Gaunt’s House

I spent two years in an online interfaith seminary based in London. Because of Covid, we did not meet in person which was good for me, because I live in California. For graduation however, I decided to go to the last retreat and ceremony in person. Incidentally, three weeks before my fly date, my landlord sent me a text giving me 30 day’s notice to quit, which meant I had to very quickly pack up my whole life and put everything in storage while packing for the trip and tying up all the loose ends. It was quite stressful. But the silver lining was that I had no ties, and could go wherever I wanted without worrying about “home.” So off I went. My classmate Melanie picked me up from Heathrow airport and took me around London for two days, which was exhausting but also thrilling. Then we drove down to a place called Sherborne in Dorset, which was such a sweet little town I wanted to stay there! We stayed there for a couple of days and then went to the retreat venue called Gaunt’s House in Dorchester. 

Why our seminary staff chose this place is beyond me. They talked it up and said how amazing it was but what I saw was a run down old house with stained rugs, gaps in the tile, half the showers didn’t have hot water, and the quality of the rooms were wildly different. Half the rooms in the main house were what the English call “posh,” large rooms, well decorated with en-suite bathrooms. The other half (including the one I was in) looked like a boarding school room, sparse with shared bathroom and shower facilities. The rest of the poor souls in our class got sent to the stables, which also had wildly varying qualities of accommodation. One lady said her room was so moldy she couldn’t sleep in it. I also killed a centipede in my neighbor’s room and dealt with a plethora of flies, a bee, and spiders in my own. Ick! If I were booking accommodations for a class of 35, I would make sure all the rooms were of equal or at least similar status. 

Then we get to the food. It was supposed to be a vegetarian place, which I have no problem with. I have had phenomenal vegetarian and vegan food, even though I am neither myself. What we had instead was poorly cooked food, and not enough of most things. I was hungry quite often the first few days until I figured out how to find snacks and use the tea service to get me through to the next meal. There were a couple of good meals, for example, one night we had ratatouille with baked potatoes and cheese for the non vegans. That was actually really good! One night we were served rice which had been massively over cooked and was mostly a mush with some loose rice around the edges and something unidentifiable which was basically a broth with some chickpeas and tomatoes floating around. And naan. That was way too many carbs for me but I had no other options. Which led me to an epiphany. The next time I am asked about dietary restrictions, I am going to say that while I don’t mind vegetarian/vegan options, I personally need protein. I would have been happy with steamed veggies or lentils, it didn’t have to be animal protein. 

Anyway, after all that, one of the ladies came into session and warned people that she had found several ticks on her body(!) During the next day or so, a few more people found ticks as well. That for me was the absolute last straw. Ticks can be extremely dangerous, and can carry Lyme disease, which can cause lifelong disability. I fully understand that it’s not possible to eradicate them, but the grounds should have been kept better and we should have been warned to stay out of the grasses. Completely unacceptable. As far as I can tell, I escaped tick-free (fingers crossed) but then again, I mostly stayed in the house. 

After all that madness, we actually did have a beautiful and inspiring ordination service and I have achieved my goal of becoming a Reverend!! It was just a bit of a rough road to get there. 

Water Lantern Festival 2022

 AKA several hours of hassle for five minutes of “ooh, pretty!” 

Back in 2020, I had asked my best friend Howard if we could go to a Water Lantern Festival for my upcoming birthday in May. He thought it was a great idea, because we enjoyed going to festivals, and bought tickets. As you may be guessing, we didn’t get to go because that March was the Covid lockdown and everything was cancelled. He held on to the tickets and two years later when they reopened the festival, we decided to go. 

