In times of peril what would you do?

There are few things in this world that I dread. The top three- in no particular order are:

Spiders - Size no object I hate them all.
Being Stuck In Lifts - Don't ask I just don’t like it.
Death of My Parents - Enough Said.

So it was not hugely gratifying to find myself in a situation the other day that required me to deal with one of these problems.
Let me start from the beginning:

On Wednesday I and a few of my friends decided to rendezvous in Southampton (I have well spread friends) so that we could meet up, shop and drink. At the same time I was going over to SMC Marchwood across Southampton water to see my brother and deliver some things from home. This accomplished I turned to my friends and we all decided to go and see what the town had to offer.

For those who do not know So'ton the high street is raised in comparison to the docks, and then there is another retail area (bit like the venue at Cribbs Causeway- but bigger).

The easiest way to get to this area would be to walk through a popular supermarket, out to the top floor of the attached car park which puts you on floor 10. There are 6 lifts that go down to street level in seconds. So in the group of us get (5 in total) and press floor 1, the doors close and we descend watching the little display for where we are. 10 - 9 - 7 (3 do odds, 3 do evens)- 5 - BANG, CLICK -"bugger".
We stopped, quickly. With no movement from the lift car we were a little concerned, especially when the idea of press any floor to get us out didn’t seem to work. It was then we noticed the LED display, 5 - 3 We couldn’t feel us moving?! - 1 - 11 - 9 - 7 eh? With that I hit the alarm button. Big orange lit up thing with a bell on it.

Now I was expecting something loud, like a bell to ring out and tell all and sundry that we were in a perilous predicament, however we got nothing. And the... ring ring... ring ring... 'in a few moments you will be connected to the call centre' ring ring... ring ring... bloody hell it takes a while to get to India nowadays. The all of a sudden a local accent pipes up... 'Just confirm you are in Lift X of X Car park?' Yes the car has just stopped. 'Ok I will alert the car park attendant and get the engineer out' I will get back to you.

So we were prepared for a long wait, but within 2 minutes 'Bang Thump' someone was on the roof. 'Don’t worry I'm taking you down to the ground floor, it may take a while.' 5 minutes later we were walking out of the lift, presumably some poor bugger had to winch us down. Just as we got out the intercom piped up..'Ok someone should be with you in 20 minutes.' Erm - someone’s on the roof and has let us out... you better speak to him, and with that we walked off, leaving a probably confused call centre taker looking at her screen

I take it then that Car park attendants aren’t meant to climb inside shafts? Frankly we didn’t care, we were just glad to out of there.
I am pleased to announce that no one panicked, although we did all go for a beer after.

I dont have to explain myself!!!

But I may as well try.

The last week has been one of very mixed emotions, the joy of knowing that I have a bit of time off of work (this is now rapidly dwindling), and the sadness of knowing that my routine of getting up and going to Marlwood is going to end.

We finished school for the final time on friday, and within 48 hrs I was back there. Nothing serious just last of the spring work. It has been a week of drinking, working, sleeping and more drinking, so you will have to excuse the lack of continuity to the blog.

When some stability enters my life I will write some more, maybe tomorrow but probably before Saturday.

Its quiet, so I'll give this a try.

Tonight I'm at work from 3-11pm. Normally I would have between 3-6 rooms to turn around ((business meeting rooms, not bedrooms(I work in a hotel)) and then I have a list of 20-30 jobs that have to be done over the 3 weekend shifts. Sat 7-3 Sat 3-11 Sun 8-4.

However tonight I have had:

3pm: 2 rooms to do.

3:40: 1 room to do

4pm: Call to room: No sound on t.v. Annoyance rating 3/10. Solve time 3 seconds - plug it in.

4:30: No rooms to do

4:30-5:30 Wander around looking thoughtful.

5:30-6:00: Dinner

6:00-6:20: Car Park check, or an excuse to get some fresh air while checking out the cars in the car park.

6:30-7:30: Do list of cleaning chores given to me by Duty Manager ready for Managing Directors look-a-round this week.

N.b 7pm: Call to room who has locked themselves out of bathroom: Annoyance rating 5/10. Solve time 10 seconds. Smugness factor 9/10 as they cant understand how I did it. I have the ability to hide the handy bit of wire in my hand, unlock the door with it with the one hand, and look blankly at them while doing it.

7:30-8: Cover reception, despite only knowing how to answer the telephone and redirect calls, let alone check people in.

This is a rare thing indeed, a quiet night. I will write up an average night some other time. But i'm off to look busy, before they ask me to do anything too strenuous... hey why should I when theres no immediate need? Besides I'm off tomorrow Muahahaha

Riddle-Me-Ree

Here’s two for you:

Make 25p using only 2 coins. One is not a 5 pence piece.


A frog is dead in the middle of a pond on a lily pad. The pond is circular and the lily is 10m from any edge. The frog has a jump span of only 5m. How could he get out?

Answers in comments please :D

Descent post tomorrow.

