Silver hair, silver post.

Standlake is a village not too far west of Oxford. The fledgeling river Thames flows just south of it, and it has a very smart pub called The Bell just off its picturesque village green. About thirty minutes walk north from the pub is Standlake Ranch, where Christian Focus had their annual weekend away this year. It was a fairy merry event, with various meditations being run for those not interested in official games of three-in-a-row, monoploy, cheat, the very hungry caterpillar card game, long walks in the (almost) snow, or mucking around with their laptops. And one of the exec left with slightly less hair than he had arrived with.

Ste is our prayer sec. He's a shorter bloke, with something of a Guy Fawkes look going on with his facial hair, a slightly worried, harassed look never far from his features, and a mischievous grin that makes Lucifer look saintly. Not that he worships Satan. We wouldn't elect him as prayer sec if he did, obviously.

Ahem.

Ste had done some research and decided that, for Saturday's 'Agape' event, it would be good if Focus members baked the bread used in the sharing of the meal. He'd got his macbook out and found a recipe, cleared room on a table, bought some bread flour and a few other bits, and scrounged together volunteers in the form of myself and Catherine Knight.

“Right”, he said, then looked at me in a slightly confused manner. “What do we do now?”

“What does the recipe say?”

“1400 grammes of flour”.

“Cool. Where are the scales, or are we using some sort of measuring jug?”

“...We don't have any”.

“Okay then”.

Between the three of us, we managed to approximate the measurements into a large steel cooking pot, which Catherine and I proceeded to mix together. Then we pulled the dough into three pieces and floured the table so we could start kneading.

Oh good grief. I just realised that I failed to make a single baking-related pun while we were doing this. Am I losing may touch?

Anyway. The kneading has to be one of the best parts of making bread. You hammer away at the dough with your fists, pulling and stretching it, then pummelling it again until it has this wonderful smooth consistency. We managed to get it done pretty well, and we left the pot over a radiator to warm. An hour there, and we knocked it back and shaped it into two loaves before leaving it to rise again for an hour and a half.

Then Ste and I turned our attention to the oven.

Standlake Ranch has one of these fantastic professional catering stoves. Six gas rings the size of soup plates sit underneath cast iron stove tops, and the front of the oven is entirely taken up by two huge doors which open to reveal a massive oven (bigger than most of the cupboards in our kitchen in Coventry) with three solid shelves welded together from steel bar. And it's gas lit.

“I've never had a gas oven”, I mentioned to Ste, as we crouched in front of this dark, greasy cave. He nodded, and frowned thoughtfully. “How do we light it?”.

“I think it's fairly straightforward”, he said, and fetched a long match. We struck it, and I stuck my arm inside towards where we thought the gas came out. There was a slight hiss, a vague smell of gas, and after a moment the match went out.

“Hm”, I said, then (quoting generations of engineers before me) “That shouldn't have happened”.

I should have thought about it. I knew from researching something for Forensic Engineering that methane was only flammable at concentrations of between 10 and 15 percent. I should have rolled up my sleeve and tried again. However, what happened was that Ste took the match from me and said “Try again”.

We re-lit the match, and Ste leant over, one arm extended into the oven.

“Does the gas come out in the middle or at the si...”

Woomph.

When we'd picked ourselves up I looked over at Ste. He looked as dazed as I felt.

“Mate, are you okay?”

“Yeah... I think so”.

“Let me see your arm”, I said. The hairs on the top of his hand were shorter than they had been. We looked at each other, and Ste tried to straighten out his notoriously light hair, which was sticking out at some fairly bizarre angles. We grinned, and put the bread in the oven. It turned out wonderfully, not too salty, nice texture, good appearance.

It wasn't until Sunday that someone noticed Ste's slightly wispy hair had acquired a new look; the tips of the hairs on the right hand side had turned curly and bleached white, almost like someone had combed fluff into it.

It wasn't until we got back to the Chaplaincy that Ste realised that the reason 3/16s of an inch of each hair was a frizzy white instead of his usual brown was that the oven had singed it off.

I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I had lit the oven. I was wearing Brylcreme wax in my hair that day. It's slightly shorter than Ste's, but Brylcreme is pretty flammable.

Moral of the story; next time settle for Hovis.

Til next time, world.