Cystal Place: i can remember people passing out due to the extreme heat, they always always booked the hottest weekend of the year! Sweat would be pouring off us! And then some A$$ hole of a GB member or some such would give his specail talk and say " isn't it great that we've been blessed with such wonderfull weather brothers and sisters?!"... cue duetifull clapping(!)
Haysbridge: oh yes!!!!!!!!!!!! Where i was baptised no less. Haysbridge was where i experianced being the lonelyest i have ever been. All the while i was surrounded by my "loving brothers and sisters" who didn't have the time of day for a single parent family and all stuck together. I remember once mentioning this to an elder and he suggested i volunter for the cleaning dep!
I remember that the large corridors all around the main assembly room were always full of dubs on the flimest exhuse to get out. It has now been refurbished of course... Gone is the 80's dark pine and blood red scheme. Now they have light beach wood and light blue instead, complete with a arena style TV above the speakers head with a close up of the speaker filmed on it. SO theres now no exhuse at all for not paying attention there. They also have a marble floor in the corridors and enterance ways, which makes things really fun when it rains!!!!
interestingly enough, Haysbridge always had a massive problem with lack of parking. So many of the dubs refusing to spend a coach jorney in eachothers company!
If you didn't fill all the seats in your car you got a big ticking off at the gate as you pulled up. They particulay liked to pick on the said car if a lowly sister was driving. I know of tons of sisters in single parent familys or divided familys who struggled to get their kids to the assembly... only to get there and be told off by the self righteous brother at the gate!
The reason Haysbridge is not allowed to expand its parking is because for years when they first opened the brothers would drive along the little counrty roads to get there and beep their car horns at each other ( freindly christian encouragement don't ya know). This would start in the early hours and continue untill after 10am and then begin again when they all went home. This would happen every weekend pretty much as Haysbridge services curcits from all over the south of the UK. Needless to say it drove the local neighbours crazy! So much so that when the JW's appiled to extend the car park there was up roar in the local comunnity and it was stopped in its tracks.
