My NCS experience or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Jesus

*Record scratch, freeze frame*

Yep, that’s me. No, not that guy, that guy. You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation. To tell you that story, we’ve got to start from the beginning…

Back in 2016, my friend Hannah (Santa hat to the left of me) asked me if I’d like to come and do NCS, or ‘The Challenge’, with her. Now, I was somewhat hesitant to accept her kind offer, because I had friends who had done NCS before and told me terrible things. The people were weird (read: obsessed with minions from Despicable Me), their accommodation had mould, there was nothing to eat… the list goes on. But, I like Hannah. I value her opinion. I trust her. And, this wasn’t any regular NCS experience. It was Adrenaline, a leadership version of the programme. I’m not the most confident of people, my leadership skills could have used some tuning. Plus, it was held at a Catholic youth centre. So, you know, why not.

NCS is kind of sold to you and set up like a pyramid scheme. It happens in “waves”. The first wave was held at this youth centre and it basically involved lots of teambuilding activities and all that horribly awkward good stuff. Then there’s the second, where you come back and do essentially the same as before but with a more educational message. And then the third wave, where you’re meant to go out into the community and do some good. The third wave is irrelevant (sorry local community). All the good stuff happened in the first two waves where we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, or as some people like to call it, the countryside.

I should probably mention that at this point the only person I really know from the group going from my school is Hannah. Whereas Hannah, with her Catholic connections, knows everyone. And they all love to have long chats about that hilarious Father Peter from back on the ’14 pilgrimage to Lourdes. So I’m having a great time already. And then to top it all off, we get put in a room with this bunch of total spreppers from the year below me named Fran, Steph and Mary. We get to the room and Steph immediately announces that she has IBS and needs to use the toilet.

To bond with my new roommates, we ate our evening meal together. One of the unique things about NCS is the style of cuisine. I’m not the fussiest of eaters, but one food I absolutely can’t stand are baked potatoes. I can’t eat them. Potatoes are so bland and I’m sorry putting cheese or beans hardly classes the joint up. I’d rather just eat a bowl of cheese and beans. So that’s what I did. That dinner really set the tone for the rest of our stay – disappointing and flatulent.

We really bonded over that meal. Later that night when we were in our pyjamas and the lights were off, we had that weird deep chat girls always have before you go to bed. They were no longer spreppers in my eyes.

So the rest of the first wave we basically just did a lot of teambuilding activities and games. The second day was, admittedly, quite good. We split into teams and had to do a trek with mini challenges along the way, and the team with the most points at the end would win. The challenges were silly fun, like, having to make it all the way through the trek without popping a huge pink balloon, or creating the best mannequin challenge video (yes alright I know, they were popular back in 2016).

In the photo above, notice a couple of people are holding brown bags. Whenever we went out we carried our lunch in them, and, according to Mary, they “smelled of poultry” (?). Now I can’t comment on that but I can certainly comment on the contents. We were told we were going to have Subway. I was so excited, I bloody love Subway. I love bread and when it’s all toasted and the vegetables are warm. Love it I do.

But.

No.

I should have known…this marked the first of many disappointments for me and my friends…it was an NCS Subway. It was a baguette like one of the ones you buy in a pack and have to put in the oven yet it hadn’t been put in the oven so it was still soft and chewy, with your pick of: lettuce, tomatoes, ham, chicken, and/or cheese! No sauce. Do you know…how dry…that sandwich was. It does not warrant the title of a Subway – nay, it does not deserve the title of a Subway.

Anyway, we managed to get over this tragedy, and things drastically improved for us all when Tommy, our school chaplain, brought us McDonald’s one time. A truly blessed evening of reflection.

We did lots more outdoor challenges including walking, which Steph loudly complained gave her haemorrhoids; abseiling, where the nice man who helped me down told me I was the most anxious person he’d ever come across in all his years (who needs therapists these days when you get that kind of advice for free?); and a high wire rope course which just about finished me off. But we also had a lot of downtime, which allowed us to explore the wonderful building we were staying in. We were too cool to hang around in the common room, so instead we used to either sit in the kitchen or sit in one of the dorm rooms. But we became friends with a boy in my year called Janal, and because the centre was Catholic, we couldn’t have boys in our room.

So…we wanted privacy, but we couldn’t have him in our room. We knew that the place was big and not all of the dorms were being used. We did a little bit of creeping around and found an empty dorm and decided to chill in there. It was only a couple of doors down from the full dorms, we weren’t a world away. Things were good – we could shower in peace, play our music, eat our food, and most importantly, we could have Janal with us. Then this happened:

Someone heard the light party atmosphere from our little pad and decided to tell on us. We were, in the words of Candace Flynn, busted. I was near the bathroom when the ominous knock on the door came, so. I. Ran.

I grabbed Fran and pulled her in too. I couldn’t get anyone else, they were too far away. They were martyrs. I yanked the bathroom light off and we were submerged in darkness. My plan was that, we stay inside the bathroom until they’ve gone, and…to be honest, thinking it through now, I don’t really know what my strategy was? All of our stuff was still in the room. I think I just like the sense of adrenaline (*Alan Partridge nose touch*).

But then Fran…just….started…laughing. And it was funny. They opened the door on us and we were just standing there in this dark room laughing. The Catholics didn’t laugh.

