Previously
Liz’s grandad was taken into hospital so Liz had to miss the start of the week because she was in Lincoln.
The marquee hire company said they can’t get a team together to put the marquee up on Sunday so we’re going to have to re-arrange plans. They do however say they will be there at 6am Monday morning. Fantastic, with a long day ahead of us we really want to be up that early.
I tried to book a van but they secretly charge you double as a deposit and so it actually cost me more than my available balance on my credit card and therefore my credit card company rejected it. So I had to make other arrangements for paying for it.
The hoodies cover whatever t-shirt you are wearing in fluff.
Saturday
Norm comes down ill.
We arrive at the van hire place having already paid for the van to find out that TJS Hire, the branch we were at don’t have insurance for under 25s. Even though Sixt said it was fine. So they can’t give us the van.
So I drag an ill Norm out of bed to get me the phone number for Self Drive Solutions. I phone them and ask them for a van today. The guy says he will try and get me one and ring me back in 2 minutes. A few minutes later TJS get a phone call asking if they can do a van for a week starting today. Yep, because Self Drive went through Mayday who went through Sixt who then called TJS Hire. So we ended up with the exact same van but paying like a hundred pounds more for it. The exact same van.
We then head off to the generator hire place to find they are closed. I phoned up and was told they were open till 4pm but they are closed. And the computer system has been closed down for the day. So they can’t do anything.
Sunday
We meet to set everything up. But we can’t decorate the marquee because it hasn’t arrived yet. We can’t put the other tent up because it’s raining. We can’t test the generator because we haven’t got it yet. We can’t test the heater or PA system because they need power. We can do the various staff briefings but half the staff are missing. We head off to poster Roger Stevens but it’s locked.
We decide to fold all the leaflets up. But they haven’t been printed yet. I’ve run out of SoC printer credits. So I go to an ISS cluster. Except ISS don’t have Publisher so I can’t print it normally and I can’t export it to images on my laptop and transfer it over via USB because then it won’t be double sided. Which is all fairly irrelevant given both myself and Norm are running low on ISS printer credits anyway as it turns out (where are all mine?!?).
Monday
It rained a lot. And hailed. Heavily.
It turns out our fuel containers have cracks in them so we have to alter the plan for the day to include buying some new ones. Because our time and money budgets aren’t quite shot enough.
Myself and Norm arrived on site at 6am ready for the marquee hire company to arrive at that time as they said they would. They turn up at 8:30. Suprisingly enough, they don’t get it up by the 9am deadline promised.
In the mean time we aren’t doing much because there are pieces missing from the other tent so we have to wait for Paul to arrive with the other of last year’s tent so we can get parts from that. Meanwhile I go to pick up the generator which turns out to be even more complicated to get out of the van than we thought so just to get the thing out takes 15-20 minutes.
The wind destroyed the generator tent and I mean destroyed. It broke the metal poles. So the generator shelter is just a plastic sheet pegged over it.
Tuesday
It rained on and off all day including some hail.
We had a cash discrepancy at the end of the night.
Nicola was ill for a second day.
Norm had to miss the end of Mike Lake’s talk because Michelle had stolen him for the evening because she had booked her flights incorrectly.
Conclusion
Are you really still trying to sell me on the idea that a benevolent god exists?
Don't have time to check my blog? Get a weekly email with all the new posts. This is my personal blog, so obviously it is 100% spam free.
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 11:20 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.