Laughter Lines

A man is on an airplane and he really really has to use thewashroom, but the men's one is occupied, so the stewardess lets him use the women's with one warning, "Don't press any of the buttons" she says.
So he goes into the washroom, and beside the toilet are 4 buttons, WW, WA,PP, and ATR. Since he's curious, he presses WW, and Warm Water splashes onto his arse. Then he presses WA and Warm Air dries it off. Thinking this is pretty cool, he press PP and Powder Puff poofs onto his butt. Now hes amazed, and he press ATR.
Next thing he knows he's in the hospital. He doesn't know how he got there, so he asks the nurse and says "the last thing I remember is being in the women's washroom and playing with all the cool buttons", the nurse replies, "Yeah, you must have been having a great time'til you pressed automatic tampon removal!"

Well done that B'stard

On Thursday night, myself and a fellow student went to the Bristol Hippodrome to partake in an evening of merriment and mirth.
We were there to see the latest performance by Rik Mayall (aka Alan B'stard) in The New Statesman; The Blair B'stard Project.
Now as we went I scanned the rest of the audience, a good general mix of young, not so young, not so old and oap's. (Not so old being Middle Aged- I just cant be bothered to justify myself.)

Seeing that we had a good mix of the population of Bristol in the theatre, I occurred to me that the one thing that I shouldn't be expecting was Bottomesque language. This was quickly shattered when within the 2 minutes of the play, the opening line was 'That bloody bu..ering b*@t!rd has done it again!" So guess what the rest of it was like.

The best bits: Tony Blair gets kidnapped; America invades Norway - With their top Desert Troops; B'stard takes over the Labour Party; Someone blows themselves up; Someone else gets blown up; and B'stard finally has his way with his secretary.
The whole thing ends with the soliloquy: "Well not a bad days work really, I got Condoleeza off my back, Flora on her back... And Habibbi, well he just went all over the f!*king place. You were right Tony, things can only get better; Now that B'STARD is in charge!"

So after 2 encores and 4 lots of Mayall bowing on his own to raptuous applause we set off, stopping quickly to purchase a programme and two B'stard rosettes. Well we weren't going to buy them is the play was crap were we?

Bloody Fantastic

Have just got back from the Bristol Hippodrome after seeing The New Statesman... Epidsode 2006 The Blair B'stard Project. For a review, just look at the title. A propper post tomorrow.

Had my ice cream... And ate it.

It would seem I had the best of both worlds on Monday, not only did I gain a good lie in, but I also had an impromptu trip to the beach. It started off like any other day at home, being bored and sitting around advertising this effect. But it was the mother that voiced her pococurantism for the time off the most, as she had managed all her weekend tasks already.

So I said the first thing that came into my head, which was... Lets go to Weston-Super-Mare. Not the most wonderful place in the world, full of pregnant 15 year olds, old women and pie and mash shops. In fact let me give you an idea of the beach at Weston.

You have (when the tide is out) a good 1/4 mile of sand reaching out into the Bristol Channel, followed by another 1/2 mile of silt and mud, and then finally around 1 mile out is the sea. So they best beach destination is isn't. It has the alternative title of Super-Mud in recognition of its most bountiful resource.

But I digress... We parked at the southern end of the beach on the beach itself. It marks the end of the Award Winning Section of beach which stretches from the north of Weston to where we were. Around a mile away was the sea the pier Weston's most famous attraction. We set off at a good pace, dodging the people heading back to their cars, over taking grannies, jumping over kids who wanted ice cream but couldn't and were having tantrums and weaving our way around the entire contents of the underage maternity hospital.

It was, it has to be said a very pleasant walk, and the extra 1/2 mile walking along the pier afterwards must have done us some good. We stopped at the end of the pier to use the facilities, and watch all the people feeding coin after coin into the money hungry amusements.
Back at the entrance to the pier are more mini arcades and some ice cream sellers, we indulged ourselves with a 99 each... Costing us £1.50 each.

The walk back was a little dogged by the fact that, a wind had grown and we were sand blasted all the way along the promenade back to the car. It being a bank holiday all the townies from up north were evacuating Cornwall, and despite using alternative routes it still took us nearly three times as long on the way back as it did on the way there.
But it was a nice day, from my memories of childhood there seemed to be just as little sea as ever, the amusements were just as noisy as ever and the prices were as high as ever.

Random thoughts that have no other way of making it into a blog entry.

Well here we are... Another Bank Holiday! Any more and I may just get used to them; but more likely just start looking for other ways to have a legit lie-in.

Yesterday at work we had two rugby teams in the hotel. One was a serious team that played well, the other were a load of drunkards who had nothing better to do than get pissed for the entire two days that they were there for. I never saw them without a beer in one hand. What was worse was that it was crap beer too, showing that they had no taste what so ever.

The proper team were a problem too, not that they were a nuisance, just that the girls wouldn't do any work and insisted on gawping for their entire shifts.

I have now added another blog to the list on the left, Random Acts of Reality... Bloody good read, and thought provoking.