January and February, not renowned for their popularity due to the shortness of the day light hours, available dosh and suitable activities to get involved in. January is always the longest of months, the cold reality after Christmas and February is arguably the year's most boring month. But a change in the air, 2014 is already proving to have the potential of being a vintage year in the Purple Book. Despite the worst spell of weather I've ever seen this year is getting off to a flyer with the pages of the good book already starting to swell like the tides of our rivers.
Ski-ing
Over the years I've come to realise my body's strengths and many weaknesses, one of these weaknesses being balance on anything other than terra firma. Anything involving movement such as skating or surfing should be avoided, including skiing. A couple of months ago though I was asked if i'd be up for going on the ski trip with the school. Half expecting this to be a joke I said I'd love to, thinking nothing more of it. Gradually though I was asked for passport details and show sizes and then invited to training days. This was really happening, a free, paid, ski trip to Austria! I'd done dry slope skiing before but not since the late 90s and had spend a couple of hours on fake snow so for all intensive purposes I was a complete newb.
First training day at Bracknell, the palaver of getting booted up. Size 13 snow boots the size of moon boots and skis taller then all the kids and half the adults present. A couple of the others were quite regular skiers, ready to laugh their heads off the second me and Batch (the only other novice) fell A over T! The first time over the edge of the junior slope, bricking it that i'm going to end up in a heap on the floor, but didn't. This was doable. A few more times down, doing weird jumps on the way, touching toes, singing on the way down and practising the 'snow plough' used to steer and stop. The next lesson a bit further up, learning to turn and stop, all good, in fact the only time I've hit the deck so far is on the flat at the end of the lesson trying to take my huge skis off! A few sketchy moments on the third training day where stopping suddenly became undoable and I damn near took a few kids out on route to the bottom but apart from that not too scary at all :) By the end of the final fourth lesson all those present were at the top of the practise slope and doing well. There is this one kid who can't seem to pick anything up, we'll have to keep an eye on him... As for me I can stop on the Velcro like substance at Bracknell, turn right and almost turn left. Should be fine as long as we only have to turn in that direction ;) I've heard it's much easier doing it on the real thing so here's looking forward to tomorrow when we set off for Austria and go skiing for real :)
Oh what a Bore and the joys of Bath
The highlight of the year so far might not have happened if we'd have gone for the earlier audition of Pointless (more on that later.) In a day reminiscent of Land's End and the Minarck Theatre, two Sundays ago turned up a complete turkey and utter gem in the same day.
It was an early start. Though being anything other than religious, Sunday is still the sacred day as it provides that most heavenly of things, the lie in. This went out the window as we set off in search of the Severn Bore, a natural occurrence with the promise of being more epic this year thanks to the crazy weather we were experiencing. I'm no Geographer and can't be bothered to Google the correct wording of the event so here's the distilled version. One minute water in a river is flowing one way, then there is a mini tidal wave as all the water from the sea filters into an ever decreasing space and then the river flows the other way, then gets higher, then lowers and flows the other way again. if that account sounded rather un-inspiring then i'm afraid that's because the event itself was. I'd driven 2 1/2 hours to stand in the cold and witness precisely what i'd just described. The tea being served in the local church was the usual tasteless stuff probably kept from when rationing was still in use and the non-event itself was crap. On the news previous bores had people surfing behind them on a big swell of water. Ours was apparently A 5 STAR one, I hate to imagine what a 1 star would have looked like. We waited around with a few other hardy souls watching the water gradually rise until we all got bored and moved on. A delightful opportunity of a lay in wasted for this? Not happy...
Still, the day wasn't over, on we went to Bath. The 'bore' at Minsterworth may have turned into another Statue of Liberty and Lands End in that I could say I've seen it but wouldn't rush back but Bath would prove to be my Minack. I don't mind admitting I was feeling pretty cheesed off as we entered Bath. The traffic was bad and car parks proved a nightmare to get into for any vehicle bigger than a unicycle. We eventually parked up, got a map and went wandering. The point of visiting Bath was to scope out the start of mine and the Old one's next Summer adventure, the Bath to Reading walk. That kind of went out the window as we stepped into the beautiful old English town. It reminded me of London in the little details and everywhere you looked there was something quirky to look at. We stopped off for a pee break and found the most delightfully random resteraunt I've ever seen. There were cricket almanacs going back to the mid fifties, a pbloushondy of different styled chairs, deer heads on the wall with various hats on them, it was if the PB itself had been turned into a café. Lunch went down a treat, especially as the loose leaf tea was served in a proper porcelain cup and saucer with milk from a kilner jar.
