Debrief

You really couldn't make up some of the things that happen in my life, and this weekend was no exception. I'm taking a risk talking about it here, since my proposed plans for next year are not, shall we say, compatible with my current job (shhh...), but I'm so excited I want to shout about it somewhere, and where better than here, on my almost-secret blog?

I'll begin at the beginning...On Saturday morning at 7am I found myself at Victoria station with a rucksack on my back, ready to embark on a train journey to East Grinstead with a handful of other hopefuls who had also enrolled on the Raleigh International assessment weekend for Volunteer Managers (over-25s who want to use their skills to work on Raleigh expeditions around the world in a mentoring/managerial capacity). The first people I met (having gravitated towards a small group of other rucksack-wearing folk) were Sade, a previous Raleigh volunteer who was on the weekend to be assessed for a trip to India, Robin, a 20 year old student at Durham, and Charlie, a 21 year old student at St.Andrews University, both of whom had been allowed to attend the assessment weekend in spite of their young age as they had attended previous expeditions as venturers. It didn't take long for me and Charlie to start bantering with one another - I was attracted to him immediately (he's absolutely gorgeous, very tall, dark hair, big hazel eyes), and loathe as I am to admit it I was also drawn to his air of arrogance, in spite of thinking he was a toff and completely full of himself.

We arrived at 8.17am and were met by Raleigh staff, who put us all into taxis to the Broadstone Warren Scout camp ten minutes' drive away. When we arrived we assembled in the main hall and were given a brief introduction to the weekend, after which we were put into three groups and assigned three 'facilitators' per group (previous Volunteer Managers who were giving up their time to come and help out). My group consisted of VMs Steph, Jason and Pete, and fellow participants Robin, Phillippa, Dick, Jo, Carla, Mel, Owen, Dave, Nuria and Doug. I was initially disappointed not to be with Charlie, but something told me it was for the best, as we'd only have brought out the worst in one another and not taken it seriously, and the last thing I would have wanted would be to jeopardise my chances of getting offered a place on expedition.

We began by doing some ice breaker games (everyone taking someone else's right hand and someone else's left hand and then trying to collectively untangle yourselves being the most amusing). We then went onto a 'spider's web' challenge where we had to get through a giant web strung up between two trees without touching it. After that we had some training on using radios and a spot of health and safety info before going onto our first main challenge, which was essentially to replicate Field Base activities in readiness for an arrival of new volunteers. I was on the Comms team with Dave, Jo and Owen, and the others were divided across other roles including Project Manager (Dick), Administrator (Mel), Medics (Carla and Phillippa) and Logistics. My particular role was to write a ten minute presentation which the entire group would perform in front of the other two groups at the end of the day, so I got stuck into that whilst the others did their respective roles (Jo worked on an info leaflet to be given out in the host country promoting the expedition and Owen drew up a list of requirements of what we needed to know about the volunteers/programme for the literature we were meant to create, which included a welcome pack, newsletter and mementoes of their trip.

For the rest of Saturday we literally didn't have a minute to ourselves. As soon as we'd finished the Field Base task we went straight onto the next one, which comprised five smaller tasks (choosing four people to save in the event of a nuclear disaster, which showed you shouldn't be prejudiced; using teamwork to fill holes in a pipe so the object inside rose to the surface; devising icebreakers/energisers for the group; assembling a trebouchet/catapult and drawing doodles to show how we'd got to where we had in our lives, what we expected out of our expedition and where we saw ourselves in future. At the end we talked through our doodles in the glorious late afternoon sunshine which was a really lovely moment. It was great to hear the others' reasons for wanting a place on expedition, from recent break ups to people at a crossroads in their lives, someone who wanted to acquire the skills to enable them to step things up a gear at their current work place and another person who wanted to find herself so she could become a more rounded person for her children. Just so inspiring, and my own reasons for wanting to do it (to broaden my experience of working in comms for a charity so I'm in a stronger position to apply to others upon my return, to learn more about myself and what I want to do, to hopefully become a better person - I know, I know, bleurgh, but true!) seemed like the right ones, which was reaffirming.

After the second task it was straight off to a big clearing where we had to decide on the best places to set up the different areas of a camp. We had to mark them out and actually build a tent that would sleep ten people (which should in itself have been a warning sign of what was to come!) Then it was time for a short trek to a large stagnant pond, which we told we would have to cross, not by raft as some of us expected but - to our horror - by linking arms and walking through. We split into three groups, with the first two going through a shallower section of the pond (but still with water up to their chests) and my group being told by the facilitators to go through the middle, where at one point my feet were no longer touching the floor and I was actually struggling to keep my head above the water! It was freezing (especially since I'd stripped down to my pants to spare my clothes from getting wet!) but exhilirating, in a funny kind of way!

The daytime activities were rounded off with us all getting together to do our ten minute presentations, and I must say I felt quite proud when ours went down well with the audience (it was totally ridiculous, too short and not nearly informative enough, but everyone laughed and the team threw themselves into the acting, which made it all worthwhile, especially as I'd been on at them like Hitler all day long trying to make them practise!) Afterwards we were given food and cooking equipment and taking to a spot where we were told to make camp for the night (Phillippa quickly became my smoking buddy and kindly offered me a space in her tent, without which I would have been screwed!). We cooked a pretty impressive pasta dish and once we'd washed up Steph joined us and instigated twenty minutes of quiet time, where we could just sit and reflect on our reasons for wanting to go on expedition. I initially wasn't so keen on this, but just like on the meditation weekend in January as soon as it started I really enjoyed it; I just lay back and looked up at the amazing starry sky above.

