Author: Belinda George

Belinda is an English writer and student journalist and is currently studying a degree in Geography. She enjoys covering environmental topics and and is now publishing her undergraduate learnings to inspire others. However her specialism is comedy and satire. Alongside her degree, she currently holds the position of editor of her university paper and is also completing a personal research project on endophyte toxicity in grasslands which she hopes to publish in the near future.

Sockulent meal at Turtle Bay

It was an impromptu visit to Turtle Bay after I’d caught a chill spending the day at university not wearing enough.

I asked my boyfriend to bring me some socks, tights, jumpers, blankets, anything that might revive me.

When he picked me up, I pulled the warm socks on quickly, scrambled into the tights in the car, and then put the skinny jeans back on over the top.

Then we decided to go into town for dinner.

Telling myself that black tights under jeans with pumps looked just about acceptable, I got out of the car in the state I was in, and stomped off to the restaurant, leaving my bag in the car.

As soon as I walked in and we sat down, I put my coat over my chair and went to the toilet. As usual women were loitering around the mirrors and so I squeezed my way out and went back to my seat.

No longer than three minutes later, I decided there was no way I could eat a meal with this many tight layers around my waist and with feet this uncomfortably hot. Instead of the usual excited anticipation at the thought of food, instead it filled me with dread as I imagined having to force food in to this already painfully tight waistband arrangement.

“What should I do?” I asked my boyfriend.

“Go to the loo and take them off” he replied.

“But I can’t just carry a pair of thick grey socks and tights across the restaurant?”

“Take your coat”

“Put my coat on to go to the loo!?”

“Well you’re gunna have to”

Imagining the alternative option, which would be to get up and carry my coat to the loo, which I decided was even stranger, I put the coat on, zipped it up, and confidently strode to the toilets.

I took the first available cubical and began to undress, remove the tights and socks, and re-dress. Having successfully completed this, shoving one sock into each front pocket along with the pair of tights, I then stood there for a second unsure of what to do. Could I walk into a toilet and leave again without flushing?

I decided that to keep up the appearance of behaving normally, I should flush the toilet. It felt rather odd flushing an empty toilet, but who was any wiser? It was only me that was ever going to know the truth.

So I confidently walked out, only to see the same girls standing by the mirrors as the first visit, no less than 5 minutes previously. At this moment it flickered across my mind that flushing the toilet might not have been the best option. I must admit they were much quicker to move out of the way this time as I tried to get to the sink to wash my hands… again.

“That’s much better” I said when I got back to the table, hung my coat back on the chair, sat down, and we proceeded with our meals as planned.

Afterwards, the waitress came over to take our plates, but I still had a bit to finish. She said she’d come back.

Soon after I finished my meal and, in getting ready to leave, I put my coat on.

Around 10 minutes later she returned. She hesitated at the bowl of half-eaten chips and looked at me asking “Are these done with?” I leaned back in my chair, gesturing in an exaggerated manner that I was fully satisfied and that she could safely take them away. In doing so, I began rubbing my belly, and drawing attention to it by announcing “Yes thank you, I’m completely stuffed”.

She glanced at my hand-rubbing-belly action which made me look down. Then, I suddenly realised to my horror that I had this bulging, lumpy belly that could not be explained by eating too much nor by being pregnant. At least if it was a child, it was a very peculiar shaped one.

Quickly, I announced “Oh, that’s just a pair of socks!”

The sudden realisation of what I’d just said hit me as she gave me the weirdest look I’ve ever received from a waitress in a restaurant. Not that I make a habit of getting waiting staff to give me strange looks.

I just smiled and gazed at her as if to say “That’s completely normal, do you not bring socks into restaurants in your pockets?” as she slowly stepped away.

I left the restaurant fully conscious of my new alien-baby, and lay my hands over it in an attempt to conceal it as I pushed through the crowds in the half light.

Despite my efforts, I definitely caught the eye of woman of similar age to myself who had spotted my little cover-up. I could read it in her face that she knew. She was thinking, ‘That poor woman has stuffed her coat with socks and is pretending she’s pregnant. How very, very sad…”

Becoming a geographer

“I must admit”, my Danish housemate Andreas uttered to me, “When I first saw you I was surprised when you told me you were here to study geography”.

It was totally forgivable. There I stood – my petite, hibiscus and quinoa salad-moulded figure tanned by a seemingly endless stint on a sun lounger in Marbella; long bleach blonde hair tumbling over my Barbie-pink v-neck t-shirt; boobs propped up on a ledge of foam rubber and lashes laden with mascara. It didn’t look like I was going to last five minutes among a class full of studious budding physical geographers.

152 — Clearly a committed environmentalist in the making

At first, my curiosity for world economics and contempt for the bores of batholiths earned me the affectionate nickname ‘the closet human geographer’. I was a difficult one to integrate. It took some months, perhaps a year or more before I was fully enrolled: happily wearing square-framed spectacles, oversized shoe laces and spending my weekends attending giant vegetable shows.

It was a slow yet beautifully discernible transition. I remember our first school trip: It was just six weeks into the start of our degree course, when we were forcefully frogmarched to Dartmoor to spend a week in November in a granite mansion with no heating.

On that week, I cried. I recall being knelt in the wilderness, the howling rain driving into my left ear, trying to dig soil out of the ground with a plastic 2ml spatula. That’s when I cracked. I’d tried really hard to embrace all that this new experience had to offer but now, tears began to roll down my face. I was cold, wet, windswept and hungry. In that moment of bleakness, I conducted a quick calculation in my head: This semester alone had already cost me in excess of £10,000. I had turned by back on the business woman I once was. No longer did I attend canapé-fuelled meetings in four-inch stilettos and talk sales figures with other hair-extension clad women. No, here I was – having kissed goodbye to a handsome pay packet and already £10,000 in debt – crouched in a peat bog on Dartmoor in the middle of winter. There was no turning back. What on Earth had I done?

