History.

I really should blog more often. Or maybe I shouldn't, who knows. Anyway, here's a story from my childhood.

Many moons ago, and back when I were a lad (about six or seven years ago) I was in the Venture Scouts, having been involved in Scouting since the tender age of six. We had been led to believe that Venture Scouts was mostly doing "proper" stuff. Man stuff (even when the women were there). Climbing things, breaking things, swimming in things, driving things. That kind of stuff.

Actually, it was mostly sitting around drinking tea.

But there are a few events that really stick out. And this is one of them:-

In 1998, we were given the opportunity of camping in Poland. We jumped at the chance, and (truth be told) that whole camp was great, involving midnight hikes in rivers, setting camp in deserted islands, historical lessons in the form of a visit to Majdanek, and accidentally breaking into a castle.

I didn't mean to, honest.

I forget exactly where it was now, but we were visiting some quaint Polish town, and there happened to be a castle type structure there. It looked fairly interesting and so I wandered off to go have a look around it. Except I couldn't find the entrance.

But I did find a random Polish guy who seemed to be heading in that direction, so I followed him. In retrospect, he probably wondered why some malinformed English teenager was stalking him, but since he didn't bring it up, neither did I.

About half way to the castle, he took a detour across a field. It did occur to me that he might not be heading to the castle afterall, but I held my trust in him and my luck bore out. Eventually, he climbed through a hole in the wall, I followed, and we found ourselves in the main street of the inner walls.

Mere moments later, the rest of the Unit came from round a corner, and seemed very unsurprised to see me. "Wasn't it expensive to get in?" mentioned one.

"Not really," said I, having never been particularly good at lying.

So anyway, that is the story about the time I invaded a very small bit of Poland. Maybe that was only interesting to me, so tomorrow's blog may be more exciting. It may even be about Bob the Totem Pole.

Some time, no blog.

Isn't food poisoning horrid?

Stuck in Orange for a week, I decided to enjoy myself at a local seafood bar. With three gert big pots of Mussels. Yum. Oh, and three gert big glasses of wine as well.

Something didn't agree with me, and so I spent my night decorating the hotel bathroom a rather fetching shade of brown (lovely*) followed by a six hour train ride home. I've been out of sorts a bit since, but think I'm getting myself back together now. Sadly, I think my out-of-sortsness might have impaired my judgement vis-a-vis a few social matters, but I hope I can be forgiven for those. You'll never read this, but sorry Matthew, even if you are an idiot.

It's no secret that I'm looking for another means of gainful employment. Actually, that might be a lie: It appears to be common knowledge to everyone except those people that I have applied to, most of which seem to think that I am perfectly happy where I am and that there is no need to even acknowledge my application. I'd love to blame my lack of decent application and covering letter writing skills upon the illness, but some of these stem back to before then.

Just how long do you wait before you understand a non-response to be: "You're a twunt and we don't want to hire you"?


* I would tell you about how much lovelier it was to clean the sink after I blocked it, but you don't want to read about that.

*waves hello*