Camp Phil

Right, I started this draft off a few weeks ago. Given that it's now nearly five months since I was on camp I'm probably going to struggle to remember much...

OK, finally time to write about camp. I've been waiting until a point when there was so little left in my memory that I'd hardly have anything to write about. Unfortunately Donald reminded me of some stuff last night.

I'm not sure what I can write here being public domain and all without breech of privacy so I'm going to have to change names to protect the campers. I don't think I'll bother protecting leaders.

On the Saturday I got all packed up ready to go and waited for Dorothy to come and collect me. Unfortunately Dorothy was delayed as she had to wait for the Tesco delivery man to drop off some shopping... then there was the slight problem of him crashing his van into her car which didn't help matters. She managed to pick me up and drive me to the auto-teller to get some money. When we arrived back the cat-sitter was there who would be looking after the cats the following week while we were at Keswick.

We got on the road to Scoughall and Dorothy noticed her mobile was missing... where was it? More on that story later! (I'm so good at suspense, I should be a scriptwriter for The Bill or something!).

So, anyway, where was I? Errr, hold on... need to put a new song on as 'Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me' by George Michael has just ended... think we'll have 'If Tomorrow Never Comes' by Garth Brooks.

We arrived at Scoughall and Donald and most of the other team members were there. There was Stuart & Jennifer who I'd met on the work parties, Gwyneth who I already knew, Donald's nephew Andrew who I already knew and several others I had never met and who were all incredibly experienced and qualified and skilled for camp and were told that I was ATL... I really wanted to run away screaming. After we'd had a chat about the basics such as Health & Safety, Child Protection, SU policy etc I outlined the programme for the week then we went off on a prayer walk. Half-way through it turned into a prayer run so I decided that I'd go inside and have a sit-down and remain with them in spirit only.

Soon the kids started to arrive and Donald told me to mingle and chat to the kids and friends. Did I mention I'm terrified of children? I'm actually, more specifically, terrified of approaching anyone unless I know them pretty well so I wasn't really able to do that... at all... at that stage.

I had, somehow, agreed that I was going to run the afternoon 'ice-breaker' games whilst Donald lit the barbecue. This was a complete disaster... not the ice-breaker games, Donald lighting the barbecue. Right, I'm onto 'The Thunder Rolls' by Garth Brooks now which is quite fitting now as that's what it did the first night. It's very difficult to light a barbeue whilst you're trying to gather up the local wildlife, leaders and children two-by-two to get them out of the rain. It was at this point that I realised just how much energy an excited child has... far too much. At that age I had the energy levels of your average Sloth so my game which involved bringing me certain items was a very scary experience. Saying that there's a prize for the first child to bring you an item and then 30 children charging straight at you with the item thinking 'I want to get there first' not 'I need to allow myself enough time and space to slow down and stop so as not to charge straight into Phil' is a very scary experience.

At the evening meeting I had to stand up in front of the children and 'front' the songs. This went down terribly. At first I thought it was me and that I was absolutely rubbish at it which would have been fair enough as it was my first time doing anthing of this nature. Eventually I realised that it was just the songs that Donald had chosen. He has to be excused though as he's from a bygone generation and I'm sure that some of these songs were very popular when he was young but so were perms... ha ha, would love to see him try to perm his hair now. After a couple of days I took charge over was songs were chosen. I think everyone was initially very sceptical idea of having a Conga... just wait until they see what I've got in store for next year! I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to divulge that information at present... possibly because I've not given it any thought.

I got to know the rest of the team pretty quickly which helped me feel a little more comfortable. The first night I went to bed and woke up at about 3am and couldn't get back to sleep as my nervousness took priority over my need for sleep.

Breakfast was another scary experience. Donald wanted me to chat to the kids... again, I wasn't ready for that at this stage so I think I spent my time hiding in the office... I think I did have some urgent laminating to do that absolutely couldn't wait. Fortunately Stuart F stepped into the breach and ran the meals until I felt comfortable with doing them (I think that was approximately the following Saturday then?).

On Sunday we took the kids to church to let them see what church is really like as some of them have never been in a church in their lives and might think churches are boring, full of old people singing rubbish hymns accompanied by a poorly played pipe organ. We arrived at church and it was boring, full of old people and they sang rubbish hymns accompanied by a poorly played pipe organ. I was later told that the minister and organ player were both away on holiday. They must have heard we were coming.

After church it was my first attempt at being in charge of the campsite as Donald took some of the campers hill-walking... most of which involved hiding from the rain which still hadn't completely gone away from the night before. Fortunately that was the last we were to see of the rain for the rest of the week.

On Monday we were due to be going powerboating but the powerboat man phoned up in the morning to say that he'd broken the boat. It was good that we had a back-up plan which we immediately put into motion swapping Monday morning with Friday afternoon which, when it came to it on Friday afternoon, probably worked out better than things would have been had they went to plan.

I won't bore you with the rest of the details because I can't remember them although I'd like to thank Dorothy for looking after me all week. I will try to write my diary more immediately in future before I've forgotten everything.