By the time it ended it was about 11pm, and we were taken back up to the main hall for hot chocolate - something I was very suspicious about because I'd been told there was a nasty surprise during the night and had already voiced concerns we'd be made to move camp. And, sure enough, we were - with a radio call coming in as we all stood around chatting to say a cloud of volcanic ash meant we had to pack up and leave immediately, so we duly ran back down, dissembled our tents and headed to the orientation point provided. This then became our next challenge - finding a bag of breakfast food somewhere in the forest. Overall the team morale was pretty solid, but after two hours of searching we were all pretty freezing and pretty frazzled! Still, we did eventually locate the parcel at 2.30am and were rewarded with Mars bars before heading back to a new coordinate to camp - which turned out to be the clearing we'd made into a camp earlier, complete with our ten man tent should we wish to sleep in that! Phillippa and I decided against it and pitched her tent againk, then went over to sit by the fire Charlie had built next to his tent.

When Phillippa went to bed I stayed with Charlie, chatting to him and a couple of his teammates. Before long the two others on the opposite side of the fire had fallen asleep, so Charlie and I snuggled up beside the fire, chatting and giggling like schoolchildren. Needless to say the constant flirting finally led to us kissing, then we lay under our sleeping bags and looked up at the stars until daybreak, which was actually really romantic! When everyone started getting up at 7am, however, the full reality of a night with no sleep began to dawn on us in a far less pleasant way than the dawn itself had! We got up, dissembled the tents and went up to the main hall for breakfast, after which we (thankfully) had a sit down outside and a Q&A session with the facilitators, where Charlie and I just sat leaning on one another and trying to stay awake!

After the Q&A we were given hilarious white body suits and paintbrushes and asked to Ronseal the fences around the swimming pool. Kevin, the programme trainer, came up to Charlie and I and started making jokes about us having a domestic - it really was unbelievable how many people seemed to think we were a long established couple. Steph had mentioned 'my friend' the previous day in reference to Charlie and I'd said 'oh no, I only met him this morning' (which, in hindsight, may not have been the best thing to say, as I'm now really worried the facilitators may have me down as a bit of a hussy which, if it jeopardised my place, would be devastating - although I take comfort in the fact it's only relationships between Volunteer Managers and Volunteers that are forbidden, not relationships between Volunteer Managers. Clearly I'm choosing to gloss over the age difference - no change there!) After that we had a competition on the field to see who could launch their 'volunteer' (eggs we'd been given at the start of the w/e to look after - sadly our first one broke during our presentation sketch when everyone crashed to the floor pretending to be trees, it having been in Doug's pocket at the moment of impact!) and then we had a final 'orienteering' task, which turned out to be a crisis response challenge where we had to send out for a stretcher for an injured volunteer and carry them back to camp.

At the end of the morning we gathered for lunch before everyone went their separate ways, but as we ate I noticed Charlie was standing across the field talking to his facilitator and looking serious. When I asked him it transpired they'd told him he hadn't been accepted as a VM, because they felt he was too young for the role and hadn't got properly involved in the weekend. He spent about an hour trying to convince them (he got a bursary from his Uni to pay for his place in memory of a friend's dad who passed away, so not being able to do it will be embarrassing for him) to no avail, and eventually admitted defeat. I'd waited around for him because I didn't want him to go through it by himself, so we got a lift to the train station together and headed back to London. He was thoroughly pissed off with the situation so I let him be grumpy, but eventually he mellowed a bit and suggested going for a drink, so (somewhat weirdly, given that we'd only met 31 hours previously) we got off the train at Clapham Junction, jumped in a cab to mine, showered, got changed and went straight to the nearest pub where we sat in the beer garden for a couple of hours in the sunshine. When you've not slept for a whole night you tend to feel you're in a dream, which is exactly what it was like, but pleasant nonetheless. It turned into a bit of an impromptu counselling session though, as I tried to get Charlie to consider the things he'd done wrong rather than just moaning about the organisation and the other people. I told him that although I could tell he was a nice guy underneath the bravado, to other people he just comes across as cocky, arrogant and aloof, with an air of thinking he's better than everyone else, which is obviously never good. He, bless him, took it all on board and was really grateful to me for being so honest. He said 'God, you're really smart, aren't you?' and whilst I'd love to think it was all down to me, I have to say that was the moment when it hit me that perhaps it was more down to me having more life experience. So anyway, we we went back to mine for a bit and then he picked up his backpack and left. Bizarre does not even begin to cover it.

Unfortunately the weekend has taken its toll and today I'm off work with what I'm pretty sure is a combination of exhaustion and sunstroke - it was a stupidly hot weekend and I didn't drink nearly enough water, especially yesterday, not helped by the fact I went to bed at 9pm last night and slept all the way through. I look like Rudolph and feel like crap, but it was worth it. These kinds of experiences don't come along all that often, and it's made me even more certain this is the course of action I want to follow. I just hope, as I said, that my dalliance with a fellow volunteer (or, to be more specific, a fellow volunteer who has been blacklisted by the organisation) won't have any bearing on my application for a place. I'd be gutted if I didn't get in because of that, but I'm hoping that won't even feature on their appraisal of me and that they'll see how serious I am.

On another note, I'm sure it won't have escaped your attention that yet another 21 year old has strayed inadvertently onto the scene. Clearly this has even fewer legs than Clark, given that he's at Uni in Scotland (!), but the point is not whether anything will happen with him, or even who he is, the point is that I don't understand why this keeps happening!! Is it pure chance that I keep stumbling across them or do I actively seek them out?! The trouble is that all three of them (Leo, Clark and now Charlie) are gorgeous, and while I'm pretty certain I'm not a shallow person, I must admit I'm a sucker for a pretty face. Why oh why can't I just meet a few more pretty faces around my own age - the only ones I meet who are anywhere close to my age have girlfriends! Arrrrghhh. The sooner I get away from this madness the better!!