Convention

The weekend has come around once again. They seem to come quicker every week! I'm not good with weekends, which is funny. Most people who work cant wait for the weekend - trust me to be different!

This weekend has an added bonus. It's the start of the Keswick convention, which for those of you who don't know is a gathering of Christians. It lasts for three weeks and the main convention building is just round the corner from my house.

Now I have nothing against Christians as such. But conventioners are a special type of Christian, unlike anything I have experienced elsewhere. they take over the town in the middle of the summer tourist season and are just not very nice. I realise I'm generalising, but ask anyone that lives here and you will get the same answer.

They spend no money in town, preferring to save their pennies for the collection plate (which is a very expensive collection plate by all accounts).
For example, a friend who works in a local cafe has many tales like the one where three conventioners sat down and ordered a pot of tea for one and three cups. With extra water... Or the ones who bought a small eccles cake to take out but asked for it to be cut into four bits....

Although amusing, this is not why the convention annoys me. Living close to it as I do, it's the arrogant intrusion into our lives that is irritating. The organisers come round with tickets for us locals to put in our cars to allow us to park in our own street!
Driving down the street towards my house, I am inevitably forced to follow convention pedestrians as they wander down the middle of the road towards their centre. A pip of the horn causes them not to move out of my way, but to turn and glare at me as if I have no right to be driving a car on a road.

And when the meetings finish, it's pointless trying to go anywhere in the car as the road becomes a footpath.

Then if on the odd occasion it's nice enough to sit outside in the garden, I get hymns and sermons blasted out at me...

I guess it's a bit like living in London during the Olympics! Only we get the convention every year. Never mind, I'm going to miss some of it this year as I will be in London for the Olympics.

Once the conventions over of course it's the school holidays, which are also a nightmare. Roll on September!