Laugh, else you'll cry...
So I've been a very busy bee recently.
I was asked by my university to attend a conference in place of another student, as his incompetence had lead him to apply for a visa to the wrong place. The conference is a good opportunity, but it does mean that I'm losing precious days with h before she leaves the country for a significant amount of time.
To make up for this horror, I took h camping for a few days before I left. I got the time off, left instructions about flights and told the person that I was replacing, that he just had to leave the admin to our brilliant administrator. h and I both enjoy a good camp, and things started well. We ate nice food in country pubs, we went on hikes around beautiful scenary and enjoyed the dazzling sunshine and rolling mist as we wandered. We'd forgotten to bring a proper torch, (we had a pen light, a mobile phone with no charger that has a torch function, and a small torch with no batteries), and supplies were short, but we had good conditions and nice local pubs.
However, last night everything came unstuck.
Firstly, the rain started. Not a problem, we were snug in our water proof tent, with duvets, sleeping bags and the like. Feeling pretty smug about the whole thing, we went to sleep. Then the wind started. To describer the weather that we had as being simply "wind" is akin to referring to a nuclear weapon as "a bang". Driving rain and strong winds caused the collapse of our tent, so desperate measures were required. We managed to evacuate the tent and pack everything into the car quite well. We then took all the poles out of the tent itself to prevent it being essentially a large sail, and put rocks on it to stop the material blowing away.
Then we attempted to sleep in the car. Now I don't know if anyone's ever tried to sleep two people in a standard car, but it wasn't as easy as we were hoping. Being gentlemanly, I gave h the back seat, whilst I tried to curl up in the front passenger seat. Bearing in mind that we were parked in a field and that the wind and the rain didn't actually let up any, being in the car was like trying to get a kip in a tin box being shot at by a machine gun.
So the decision was made to evac. Originally, we had planned to leave at a sensible time. Originally there would have been a garage on every corner, filled to bursting with available petrol. But the big list of advantages to small town living doesn't feature, "can fill your car up at 2am" and therein lay a problem for your intrepid adventurers. So we drove the entire way from our deliberately secluded camp site, in the wind and the rain, anxiously watching the fuel needle's inexorable decline towards The Red Line of Doom. Fortunately we made it to civilisation and filled up my little car. Civilisation was supposed to be when the pain ended. I was wrong.
Remember how I said that I was going to Italy because of a guy's incompetence? Remember how I said to leave all the changes to our brilliant administrator? Are we seeing a fatal flaw in the plan? Incompetant people, by their very nature, are givers. They just love to help out, because in their world, their input is as good as the next man's. It was this logic, I assume, that lead our "obeying-a-direct-instructionally challenged" individual to cancel his hotel booking, rather than let the administrator change the name. This logic resulted in there being no space for the duration of the conference. After no sleep, a long drive and the slightly haunted sensation that can only come from your fabric abode collapsing around you, this logic could well have resulted in his untimely death if he'd happened to be in the service station I was in when I discovered the news. And so it is that I'll be in two hotels for my 4 day trip to Italy. Muppet.
Addendum: I checked my emails when I got back to Notts to find that the timetablers for my forthcoming course have accidentaly scheduled my 2 one hour lectures as a single two hour lecture. This means that if they can't correct it, I can't set 50% of the homework I was going to. Nurse, pass me the axe of vigilante justice.
I was asked by my university to attend a conference in place of another student, as his incompetence had lead him to apply for a visa to the wrong place. The conference is a good opportunity, but it does mean that I'm losing precious days with h before she leaves the country for a significant amount of time.
To make up for this horror, I took h camping for a few days before I left. I got the time off, left instructions about flights and told the person that I was replacing, that he just had to leave the admin to our brilliant administrator. h and I both enjoy a good camp, and things started well. We ate nice food in country pubs, we went on hikes around beautiful scenary and enjoyed the dazzling sunshine and rolling mist as we wandered. We'd forgotten to bring a proper torch, (we had a pen light, a mobile phone with no charger that has a torch function, and a small torch with no batteries), and supplies were short, but we had good conditions and nice local pubs.
However, last night everything came unstuck.
Firstly, the rain started. Not a problem, we were snug in our water proof tent, with duvets, sleeping bags and the like. Feeling pretty smug about the whole thing, we went to sleep. Then the wind started. To describer the weather that we had as being simply "wind" is akin to referring to a nuclear weapon as "a bang". Driving rain and strong winds caused the collapse of our tent, so desperate measures were required. We managed to evacuate the tent and pack everything into the car quite well. We then took all the poles out of the tent itself to prevent it being essentially a large sail, and put rocks on it to stop the material blowing away.
Then we attempted to sleep in the car. Now I don't know if anyone's ever tried to sleep two people in a standard car, but it wasn't as easy as we were hoping. Being gentlemanly, I gave h the back seat, whilst I tried to curl up in the front passenger seat. Bearing in mind that we were parked in a field and that the wind and the rain didn't actually let up any, being in the car was like trying to get a kip in a tin box being shot at by a machine gun.
So the decision was made to evac. Originally, we had planned to leave at a sensible time. Originally there would have been a garage on every corner, filled to bursting with available petrol. But the big list of advantages to small town living doesn't feature, "can fill your car up at 2am" and therein lay a problem for your intrepid adventurers. So we drove the entire way from our deliberately secluded camp site, in the wind and the rain, anxiously watching the fuel needle's inexorable decline towards The Red Line of Doom. Fortunately we made it to civilisation and filled up my little car. Civilisation was supposed to be when the pain ended. I was wrong.
Remember how I said that I was going to Italy because of a guy's incompetence? Remember how I said to leave all the changes to our brilliant administrator? Are we seeing a fatal flaw in the plan? Incompetant people, by their very nature, are givers. They just love to help out, because in their world, their input is as good as the next man's. It was this logic, I assume, that lead our "obeying-a-direct-instructionally challenged" individual to cancel his hotel booking, rather than let the administrator change the name. This logic resulted in there being no space for the duration of the conference. After no sleep, a long drive and the slightly haunted sensation that can only come from your fabric abode collapsing around you, this logic could well have resulted in his untimely death if he'd happened to be in the service station I was in when I discovered the news. And so it is that I'll be in two hotels for my 4 day trip to Italy. Muppet.
Addendum: I checked my emails when I got back to Notts to find that the timetablers for my forthcoming course have accidentaly scheduled my 2 one hour lectures as a single two hour lecture. This means that if they can't correct it, I can't set 50% of the homework I was going to. Nurse, pass me the axe of vigilante justice.
posted by Bob at 12:37 PM
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