number threee

I was thinking of calling this 'day one' in a poor effort to live today rather than thinking about tomorrow all the time- as I do. So the third 'day one' started with plans around the post ski show party for the new staff and the people from the company. I made the mistake of actually going to the Ski Show first which was a waste of thirteen quid- although there were some American kids break dancing which was absolutley amazing.
The ski soiree, as it was billed was held in a pub across the road from the show and given the hour of the day was predictably jam packed with posh twenty somethings all talking 'yaa I ski'. I spent 20 mins battling for a pint (I was thirsty and the weather was unnaturally hot) before heading upstairs to the party where I found many glum faces. Not because I did anything wrong- the pub was so busy they hadn't been able to spare bar staff and I was the only one with a drink. We were each given a badge with our name, resort and job and left to mingle. I made a point of tracking down the other resort managers to gleen as much info as possible on what the hell my job was. Most of them were a little off at first, demanding to know how I got Lech ( because that's where they wanted) and how did I get resort manager with no previous experience (they were all old hands and started off as chalet staff). The answer to question one was ' I got there first' and to the second 'I have absolutley no idea!
As the night wore on a bunch of hyper-active girls (all with the ubiquitous exposed belly) gathered a posse to go clubbing. They were all recruited to be Santa's Little Helpers at the company's Lapland resort over Christmas and they fitted the bill perfectly- in a Munchkinesque kind of way. I decided to slope off back to the hotel room generously donated by DTL.
This left me with a day in London- and a beautiful day it was. A stroll in Autumnal Hyde park, the V&A (where I learnt the meaning of taking someone down a peg or two) and the National Portrait Gallery where I learnt that Wallis Simpson was actually better looking than I thought (good but surely not worth the thrown).

Eventually I got to Gatwick and the long flight to Namibia. The airline was pretty good- the cabin crew very pretty and a reasonable number of vacant seats- which begs the question "why was it so hard to get a seat on this flight?" During my nocturnal random thoughts a vision came to me- Reg Woolley (I hope you are reading this Eddie). Reg was from the Mumbles, Swansea. Tall, ungainly and with a clump of curly hair, he had not left the seaside town where he lived with his mother until joining the Air Force and ending up in the same block as us. Nowadays we would call him call him a geek, he was big into short wave radio and not much else (maybe zig zag jumpers which were too small for him). To the extent that he drove a reddy gold Renault 5 with a 3 metre whip aerial on the roof and his call sign in stickers down the side- not a trendy CB style handle but a random collection of letters and numbers. Anyway, the point is Reg naturally spoke daily to those of his ilk from all over the World and, as we were living in Germany, had been to visit many of them. He had experiences the rest of us couldn't imagine- but could he tell you anything about them, spin a yarn, share an interesting fact or funny story- NO, he bloody couldn't. In fact the most communicating he did was a poor impression of the Swansea and Mumbles Steam Railway- yep. choo choo. It was at that moment on Sunday night I resolved to fill these pages and let you decide what to read.

Good news by the way. The Army (God bless 'em) have agreed to pay me in the region of $(no pound sign) 4500 and give a military flight to Borneo if I agree to give 3 presentaions, write 4 articles/features for magazines and attend some recruiting events- I'm still thinking about it!!!

Don't forget comments at the bottom of the page- I am half endurring this trip for you because I know how pissed off you'll be with me if I don't have a good time.
Chris