Ramblings of Ru

I liked this :)

I recently got back from a camping trip that we had organised for our "young peoples'" environmental activity group.

Taking twelve 10 - 13 year olds away for an over night camping trip may seem like a crazy thing to do to most and I have a lot of sympathy for that view. Also, on the face of it, it is especially crazy when taking kids from the area I work in and when the trip is in the UK where weather can be a bit of a problem (so much for the long range weather forecast of a long hot summer!)

The major obsession of the kids seemed to do these 3 things, climb anything they can, fight, get as muddy as possible. If they could have done all three at the same time I am sure they would have reached nirvana.

We were staying with at scout campsite and they had prepared several activities for the kids to take part in. The activities were led by a rather strange man who had a very slow and deliberate way of speaking and an amazing ability to make something that is interesting incredibly boring.

The kids have this ability to do everything at 100mph which was impressive as is their staying power (they eventually calmed down around 12:30am)

The second day was a dreadful washout as the heavens opened and the place became a quagmire, perfect for the kids to indulge in mud wallowing.

Whilst the trip is not high on my list of things I would like to do again, I am not naturally child friendly, it was actually not that bad.

I have had a shocking realisation Birmingham is not the centre of the universe :( I know it has dragged itself up by its boot straps over the last few years, but I believed it had progressed further than elsewhere, I believed that the rest of the country had stood still. Well I have been a fool. A few years ago I went and visited Bournemouth and came away thinking what a dump, so it was with some reluctance that I accepted an invite to go back there yesterday for a conference. Bournemouth, it seems, has also reinvented it's self and has done so in a way that is much more appealing than Birmingham. It has stepped out from the cheesy seaside town where the elderly go for their last few years and has now become a vibrant city that celebrates its proximity to the sea, regenerating its seafront so it now attracts the "surf" set, no mean feat for a bay that picks up very little swell. The city centre is multi cultural, independent coffee shops, deli's and restaurants abound. Now here is my point, Bournemouth was busy, as you would expect a seaside town to be in peak season, but not as busy as Birmingham is on a normal working day. So why is it that Birmingham struggles to deliver a regeneration that encourages pride in its manufacturing heritage, its multiculturalism and why is it that we only seem to have chain restaurants in the city centre (Chez Jule and Michelle’s apart)? No deli's, no independent coffee shops? Just chain shops, chain restaurants and chain coffee shops?

The fact is, that whilst being a busy place and full of busy people, we are not an international city!
We are a city without identity.

Bloody great! Just been told by my Doc that I have very high Cholesterol, so much for a Mediterranean diet humph!

Is always the hardest don't you find? Well here it is, this blog started life under a different name and under a different email address but as the email address was a work one, and the likelihood is I wont be working there for the rest of my life, I decided to invent a new place to lay down my ramblings.

I have just come back to work following a short holiday in Scotland with my partner and I have to say I feel well and truly refreshed and raring to go. It was two years since we last took a holiday away from home so it was needed indeed.

Scotland is beautiful, well the west coast is but the east coast is less so. Where the west is mountainous with lochs and glens as far as the eye can see the east is flat as a pool table. There seems to be a difference in the people as well, those from the west seemed open, friendly and willing to look you in the face those in the east seemed to spend a lot of time looking down at their feet. No idea why but that’s the way it seemed.

Whilst in Scotland we visited two very nice restaurants, one on Loch Leven (Highlands) and one in Auchmithie near Arbroath.

The “Seafood Café” on Loch Leven served some of the best scallops I have ever had. Cook perfectly on a pesto made from oil, garlic and parsley, simple lovely!

“But n Ben” in Auchmithie was lovely in a very different way, a “homely way”. We had Arbroath Smokie pancakes that were very rich and really didn’t need the vegetables that accompanied it.

Whilst the holiday was lovely we did have a minor problem in one of the hotels we stayed in.

We stayed in a small hotel in Oban, I won’t name it but its name is something to do with the monarchy, it was a bit shabby and not very clean. The lift up to our rooms looked like it had not been cleaned for years, bits of food and dust mixed along the ridge of the panel holding the buttons, the mirror at the rear looked like someone had rubbed their face down it as they collapsed to the floor and it reminded me of a typical lift found in some of the high rise flats found in Birmingham in the late 70’s (minus the urine smell).

Anyway, once in the room we noticed that the room furniture all had the handles broken off, the TV seemed not to work and that the bed was on a slope that a down hill skier would look upon with glee. But the special feature and the one this story is really about was the bathroom. The fact that it was small enough so that you could sit on the loo, wash your face and shower your feet at the same time was not the main problem, the main problem was that it had no ventilation. The window didn’t open and there was no extractor fan.

I noticed that the window had been screwed down so I called reception to see if someone could come and unscrew it so that we could get so air in there. I was told that there was no one available until the morning so, as I had the forethought to bring a multi tool (“Be prepared” I was always told as a child), I decided to unscrew it myself.

Standing on the loo seat I carefully removed the screws from the bracket holding the window shut. Then, putting my full (and considerable) weight behind lifting the sash window.

Well you probably guessed it, my foot went right through the loo seat, shattering it into an odd shaped jigsaw puzzle. Bugger!

I could hear my partners voice filled with concern as she shouted “what the hell have you done now?” from the lopsided bedroom.

Panic struck, I grabbed the super glue (see “be prepared” again) and attempted to glue the pieces back together again only to find that super glue doesn’t glue cheap plastic very well. Next plan was to remove the remaining stump of the loo seat in the hope that, as the room was so shoddy, the cleaning staff wouldn’t notice. Moments later I was on my knees in front of the loo with my arms wrapped around it trying to use the multi tool to remove the nut from the back of the loo. In this position I managed to successful slice the top of my finger off with the tool, my cursing bought a “are you ok?” from my partner, “fine I replied, trying to stem the flow of blood and to continue to remove the nut. After about 15 mins I gave up, the nut wouldn’t move and I was obviously getting weak from the amount of blood I had lost.

I walked into the bedroom, sweaty and in need of a blood transfusion, and my partner looked at me and said I should just “fess up” and tell the hotel receptionist. Reluctantly I sat down and called them.

“ Hi, this is room 312, you remember I called about the window? Yes well I am afraid I have broken you loo seat, no I mean really broken it, smashed it.” “oh! Ok, well thanks!”

“What did she say” asked my partner.

“She said it was not a problem and that “It happens all the time!!!!!!!!!”