Quite forgiving, Catholics. For them, it was almost like it had never happened. However, being the cool bunch of kids we were, sort of decided it was war. It was war on NCS. Somewhere along the way, we had given our collective group (me, Fran, Steph, Mary, and Janal), the name “Milky”. It started off as a sort of joke as we talked about forming a band that highlights our individual talents. At some point we got quite serious about it but it never really panned out. Anyway, Milky quickly became known as the moaners. We saw right through their fun and games and inclusivity. Screw you, being nice for the sake of being nice, we’re the only real people here.

The song that inspired it all…

One afternoon, after a really challenging and mentally exhausting day of high-wires that I had actually enjoyed, we were so happy to be returning to the house for a night of relaxation and chocolate provided by Fran. Imagine our dismay when, instead of driving us up to the front door, they dropped us in the field. Where there was a football pitch set up. Not just any football pitch. A bubble football pitch.

I was. So. Done. So we (Milky) decided to protest and sat out of the game. Whilst doing our usual complaining, we noticed that some of the others who were sitting out were eating. There were a couple of trays of hot sausages and bacon that had been carried out. Fran, Steph and I are vegetarians, so we couldn’t eat it, but I wasn’t that bothered anyway. However Steph (head complainer) decided that this was a gross miscarriage of  justice and set out to make it right. She asked if we could have some vegetarian sausages brought out. They obliged, and we waited. It didn’t take long until my eyes caught sight of a glorious glint of silver. Our tray had arrived. We peeled back the foil, and…

Two.

We had two sausages.

And they weren’t big Cumberland-style sausages either. I seem to remember them having a bit of an orange-y tone, with a thick skin. But that wasn’t even a big deal, if we’d had a couple more I’d forget their fake-tan appearance. It was winter, we were cold, we were tired, we wanted food. In my mind, the ghosts of NCS past went round and round in circles – “don’t do it…there’s never anything to eat…it’s cold…they all love memes…”

My friends also warned me about the interesting living arrangements only found at NCS. They weren’t too bad, to be fair. It was just a very old building and the radiators were those types of radiators that don’t really emanate heat, but if you touch it you get third-degree burns. The windows were stiff and made to the finest standard of single-glazing. This was not always a bad thing, though. It created a nice cool patch on our windowsill which also functioned as a natural fridge, where we stored amenities such as hummus.

I did quite a bit of room-swapping during my stay. On the first wave, we were allowed to pick, which is how I met Mary, Fran and Steph. But on the second wave, they decided to “shake things up” (a phrase that, when used by teachers, instils fear in any teenager). Apparently, being with strangers from 8am until 4pm and intermittently throughout the evening wasn’t enough. We now had to share a room with them.

I was over this arrangement by the next day, after being waken up by one of the girls in my room watching Facebook meme videos on her phone out loud. So I asked one of the youth leaders, Erin, who was my favourite and who our group really loved, if I could move rooms. She loved me so of course she said yes. And I settled into a good night of sleep in a room with Mary, Steph and Fran.

Until.

There was a knock at the door. No, not a knock. A pounding. And then scrambling with the door handle. And then, the door burst open. A flash of light from the landing. And then, it slammed shut.

Someone sprinted in, and skidded round the corner of the room into the bathroom.

At this point, others had woken up, and murmurs of “what the fuck” and “what time is it” were exchanged.

And then came another knock at the door. No scrambling this time.

“Girls, has anyone come into your room?”

“No, Alice”.

“Ok. See you in the morning.”

And then, the figure emerged.

It.

Was.

HER.

The Facebook meme girl. She was in my bedroom, again. All I could do was laugh. And Mary and Fran were laughing too. It was that kind of laugh where you’re trying to be quiet and your shoulders bounce up and down and a little shriek escapes every now and then. It was funny.

Thankfully, most other nights, we did manage to sleep ok. One evening, however, the youth leaders told us we needed to get an early night because we had an early start the next day. There was something suspicious about their behaviour that day. I don’t think Mary likes suspicious “surprises” and she’s quite good at Internet stalking, so she did some googling about previous NCS experiences, and came back to us with this:

Mary’s research told her that we were going to be woken up around 6ish, with alarms blaring and people in our room with pots and pans, with only 5 minutes to get ready. This was in order to emulate the “experience of a refugee”, apparently to make us feel more empathy towards the refugee crisis. I have very strong feelings on this concept that in order to sympathise and understand someone’s struggle, you must experience it for yourself (imagine if it was “experience of a gay person” or “experience the Holocaust”?), which I am not going to discuss in this post in order to keep it light. However, feelings aside, we were not about to be duped, so we made sure to have our bags ready with all our stuff in for the morning, and we mentioned to a few others what tomorrow would entail. This somehow got back to the youth leaders, and they noticed that we were all already awake and dressed when they got to us. Mary got spoken to about ruining it, I begrudged them for belittling the experience of actual refugees to a bit of fun, Steph cried…etc. It was a long day.

Honestly, it was a long time in general. Despite all our moaning, despite all our pigeon-like behaviour when it came to the food, we had so much fun. I have so many funny memories of NCS that I didn’t even mention in this post because it would have been 20 pages long. But most importantly, the atmosphere of forced goodwill and our unwillingness to get involved forged great friendships. NCS is where I met Fran and Mary, who I’m still best friends with to this day.

I leave you with this video, which I think sums up the whole experience quite well…

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