Training & Jordan

I thought I’d managed to wheedle out of any major effort this weekend, what with going off to Jordan on Sunday morning, but I’d reckoned without the punishment regime put in place by the camp guards.

Apparently, there is a need for some old bricks for some terrifying future project in the garden, so I was promptly told “You can run round to that pile of rubble on the other side of the airfield, and bring back a ruck-sack full of nice whole bricks. It’ll be good training for you”.

By the time I’d staggered back with a full load, I could hardly walk. So just out of interest, I weighed the pack on the bathroom scales. THIRTY BLOOMING KILOS !
Of course, I got into trouble for that as well – apparently, although the bricks are just the job for the garden, that’s where they should have stayed and not on the bathroom scales.

So it was quite a relief to get to Jordan to help with a couple of teacher-training courses, thinking I might escape further punishment for a while.

Oh, foolish me.

After the first minor cock- up, presenting the Royal Prince with an award, that I should have given to the University Dean – honestly, how was I supposed to know ?
I then found out that I’d been volunteered to escort groups of teachers round the livestock units in the university farm – in the pouring rain. It’s rained on exactly five days there this winter, and we have to pick two of them.

And if that wasn’t bad enough I had to give a demonstration of clipping sheep’s toe-nails. Not only have I not done that for twenty years but they wanted the tups or rams done. Great big, fat, horned so and sos.

They were not keen on the idea either – one of them socking me in the mouth with his head.

So frankly, it’s been a pretty grim few days . And to cap it all, Simon says the Marathon literature has just arrived, with terrible news – no alcohol whatever is allowed inthe final weeks and days of training Oh, what fun these athletes do have.