Where Everybody's Crazy

The atmosphere in college tonight is electric. Everyone is on a serious high. We did it.

Today's been the college open day, and we've seriously worked our collective butts off for it. All week we've been cleaning and tidying and weeding and preparing to get the college looking as good as it possibly can, and all day we've been working to show people around, answer questions, put on exhibitions, and generally show off what we're about here.

It's not just the day that people come to see if they want to study here, it's not only our major fundraising day, it's not just the day when friends and supporters and former students can get together to see what we do - it's a matter of our pride in our college, and we've got it in spades. So it went very well; everything we put all that effort into went off excellently.

Only thing that didn't work out was the weather, and we can't do much about that. At least, not until we've done the PhD course.

I was putting on the tours. Now this is something I get pretty emotional about, but of course once I'm up and talking I'm only thinking about what I'm saying. It was only afterwards that it all hit me. The story of the Buxton family, the history of the various colleges that make up present-day ANCC, Hudson Taylor - the college rests on a long tradition of great Christian witness and humanitarian and egalitarian work. A hundred years ago, Ellen Buxton wrote to her grandson to explain why the family moved here, and she said she believed the estate would always be inhabited by Christians, and used to be a blessing to the world. That was a hundred years ago, and she was right. I love it.

I love talking about the Xenos stuff we do by and for missionary children; it reflects the one thing I love about this college, which if I were to sum it up in two words would be "thoughtful care".

So I was an excited and enthusiastic tour guide, which infected my team and, I hope, some of the people I took around. I've certainly heard good reports back about it.

Joe, our principal, is very much the father of the college family. After the whole college had been put back to normality in the two hours between the close of open day and our mealtime, he announced at dinner that we had made him proud of us. That's when the emotion started.

This evening we're tired as well as emotional. We've been chilling out with a video, and we have the weekend and Monday off to recover. We need it. It's been really, really hard work. But ultimately, very worth it.