Fat Phil

It's finally time to write about my experiences at camp... but I'm going to do this blog first. My reason for doing it now isn't that I haven't got anything more productive to do it's just that I can't be bothered as I feel especially grumpy today... which on any normal scale of grumpity if flipping well grumpy. I haven't actually got any good reason other than the fact I don't feel especially well which in itself wouldn't be an issue seeing as I don't think I've ever felt especially well in my entire life but it's the fact that I've brought it entirely on myself by being a greedy git.

Most 'normal' people stop eating once they've had sufficient calorific intake to keep them going.
Then there's the people that stop eating once they're comfortably full.
'Some' people will eat and eat until they're absolutely stuffed.
Then there's people that'll eat to the point where they start feeling ill.

I fall into a whole different category where I keep eating and eating well beyond the point of feeling uncomfortable or ill and will sit with a biscuit in hand telling my stomach to hurry up and make a space so I can eat it... not normal... not normal at all! Glutiny is a sin and I am most certainly a sinner. Not only am I a sinner but I'm a big fat pudding too. I can barely fit into my leotard at ballet practice anymore.

Well I know I'm gonna be... I'm gonna be the man who's havering tae you!

'Havering' is an intransitive verb found in Scottish slang of which the etymology is unknown.

Tae me though, it's just tae hem and haw!

I think I need to be doing a little bit more of that on here. The thing is, I see so many things that I want to pass comment on but most of you wouldn't have a clue what I'm on about unless you happen to have been watching the same TV programme as me that night (oh... poor Sarah-Louise, imagine Jason doing that to her!), see... are you confused? Then there's the issue of me offending most of the world!

I think I shall now go and blog what I can remember of camp. I'll have to edit names of campers to protect identities... don't think I'll bother to protect the identity of leaders though. They deserve everything I'm going to get... especially Donald. I think I did a pretty effective job in sabotaging the bit of the talk I was involved in which leads me to another point...

Men... pay attention! If you ever don't want to do something don't simply refuse to do it because you'll keep getting nagged and then you'll end up doing the task and then next time the task comes round you'll get nagged to do it again and again and then you'll just do it again and so you'll get nagged.... it's an endless cycle called 'marriage'.

Anyway, what you need to do is volunteer to do the task before you're even asked... or at least pretend you're more than happy/keen to do the task. Then, once you do it... do a terrible terrible job of it. That way you'll never need to spend time doing it again or getting nagged to do it again... problem solved!

If any men out there have any other tips on how to survive the terrible terrible fate of marriage then please post your tips here!

Blogging Behind

Howdy Blogworld!

It seems I've been letting things slide again with regards to updating this blog. I'd like to say I'm about to rectify that but my phone's just allowed to ring twice (not answered, to save the cost of a call) to notify me that Ian & Nan are on their way to come and pick me up from church which, by my calculations, allows me about the length of 'Angels' by Robbie Williams and 'Careless Whispers' by George Michael to type something deep and meaningful here before I have to go and put my shoes on... possibly to '500 miles' by The Proclaimers who I was listening to (and heartily singing along with) today when my ignorant wife informed she didn't like them... not just because I was singing along to them. How can she call herself Scottish and say she doesn't like The Proclaimers?!?!?!?!? I mean, that's just an utter disgrace! What true Scot hasn't blurted out the lyrics of '500 miles' whilst walking down an otherwise quiet residential street at about 2am with a carry-out in hand?

Oh dear, we've on to Careless Whispers and I haven't got round to typing anything deep and meaningful yet. Perhaps we should just skip the deep and meaningful material for this blog entry and instead concentrate on a news update (still haven't written about camp or Keswick yet... or my golfing injury/GBH incident). Actually.. Donald's meant to be asking me some questions about camp in front of everyone at church tonight. That should give me an opportunity to embarass him, myself and everyone associated with me... that'll be fun.

Right, still not actually mentioned anything deep, meaningful or now even newsworthy and we're at the big long sax solo bit in the middle of the song... 2:37 into the song Windows Media reliably informs me although by the time I've typed this it'll be past that... like you care.

Oh, did I mention my computer is alive again? I had to give it the technical equivilant of mouth-to-mouth which basically involves reformatting your hard drive, reinstalling the OS, drivers and all the software you previously had... not to mention putting your entire music back on to it. My Cliff Richard collection alone will take a team of twelve IT specialists about three weeks to 'rip'... I'm told 'ripping' is the technical term but I really don't want anyone to be 'ripping' my Cliff collection... it's much to precious!

Right, better go... the music is fading out now. Better go and put my shoes on and make sure I've got everything I need with me!

Tattie bye!!!!

RIP PC

My PC died yesterday. I'm on here pretending I'm doing something useful like working or something or nothing.

It's not so much that my PC is dead. It boots up fine and as soon as Windows loads it restarts itself before I can do anything to try and address the problem. It even does this in safe mode and diagnostic mode. I don't even think reformatting the drive or a clean install of the OS will solve the problem.

My main lesson is in diplomacy though. To all men out there. Should your PC break down the following could result in severe injury or loss of limbs.

1) Telling your wife that you actually own her PC so she better let you on it.
2) Telling her that if she doesn't let you on it you'll just disconnect her from the home network.
3) Telling her that you'll uninstall her speech software so it'll be useless to her anyway.
4) Telling her that if you can't use it she gets no more money ever.

Oh well, maybe I could do with a rest from the PC after the fingers on one hand got 'accidently crushed'.