Normally we would both show up early to a festival like this, get good parking, and spend as much time as we wanted there, hanging out and telling stories. However, unfortunately I had taken a dog sitting job and could only leave the dogs alone for a few hours. So we agreed on a time that would be late enough so the dogs wouldn’t be left alone too long, but that we could still do all the activities. As I was on my way, he called me. He had gotten there early, of course, and scouted everything. He had bad news. The place was packed and there were cars lined up down the street trying to get in. I said, "ok, you go see what's going on inside and have some fun and I’ll let you know when I get in." So I called my sister and we had a nice conversation to help me pass the time waiting to get in. Once I got past the entrance booth, Howard called me. I put my sister on hold and answered. “I’ve spotted you,” he said. I asked “where are you?’ He said “behind you and to the right.” I asked “are you walking?” He said no, he was in his truck with his binoculars! He sat there and watched all the cars until he found me. I told him I needed to wrap up my call with my sister and then I would park. He said ok. I went back to my sister and told her what happened. She laughed and said “he’s a good guy,” and I agreed. She told me to have fun, and I parked. Not ten seconds later, Howard was walking up to my car. 

I gathered my things and off we went. I told him first order of business I need a bathroom. If you have read any other stories on this blog, you know that periods can happen at most inconvenient times. This was one of those times. So I went to the bathroom and got that all taken care of, then we went in search of the bags and lantern kits. We got to the tent and Howard told me to find him a color, since he is red/green colorblind. I looked at the bags and they were all green, pink and orange! I told him so, and we laughed, and I explained to the guy sitting behind the table that Howard is colorblind. He had never heard of it, so we spent a minute or two explaining it to him. Howard showed him the app on his phone that lets him find colors, and the guy was fascinated. So I got him a green bag and picked out a teal colored mandala blanket, which also came with our ticket. 

We then went in search of food trucks, one of our favorite things! Howard had seen one on the advertisement called Wonton Tacos, so we had decided to try those. We found the truck and the line was shorter than the others. Howard said “do you think the line is short because the food is bad, or people just don’t know what a wonton taco is?” I said “either way, it’ll be an experience!” While we were waiting for tacos I realized that each of us should have gotten a bag, and I hadn't picked up mine. Whoops! So I went back and got a bag. They were out of any of the good colors, so I got an orange one. That's ok, I got the blanket. We got our tacos and tried to help a lady who had too much stuff and was having a hard time holding on to it. I don’t know how much help we were though! Having gotten our food, we headed off to find a spot far away from the crowds. I was starting to get a whopping headache, so I needed to hydrate, get some food, and take my night meds. We were standing in line and I told Howard this and he joked “those meds aren’t going to make you do anything crazy, like last time? I didn’t bring a shovel!” I shrugged and said “no promises.” We often have dark humor, and I wonder what the lady in front of us in line was thinking! 

Anyway, we managed to find a picnic table, which was a huge score because the park was absolutely packed. We ate our tacos, I drank my tea and got my meds down, and we got to work on our lanterns. He had brought all his runes with him and knew exactly what he wanted. I had been so stressed all week that I hadn’t even had a chance to think about it. But I found a few designs online and made up a few more, and was pretty happy with my lantern. We made a couple of TikTok videos and it was getting dark, so we went down to launch the lanterns. That part was actually pretty stunning, it was dark and there were all these lanterns floating on the water and other people finishing theirs up and bringing them down. We launched ours together, and watched them float away to join the others. We mentioned that it was like us and our friendship, going forward and having other adventures. 

That lasted all of five minutes, and then it was time to turn our attention to how the heck we were going to get out of there. There was already a line of cars all the way back to where I had parked, which was almost all the way back. We told each other goodbye and good luck and I got in my car and got in line. I got another friend on the phone to pass the time and it was a good twenty minutes before I even moved. When we finally did move, we went all around the park road, then saw that they were diverting the food trucks on to the actual road, and diverting us to one of the trails that ran around the park! So that was an interesting drive. So what should have been a twenty minute drive each way turned into at least an hour! Later I learned that Howard had found a back road out and avoided the line altogether. No surprise there, he’s good at that sort of thing. 

All in all we had a nice evening, albeit a little stressful, and got our food truck food, TikTok video and Instagram pictures. Was it worth it? It would have been better if I wasn’t double booked with the dogs and could have come earlier, but we had a good time and some new stories to add to our lexicon. So it was worth it.