The ground crew in Perth was split into two shifts, imaginatively named Shift One and Shift Two. I personally preferred the more McDonald's oriented substitution of 'shift' to 'crew,' but such a wild and dangerous idea had no chance.
Some of you are by now aware of the up-and-down nature of my workload while in Perth and are of course insanely jealous of my perfect job. I'd just like to point out that I'm not allowed to talk about the details of the hard part of my trip which does mean that this blog rather lends itself to promoting the Air Force as a holiday on full pay.
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This just in - I have been listening to a Beatles album while writing this and a song came on called
You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) which has disturbed me slightly, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing, anymore.
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Right.. Air Force.. Full pay.. where was I? Okay:
Ahem. To further the illusion that I do nothing for a living I am going to share with you some pictures from one of the few nights when both Shift One and Two had no work on.
Someone decided to go Ten Pin Bowling. In situations like this it is never a good idea to plan. To plan and organise an outing runs the very serious risk of losing people rather than collecting them. The more time someone has to think of something else they'd rather be doing the more likely your evening jaunt will fall on its haunches before it reaches the start line. My evening of Ten Pin Bowling got off the ground when there was a knock at my door:
"Yes?" (inquired the beautiful damsel)
"Coming bowling?" (asked the handsome fellow)
"Ten pin or lawn?" (clarified the lovely lady)
"Ten pin. Almost everyone's coming." (informed the informative male of attractive disposition)
"No reason not to, gimme five mins to get changed." (agreed the agreeable and equally attractive person of female disposition)
"Sweet, meet downstairs in ten" (continued the leafy tree with tentacles.)
(just making sure you're reading everything).
Fifteen minutes later and we were making our way to the vans and off to the bowling. It was an exciting drive, to say the least, and to add a little more I'll state here and now that I'm glad we were in a country with the same road rules as us. (As opposed to, say, America.) (Or Germany.)
BUT ALAS!
The problem with
not planning is of course sometimes the venue isn't quite ready for you. So was the case for us. There was a party of some sort going on upstairs where the bowling was supposed to be happening and we weren't allowed in. This is what the sign on the stairs told us. People milled around aimlessly like slightly concerned sheep in front of an open gate without anything definitive happening. I raced upstairs to find out what was happening. I found out that for some reason, the sign on the stairs had told the truth. When this information was passed to the flock, it was decided we'd wait out the hour and a half to the end of the party by going
down the stairs and into the pool hall. To be honest I thought signalled the end of the bowling idea. Usually I like a good game of pool but this night I just wasn't feeling it. Instead I decided to ruin everyone else's experience by trying to take 'artsy' photos of the action. But I didn't have my Good Camera, just my point-and-shoot. The P.A.S. (which I sometimes think of as my P.O.S) has its advantages and fitting into a handbag is one of them, hence its presence at the pool hall. But it doesn't have the focus or the speed I love so much in my
Canon EOS 500D D-SLR.
Of course after a few beers and ciders and a couple rounds each we made our way upstairs to the bowling. The energy and enjoyment was about the same, generally, and we took up the usual two lanes. I don't usually play so well as to be in the top three in this game, but I'm not usually working hard to keep out of the bottom two either and tonight I was having a bad night. Not as bad as Kerry though. We ended up giving him the kiddies' aide.
We finished our practice round (I came 2nd-to-last) and while playing through our competition round someone finally pointed out a suspicious looking hole in the wall (?) in front of us:
Enlarged:
I wonder how that got there?
I ended the competition round neither last nor second-to-last, but no better than that. Ole-Mel-The-Games-Shark did pretty well despite telling us how terrible she is at bowling and how this is the second time she'd ever played it. I regret teaching her to use the arrows laid down in the wood at the start of the lane because boy did she kick my arse. This was a very similar situation to how "I'm no good at pool" and "how do you play Last Card/Gin/Hearts/Threes/Sevens?" All of which she excelled at brilliantly. We finally got her with 500. Turns out she's not such a team player ;-) ... OMG, Soz Mel LOL !!*
But hey, fun was had by all and it was great to get the whole team together in one go - even if it did mean many a drunken question trying to discover which female body part I loved to perv at more. Not that I made it difficult for them, the poor, sweet, predictable boys that they are! ;-)
(this part)
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That, I pray to God, is the only time you'll see me using OMG or LOL.
