Wednesday 17 November 2010

In the back end of beyond!

The back end of beyond here refers to the past, not a place, sadly. By which I mean this post was written on the 29th day of October rather than the 17th November which it happens to be currently.

I’m sure that you will all be glad to know that absolutely no drowning has occurred since my last post. Obviously I am referring here to the last time that I wrote a blog, not any bugle/trumpet playing extravaganzas. This would be largely due to the fact that I am an hour and a half away from my trumpet, and daily mourn its absence in my life (i.e. every now and then I think that it would be nice to make a lot of noise and am unable to).

What has occurred instead, is BOB. BOB is both a person and an exciting adventure of the mountain biking variety. Along with my ragged bunch of compatriots, also known as the DisTIL team, we set forth into the opposite of the unknown (that would be the known), and did a British Offroad Biking course (BOB). The course ran out of our office for two days, and we chased it down the hill. We cycled and we played with bikes and we cycled some more. And some more. And we had very sore bottoms. And then we cycled some more. One could say that it was muchos funamondos, because it was. The only small fly in the ointment was the lack of Jonny, which required me to actually participate in the fixing of bicycles, not just the touching of them. However, I didn’t lose any fingers, and I only fell off once into a patch of stinging nettles. BOB was run by Bob, and his assistant Siggy, who unfortunately was not called Ziggy as we first thought. I am wholly of the opinion that Ziggy is a much better name, and it is a definite possibility that one day I will have a child/fish/turnip by that name.

In addition to BOB with Bob, there have been extraordinary fun and larks about the office. After the canoeing and death sessions last week, we had Friday as an admin day in the office to recover. I’m sure Sarah would agree that by far the best part of Friday was The Shelf. In a small corner of the Adventure Plus office is a secret hideout for all of our cleaning supplies. Actually it is neither secret nor a hideout because everyone at A+ knows where it is and it is the opposite of hiding, i.e. not hiding. In fact it can be seen from quite a long way away. Anyhoo, this shelf was about 92 feet high, and impossible for any normal-sized person to see what was on it. Even the extraordinarily tall amongst us (myself included, of course) were having difficulty. The result of this crisis was a Committee for the Relocation of The Shelf (CRTS). The committee consisted of two permanent members (myself and Sarah), and various temporary assistants (James, Ruth, Jonny, Jean-Claude). In one day we double-handedly moved The Shelf several inches closer to the ground, and in the process of replacing its contents, turned it into a haven of organisational bliss. All is now well with the world.

Amongst this week’s adventures are the pitching and fixing of tents (in which my role was minimal), the striking of tents (for the unenlightened, this means taking them down, not beating them), the packing up of tents after having repaired or replaced poles, sorting through and testing all of the camping equipment and arranging it in neat lines in the camping store, tidying and rearranging the bike store, pairing and counting cycling gloves, removing, testing and rearranging the entire contents of the stationery cabinet, moving the stationery cabinet, building a desk without instructions, and sending off paddling dry wear for repairs. This list is largely so that I can point at it and leap around when JL asks what we have been up to all week. The best part is that it doesn’t even include the time spent attempting to remove the light shade in the toilet, getting James to remove the light shade in the toilet, being told not to replace the light bulb after all and attempting to replace the light shade in the toilet. This sounds like a very simple escapade, but in fact it is not the case. The light shade is a very aggressive piece of equipment, and refused to budge even when attacked viciously with a screwdriver, a fork and a set of keys. It was stubborn to the extreme that the light fitting even threatened to fall out of the ceiling. Fortunately it did not, as there is no one living upstairs for me to rant at. I suppose that is largely a good thing as I am not sure that the roof of our office would be the best place for people to live. In fact it might be one of the worst places. Except for the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Or maybe a volcano.

But alas, I must part before I set your pants on fire and bore the lies out of you.

P.S. Sadly, much drowning has occurred since the writing of this post. More about that soon...