It’s rest day as we are half-way through the World Championships and after 6 days of flying coupled with the dreadful accident yesterday pretty much all the pilots were happy to spend the day loafing about reading, emailing and having very long lunches.
In the British Team house we spent the morning dossing and chatting about wings and tactics all washed down with plenty of coffee and tea. As the only one of the team to have had the foresight to bring a decent supply of Tetley Tea Bags with me I’ve been unusually popular with everybody at breakfast time. I only brought enough to see me through the two weeks, however, so no amount of badgering me and talking about ‘team spirit’ or ‘all in it together’ has persuaded me to part with many of my limited stash. I’ve also hidden them in my room so that neither Jamie nor Russ can stage a raid whilst I’m not in the house. As we all know a true Englishman can’t survive without at least two cups of tea a day and I’m defending my supply to the death even if it gets me grumpy looks as the others have to drink either the local muck or flowery nonsense like ‘fruit tea’ or ‘raspberry tea’. Yeuch…
We have a Jacuzzi in the house and we were hoping to have spent the afternoon in that (or at least I was) but it was cold when I went to investigate at 3pm. I couldn’t find the landlord to get it put on so, undeterred, I dived into the nether regions of the machinery underneath it to see how to put the heater on so it would be warm for a nice soak by early evening. Jamie had mentioned something about how it was easy to turn on so I pushed a few switches till things whirred a bit and hoped it would heat up. Coming back for a check at 5pm it was still cold so I had another delve into the gubbins underneath and tried turning a few taps on and off. I thought I’d wait a few minutes to see if any heat started soaking through the pipes when I suddenly noticed the level in the Jacuzzi had fallen quite significantly. Turning everything off I quickly traced the pipes and discovered I’d managed to turn on the drainpipe and so was emptying it. ‘Not to worry’ I thought and just filled it up again with the hosepipe lying next to it and hoped nobody would notice.
Coming down the stairs to go out this evening there seemed to be quite a bit of commotion going on and several people messing about with toolboxes. ‘Hola!’ I waved to them, noticing to my horror a large flood across the entire first floor landing and lots of mops and buckets laying about. I think I’ve discovered where the overflow pipes come out. Lacking the ability to explain in Spanish what had happened I just did a runner to the taco stall and hoped it would all be sorted by the time I got back.
It wasn’t and I’m currently hiding in my room typing this whilst continued Spanish shouts of ‘inundacion’ and ‘agua’ come through the doors. On later interrogation it turns out that ‘a Mexican bloke’ explained to Jamie how to turn it on and ‘mentioned something about taps though he didn’t actually show me which ones and I couldn’t understand his Spanish anyway’. Nice work, young James. At least it means that I can blame it on him if questioned whilst sipping my cup of tea and looking innocent.
It’s probably lucky that we’ll be out flying all day tomorrow when the owner’s wife returns. I fear there may be no more scrambled eggs or other treats at breakfast time once she sees the mess.
Mark H
Russ and Jamie loafing about
Russ and Alijaz Valic discussing you know what
Yassen Sassov with patient friend
The results of the unfortunate jacuzzi incident
