News from Hemel, Re:Act North Tour

Re:Act in Hemel Hempstead, Richard Townend

It’s Tuesday. Re:Act begins for most today, but for the North tour, we’ve already started! We were clearly the guinea pigs of this whole project as we delivered our first family fun day and church outdoors in Hemel Hempstead. Not the most Northerly town, I admit, but apparently anything above Watford is up north. For me, as a passionate Yorkshire man, anything south of Sheffield is quite clearly in the south.

The day went spectacularly well. The set up was quick and efficient, the local team and churches were an excellent support and we worked together well, and when I asked for questions at the end of the briefing, no-one had any! This can’t be right, I thought. Things are supposed to go wrong. Things aren’t meant to be this smooth on Re:Act, especially on the first day of a tour when the team literally was thrown together hours earlier.

To their credit, the young people have been awesome. The training residential in Harpenden was intense, but taught them everything they needed to know. Jonathan Lake quickly took the lead on erecting the marquee, whilst the Road Team, led by John Smith and Jonno Ratcliffe had no problems.

The Health and Safety check gave us an issue and we had to deflate a bouncy as it had a child sized hole in it! And by mid afternoon, King Bouncealot had come on to the park to replace it.

By 2pm, hundreds of people were on site queing for bouncies, hair braiding, face painting.

We were ready – answered prayer? You better believe it!

I would tell you how the day went but am gonna have to save that till later, as our next stop is Northallerton, and I’m late for the bus! I’ll keep you posted…