You may turn over your papers
Showing posts with label space. Show all posts
Showing posts with label space. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 June 2014
Caption contest - It's Gorn West!
so here we are again with another caption contest and this time it's 'gorn West' to give you a chance to show off your wit, perspicacity and general all-round cleverness:
You may turn over your papers
You may turn over your papers
Friday, 30 May 2014
The Vicar's a Time Lord! - A cautionary tale
A long time ago, when the world was young, there was a man who could control time.
When the situation was such that more time was needed to be available for him to get things done then he merely slowed time down such everything that needed to be accomplished was carried out in the same time slot that was ordinarily available to the mere mortals around him - except there was more of it for him!
Whilst the general populace thought that there was but one day left before an event, the time lord, thanks to his time-shifting abilities managed to make it such that he could get three days work in - and so all rejoiced as the event ran like clockwork (and on time too!) with no one any the wiser (although the people were amazed at the work rate of the man in question).
As the man's life progressed he came to faith and later became a Vicar, a role where the special skills and abilities he possessed really came to the fore. Fetes, services and festivals were always delivered without a hitch and without the slightest blip for, when anything that might have previously been a problem appeared on the horizon, the Vicar would merely bend time to make sure enough was available to make sure everything necessary was done to make whatever it was happen.
Our time lord Vicar became aware of a strange phenomenon which at first he supposed was the result of all of his twisting and stretching of time. It was a most troubling and extremely bizarre phenomenon because it seemed that wherever he was time ran like clockwork and all the people worked normally. The weird bit was that the moment he left, so to (it seemed to him) did time itself! It's true, as soon as he was somewhere else, in the place he'd left, time stopped until he returned!
The moment he appeared things started getting done but as soon as he departed everything stopped again! Busy groups of people were, immediately he left, rendered still, silent and completely inactive and yet, should he walk back in to their presence, they start moving and acting as if they'd never stopped. Bizarrely, none of them seemed to have any realisation that they'd been in what seemed to be suspended animation the minute the Vicar had left!
'It must be a folding of the time-space continuum,' he thought to himself as he returned from his two-week's holiday to find nothing had been done while he was away and it seemed to him that everyone was exactly where he'd left them.
He repeated the exercise time and time again and yet, without fail, found that the same thing happened (or rather didn't) to the extent that he was ready to promote his empirical hypothesis, on the basis of his experiment and measured research, to the state whereby it was to become known as 'Vicar's law'.
Now I'm sure that there are many out there who are totally aware that the time-space continuum had not been corrupted or distorted by the Vicar's stretching of time at all and this is the reason that 'Vicar's Law' never made it into print or onto the stages whereby accolades and plaudits were heaped upon him. No journals have ever carried the research because, as I'm sure you will already know is this:
What our hero had observed was no figment of his imagination but was a reality many Clergy live with!
For the reality is this:
Time really continued as normal when he was absent.
The terrible reality, which is just a little too terrible to contemplate, is this:
The people had been doing nothing for almost all of the time but he was just too busy (or perhaps too polite) to mention, or even notice!
It was only when he was absent that the fact that the others were doing nothing became obvious!
(glad that's not the case where I am)
When the situation was such that more time was needed to be available for him to get things done then he merely slowed time down such everything that needed to be accomplished was carried out in the same time slot that was ordinarily available to the mere mortals around him - except there was more of it for him!
Whilst the general populace thought that there was but one day left before an event, the time lord, thanks to his time-shifting abilities managed to make it such that he could get three days work in - and so all rejoiced as the event ran like clockwork (and on time too!) with no one any the wiser (although the people were amazed at the work rate of the man in question).
As the man's life progressed he came to faith and later became a Vicar, a role where the special skills and abilities he possessed really came to the fore. Fetes, services and festivals were always delivered without a hitch and without the slightest blip for, when anything that might have previously been a problem appeared on the horizon, the Vicar would merely bend time to make sure enough was available to make sure everything necessary was done to make whatever it was happen.
Our time lord Vicar became aware of a strange phenomenon which at first he supposed was the result of all of his twisting and stretching of time. It was a most troubling and extremely bizarre phenomenon because it seemed that wherever he was time ran like clockwork and all the people worked normally. The weird bit was that the moment he left, so to (it seemed to him) did time itself! It's true, as soon as he was somewhere else, in the place he'd left, time stopped until he returned!
The moment he appeared things started getting done but as soon as he departed everything stopped again! Busy groups of people were, immediately he left, rendered still, silent and completely inactive and yet, should he walk back in to their presence, they start moving and acting as if they'd never stopped. Bizarrely, none of them seemed to have any realisation that they'd been in what seemed to be suspended animation the minute the Vicar had left!
'It must be a folding of the time-space continuum,' he thought to himself as he returned from his two-week's holiday to find nothing had been done while he was away and it seemed to him that everyone was exactly where he'd left them.
