubt a bad religious upbringing has the capacity to entirely screw up kids.  I know in great detail the failings of the Church through history from the institutionalised teaching of anti-Semitism, through the Crusades, the Inquisition and on to the appalling way the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in particular has dealt with the issue of abuse by priests.

But does all this give me the justification today to prejudge, pillory and dislike each and every individual Christian I come into contact with or to mock their faith?  I really don't think it does.  Far from everyone who is a Christian ascribes to a fundamentalist interpretation of their faith - and even those who do can only be judged on their own actions and the impact they have on others.  Far from every priest is a kiddie fiddler.  Not every kid who was badly screwed up by his/her parents had a religious upbringing.  There aren't *that* many people around who still remember 1492 personally... etc etc.

In any case what are we proposing?  Guys, we share this planet with a lot of people who don't agree with us.  Is angry intolerance and hatred the way to make it a better place?  Like it or not, 2.2 billion is a lot of people.  Just as the homophobic right wishing that gays disappear will not make them vanish, so collectively hating or jeering Christians is, in my opinion, not going to have any effect other than to make you an unhappy person.  "Live and let live" is however a philosophy that can have a hugely positive effect on us all.

Fairy Tales?

When I hear the stories of the Bible, I really do think "fairy tales."  That is my personal subjective view.  I know there are many highly intelligent people who would disagree, however, and whilst I cannot personally see how they could rationally believe these stories, there's no doubt I wish to respect their freedom of belief.

I'd hope that few reading this blog would disagree that freedom of belief should be allowed... but I think it's important to note that "respecting" in this context cannot include mocking or offending - once again something I have done that I'm not proud of.  It has to mean allowing people to worship as they think fit, to accord them dignity in doing so, and the right to express their beliefs without intolerance and judgementalism.

Christians: great line in art & buildings btw

I do also sometimes envy people of religion and what it appears to offer them.  Friends of ours lost their 12 year old son when a car hit his bike outside their home.  Their Catholic faith helped them through that enormous period of trauma.  I was only 17 at the time but remember thinking "I don't care if this is fairy tales, if it's giving them help and comfort, that's an amazing thing".  Believing is not something I can personally do; but seeing its potential for good: that is not hard to do.

Moving on from the stories, the core Christian faith messages of tolerance, love, acceptance, forgiveness and kindness of spirit are ones which I wholeheartedly agree with.  I am increasingly seeing the need for non-believers (including myself) to exercise them towards Christians.

There *is* definitely a weight of history that stops us from acknowledging these characteristics when they are applied by ordinary people of little, some or much faith - but that is no excuse.  As I said, surely prejudice works from all angles, not just the liberal causes we believe deserve to be protected from it?