Rich having become increasingly flustrated with the lack of action in Humanist communities suggested that we should really be getting out there and doing good work and leading by example. As such, last Thursday (the 12th) we headed out to feed the homeless.
It was an interesting experience. We took soup and coffee which went down reasonably well although most of them weren’t overly interested in the soup, they just wanted the coffee. It’s also suprising how few of them there actually are on the streets.
Interestingly enough though there isn’t that much support in Leeds. There is one shelter, St. George’s Crypt but that is basically all there is. Maybe it’s just not that much of a problem but it was certainly nice to be able to provide those that were out with a hot drink.
I got woken up yesterday morning by Liz knocking on my door informing me the police were hear. Always a good way to start the day.
Turns out someone had been down the street doing over cars. They smashed my quarter light, realised my car was deadlocked so smashed the passenger side front window and got the stereo. Awesome.
Great time to find out that your car alarm doesn’t work. But Evans Halshaw assured me it has been through the full Network Q check thing, which shows how worthwhile that is (this is after they failed to notice my central locking didn’t work).
So yeah, turns out I’m £200 worse off than I thought I went to bed on Tuesday night. It seems somewhat futile to bother trying to save money or pay off overdrafts, I don’t seem to be getting anywhere.
Tuesday evening started off with the usual A-Soc committee meeting which brought up some interesting discussions, followed by the usual A-Soc meeting which this week was Michael’s talk which by all accounts was excellent.
Unfortunately I missed the talk as I was down at the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire attending their event on Ashley Montagu as a critic of Darwin which was also very interesting. Too many choices on Tuesday!
This was followed by hitting The Terrace for a few drinks at which we bashed out some great ideas (or as a titled the sheet at the time, ideas that seemed great when we were in the pub 😉 ) for Rationalist Week so hopefully some of them will actually be useful!
I had a meeting on Monday with Mike and Daryl from the University of Huddersfield to discuss the creation of an atheist society there. I think we bashed out a few good ideas and there is certainly a lot of potential, we just need to get a few more students on board and it should be ready to rock and roll.
More importantly though, this brings me one more step closer to Patrick Stewart 😀 .
Sunday saw another exciting night with Rich not being on the close and Craig not being at band we were able to meet up in The Mill beforehand and have a few drinks before heading off to the local Toby Carvery for a meal. There is just something so satisfying about saying “I’ll have every meat please” 😀 .
Friday saw our Perspective session on Paganism with a practicing witch coming into to talk to us. You have to respect the guy’s honestly, he opening said “it’s all made up” and was created about 30-40 years ago. However it is apparently a belief system that works for him and he has seen it working with his coven using the power of their mind to change reality. Fair enough I guess.
Zoltan provided the food this week and did a rather nice vegeterian dish. We also had meeting room 8 rather than meeting room 5 so we actually had enough space for once. All in all, a very nice session if I do say so myself.
Last week was No Vices Week which was a week (well, 5 days lol) in which we avoided takeaway and alcohol and donated the money we saved to Rationalist Week. There wasn’t a huge uptake but some of us actually managed most of it.
It almost killed me to be honest. Day after day I was like “aww, I can just get McDonald’s on the way home” and then remembering I couldn’t. I drove Norm to work on Tuesday morning thinking I could just go for breakfast to fill the gap before I started work and then realised I couldn’t so I headed for “non-takeaway” breakfast – which was closed! Needless to say, I was not amused.
The other worry of course was that with me and Lil not eating McDonald’s we would put on a lot of weight (we are of course living proof that McDonald’s keeps you thin). Luckily Lil came up with the answer in us just sugaring our bread and eating a loaf a day. Seems to have worked.
Having nothing officially scheduled to do on Wednesday night (I had no appointments, just the usual stuff to catch up on) I was looking forward to an easy night and set off driving home from work. I almost made it as well. I had literally just pulled up outside my house when I got a phone call from Lil telling me to come to the pub.
So I headed down to The Terrace where Lil was off her face alright along with Oli, Fat Harriet and Norm. Nicola and Matt later joined us too so it turned into an alright night until Lil ruined it by spilling beer everywhere (tut, tut, tut 😀 ).
Tuesday saw A-Soc roll around again and with no exec members there on the night, it was up to Sophie to lead us for the night. But of course she didn’t so I had to do it 😛 . The night involved a short introduction to Humanism given by myself followed by a formal debate on whether Humanism was a religion.
Michael argued it was and made some good points but was ultimately beaten by Tom who bravely swapped sides at the last minute after none of the speakers who were going to be arguing Humanism isn’t a religion showed up.
Monday saw a meetup organised on RichardDawkins.net in Leeds. Of course, the last thing Leeds actually needs is yet another splinter group for the whole free thinking movement but sometimes you just have to go with the flow.
The turnout was quite good, 15-20 people for just a pub meetup and the first time it had been done too. Myself and Rich basically just spent the entire night name dropping having recently attended the AHS press launch.
It also turns out that the Scarborough Hotel is quite a nice pub. You learn something new every day.