He repeated the exercise time and time again and yet, without fail, found that the same thing happened (or rather didn't) to the extent that he was ready to promote his empirical hypothesis, on the basis of his experiment and measured research, to the state whereby it was to become known as 'Vicar's law'.
Now I'm sure that there are many out there who are totally aware that the time-space continuum had not been corrupted or distorted by the Vicar's stretching of time at all and this is the reason that 'Vicar's Law' never made it into print or onto the stages whereby accolades and plaudits were heaped upon him. No journals have ever carried the research because, as I'm sure you will already know is this:
What our hero had observed was no figment of his imagination but was a reality many Clergy live with!
For the reality is this:
Time really continued as normal when he was absent.
The terrible reality, which is just a little too terrible to contemplate, is this:
The people had been doing nothing for almost all of the time but he was just too busy (or perhaps too polite) to mention, or even notice!
It was only when he was absent that the fact that the others were doing nothing became obvious!
(glad that's not the case where I am)
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
When growth means 're-order' - I
Despite the common elements that make up a church building, each and every one of these is unique and this is due to architecture, personal taste and clerical whim! Once church I know of has absolutely no sight lines from the side pews and so, once you're out of the main body of the congregation you're working with, at best, what the theatre proprietors would call 'restricted view' seats. They have considered rotating the church ninety degrees so that they face north/south (or vv) and taking out a few pillars and using a nice girder having but two thin metal uprights instead. Fortunately there are no 'Victorian' or other 'we don't go to church but we demand the right to call it ours' societies involved!
Mind you, where there are I am strongly coming to the opinion that we should let them have the care, maintenance and upkeep of the blinking building and we'll take the Church somewhere more fitting our needs. So be warned - if you want to have a say then you need to be ready to pay (and keep on paying) for the bricks you so love to issues dictums over!!!
Another place I visit has had the congregation facing East, the traditional direction, and West at different times in its recent past. One way saw the people and the sanctuary in the same place and the other took the table and the 'stuff' behind a wooden panelled screen. Don't have problem with this and it's a good creative was of adapting the building and yet maintaining the 'historic' bits. Seems like a win/win to me.
Yet another has removed its pews so that they can have more 'adaptable' space for creative worship and whilst the theory was good the practice has been less than that which was hoped for. The reason for this is that whilst the church does indeed have a lovely carpeted and flexible space, this reduces drastically in size as the chairs are taken and stacked. This something that often gets overlooked in that pews are 'density seating' and require no storage but once you have moveable seating you also need space to store it or you find your newly gained space vanishes quite rapidly (and there's always those helpful sorts who will stack them so high that they become a health and safety risk instead!).
So I guess a word to the wise - you will have a nice open space if you take out the pews but this will vanish once you decide to let the congregation sit and the space taken by chairs is often more than the pews when configured for BOPS (bums on pews) and the open space decreases quite markedly unless you have another space to store the chairs. Not only that but the sight of stacked chairs often makes what was once a fairly controlled, albeit traditional, space something of a nightmare unless managed well. And there's the added joy of finding yourself given the job of stacking and putting out the chairs (yippee - you're the caretaker!).
Just some off the top of the head thinking.
Pax
Mind you, where there are I am strongly coming to the opinion that we should let them have the care, maintenance and upkeep of the blinking building and we'll take the Church somewhere more fitting our needs. So be warned - if you want to have a say then you need to be ready to pay (and keep on paying) for the bricks you so love to issues dictums over!!!
Another place I visit has had the congregation facing East, the traditional direction, and West at different times in its recent past. One way saw the people and the sanctuary in the same place and the other took the table and the 'stuff' behind a wooden panelled screen. Don't have problem with this and it's a good creative was of adapting the building and yet maintaining the 'historic' bits. Seems like a win/win to me.
Yet another has removed its pews so that they can have more 'adaptable' space for creative worship and whilst the theory was good the practice has been less than that which was hoped for. The reason for this is that whilst the church does indeed have a lovely carpeted and flexible space, this reduces drastically in size as the chairs are taken and stacked. This something that often gets overlooked in that pews are 'density seating' and require no storage but once you have moveable seating you also need space to store it or you find your newly gained space vanishes quite rapidly (and there's always those helpful sorts who will stack them so high that they become a health and safety risk instead!).
So I guess a word to the wise - you will have a nice open space if you take out the pews but this will vanish once you decide to let the congregation sit and the space taken by chairs is often more than the pews when configured for BOPS (bums on pews) and the open space decreases quite markedly unless you have another space to store the chairs. Not only that but the sight of stacked chairs often makes what was once a fairly controlled, albeit traditional, space something of a nightmare unless managed well. And there's the added joy of finding yourself given the job of stacking and putting out the chairs (yippee - you're the caretaker!).
Just some off the top of the head thinking.
Pax
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)