Pointless
We gave 100 people 100 seconds to name their favourite quiz show and most of them chose Pointless. The once secluded little show on BBC 2 is now cult viewing for the masses with streams of people applying to be on it. One of the purple entries is marked 'appear on a gameshow' and pointless definitely fitted the bill, even if it meant bringing someone along for the ride. The old man was up for it, we'd filled in a registration form a few months back and thought nothing of it. That was until I got a call at work asking me if I was still up for trying to get on the show and said they had an audition space that Sunday if we were free. That was the Severn Bore Sunday and Dad was down to do his 'who had the best football pitch / swamp competition' judging so it was a no at that point. I then had a call the following week with a new date for the week after, 2:00 in Dad's least favourite place, London. The response from work was great, everyone was really excited for us, the first time everyone was unanimous in their approval of a purple entry. I'd been warned by the old one not to dress too wacky and in turn I told him to avoid beige at all costs. We packed our ID, thought up our interesting facts about ourselves and were on our way. Out of curiosity I asked Dad was his fact would be. Opting for the quirky approach, Dad said he was into threesomes as he did various tasks such as going to the gym and visiting the elderly relatives 3 times a week. I was keeping my fingers crossed he was saying this just to freak me out. "He wouldn't", I thought...
Because of the weather causing havoc we left early and despite a bit of disruption got to the venue in Holborn in plenty of time. After a cheeky scone and a cup of tea we went to the Double Tree hotel where the auditions were taking place, looking forward to whatever we'd be getting up to. The other auditioners starting to show up, Dad was amused by the brother and sister pairing around his age with matching tablets, he did his best miming impression of one of them swiping their finger across the screen. He'll wake up to the 21st century eventually bless him ;) Eventually this bloke built like a bouncer came and started faffing around with the keycard entry of the door we were going to go through. I'm still not sure what he was doing but he managed to lock the two girls that were busy munching their lunch. They were eating sushi (only in London!).A few minutes later the door opened and we were greeted by Amy and Sarah, our very own Xander and Richard's for the day. This wasn't a surprise as with 4 auditions a day, several days a week we would never be seeing the real deal until the show itself if we ever got on it. We all sat around the big oval table while the girls went through the formalities. From the off everyone was made to feel relaxed and welcome, despite doing this for a while both girls had great enthusiasm and genuinely seemed to love doing their jobs. After filling in some basic forms we had a timed general knowledge test on paper, three minutes to answer 20 questions (not all that easy ones either, especially under a time limit.) We then moved onto a demo version of the show, with a flipchart being used as the game screen. Instead of the sound effects with the 100 - 0 bar we'd be making our own as Amy's pen moved down towards zero as everyone gave their answers. The first two rounds we all did on our own, the topics were Chemistry and Countries. Sarah had already let the cat out the bag that Chemistry would be the periodic table so I knew I had a fair chance at both, Dad looked panicked at that one so I stepped up first for that one. "Name an element that starts with a vowel". Quite a few to choose from but which is the most obscure? I went for 'Argon' but the first guy up, our secret ministry of defence hush hush chappie beat me to it. After the guide dogs for the blind puppy trainer went I had a punt at 'Iodine' and it came up with 17 points. Dad was enthusiastic in his applause for me, lacking only a set of pom poms to go all out cheerleader on me. The other scores came in from the Mathematicians, the trainee doctors, retired actor and other pair, most of which seemed to have been born with a silver spoon inserted.
Dad's turn, he'd already outdone himself with his interesting fact (yes he did mention the 'threesome' bit...) and was now about to dazzle with his knowledge of Geography "Name a country with the letter 'Y' in it." The order was reversed and after the nerd / wannabee stand up comic and second trainee doctor had spoken it was Dad's turn. "Yemen" was the reply. Silence. The answer was fine, the problem is that we were being filmed and would most definitely be filmed if we made it on the show so the trick is always to elaborate on one's answers to make the show watchable. After a bit of prompting Dad added how he chose that answer instead of Italy, the country that no one had mentioned yet. Bless him... time will tell whether his comedy genius will be our triumph or undoing as to getting into the show but it's given me and all who have heard it a laugh so way to go Dad x ;)
Final round and we're allowed to pair up and confer. The topic is top 100 BBC sitcoms of all time. Any easy question to answer but a tricky one to come out ahead in. We had several answers but Dad let me plump for a potential 'Pointless', especially as our points on the day were merely to see how well we worked as a team with no prize up for grabs. I went for Lenny Henry's 'Chef' where he plays a grumpy chef who insists on perfection n his Kitchen. I was pretty sure it was a show that had been on the beeb, it was just if it was in the top answer. Bad news, it wasn't! All present made the 100 point noise with everyone else getting pretty lowish scores with classics like Porridge getting really low points because there were so many choices to choose from. I had to Google the list on the way back to put my mind at rest, Chef WAS a bbc show, just not that popular it would seem! After that it was all over. 4 of the 7 couples were asked back in. We were told before that this didn't necessarily mean they were in and we weren't but me and Dad have our doubts either way we'll know by the end of the month if we're through to the next stage with no news being bad news. Time and The Purple Book wait for no one though, straight after that I booked myself up for three Color Runs this year and have had just enough time to type this before going on the Ski trip tomorrow with the school. Mallnitz Austria here we come. My own interesting fact about myself on pointless? Not hard to guess. It described a book which has inspired me to abseil the tallest building in my home town, walk over hot coals, and all manner of weird and wonderful things. Fingers crossed this year brings plenty more where that came from :)
Rossifer x
0 comments:
Post a Comment