At the end of a long, wet and tiring week, we took one final visit to the Tor summit. Our lecturers, clad in Burghaus green waterproofs stood like toy soldiers whilst the undying enthusiasm for geology was clearly visible on one teacher’s face as he ran around trying to assemble the students for more study. As everyone reluctantly gathered in a circle around an apparent xenolith I stepped to the front. Being a mature student (a ripe 24 years old) I didn’t want to replicate the extreme disinterest of the rest of the group; who were worn out, hungover and just about ready to crawl under the duvet and watch Netflix. With a feigned look of fascination on my face I leaned forward, crawled onto the rock and ran my hand over the xenolith. A million thoughts raced through my mind and I suddenly realised that this little piece of foreign rock caught among the batholith when it formed 20,000 years ago was under the palm of my hand and actually- that was pretty damn awesome.

In time, I learned to embrace all things geography. Whether it was sitting on the floor of a lecture hall in our spare time trying to place Singapore onto a giant map of China (how many geography students does it take to work out Singapore is not a city in China?) or timing water and it slowly dripped through a lump of soil into a measuring cylinder at a rate of one drop per minute, I was there, fully signed up, and ready to learn.

bugs — Hunting for mayfly nymphs to help assess water quality, Dartmoor

As I grew into geography, golden locks and manicured talons grew out into sombre dirty-brown tresses and dirt-tipped stubs. Fitted t-shirts and hotpants were gradually replaced with unfashionable fleeces and ill-fitting waterproof trousers. In our matching outdoor-wear, like comrades on the front line, I knew I was safe – I wasn’t going to be judged here.

water — Raring to go and collect sand particles to asses longshore drift at Sand Bay, Somerset

I studied hard. Although I’d always had an environmental conscience and a love for the great outdoors, it wasn’t easy to re-train from robot-like selling of commercially produced fashion products to delving into the science of Earth’s systems and producing maps, presentations and written-reports on them. Moreover, I had absolutely no relevant qualifications- everything I achieved at that place I had to teach myself from scratch.

My reluctant but nevertheless relentless studying and slightly enacted thirst for knowledge slowly but surely morphed into a true and burning passion. For pure fear of ‘not getting my money’s worth’ I wasn’t prepared to leave any stone unturned. Conscientiously reading everything and anything that was suggested to us, including a grand total of seven text books cover to cover and possibly thousands more journal articles, the more I knew about this planet the more I became determined to save it. In fact, I took my geography degree so seriously I even developed geographic tongue (disclaimer for when you inevitably tap that into Google: mine is nowhere near that bad, although I did have South East Asia on the tip of my tongue for a short while).

Things that once seemed abstract or irrelevant to me suddenly seemed immensely fascinating and disconcertingly close. When it came to rainforests I became a committed conservationist; when it came to deserts I became a total alluvial fan (sorry Harry, yes, I did nick your line). When it comes to geology, no longer would I just glance at a rock and think nothing. It became a monument of beauty- I began to really appreciate a good cleavage when I was looking at one. (I promise that’s the end of the lame geography jokes, I was just highlighting the fun we had…)

Vertical cleavage in shale of the Chancellor Formation, Yoho National Park (Mountain Beltway, 2012)

You see, it is through deep learning about the issues that affect our planet and inevitably all life that inhabits it that inspires one to take action. Of course my job was never to take action in the form of recycling the odd bottle, or even going out there with an enormous net and trying to scoop out a few thousand of them myself… it wasn’t to stand outside Hinkley power station holding a sign that says ‘Don’t make us all fry’, or go vegan alone or refuse to drive my car. I had one destiny, and that was to become the driving force behind policy change that invariably stems from the most influential group of all: The people.

Those tea-fuelled nights ironically spent burning electricity, throwing trees into the waste paper bin and eating rainforest-derived palm-oil laden peanut butter straight from the jar whilst reading hundreds upon thousands of articles were never in vein, because through the written word my purpose is to spread knowledge in a form that is engaging, simple, captivating and inspiring.

I’m not sitting here thinking “What the heck do I do with a geography degree?” (The question I have received a sum total of 68 times since completing my final assessments). I have a mission, and that’s to inspire every single person who reads my words to think… to vote… to choose wisely- and if they want, to wear green waterproofs and let their hair grow out, because, well, there is something rather liberating about it.

Strutting my stuff in my waders, Dartmoor

And yes, I know you’re still somewhat perturbed by the images of geographic tongue. Here it is, in case you’re still wondering.

STUDY

Why you should never leave negative feedback on eBay

Okay, so you bought something from eBay that was described as used, the photographs were a little fuzzy and you paid a bit too much for it.

When you try it, it doesn’t exactly turn you into Miss World like you thought it was going to. Then, shock-horror, you spot a snag that the seller failed to mention. You begin to fill with venom. There is only one way to take revenge against this personal vendetta: leave a negative feedback. That will teach the conniving little fraudster.

I can almost feel the fumes radiating from the computer screen when I see them- no contact has been made, no attempt to get a refund or a replacement has been tried, and the sheer number of exclamation marks and typos spells out a message written by a hand that is shaking with rage.

Well let me tell you a secret- if you keep thinking the world is out to get you then it will. If you want good service and you wish to avoid being screwed over altogether then you’ve got to learn some eBay manners. The golden rule is: never leave a negative feedback.

Let’s start with some ground rules: DSRs. This stands for Detailed Seller Ratings; this is the part where you can mark sellers out of five stars for accuracy of item description, communication, delivery time and postage and packaging charges. These directly affect seller performance, and therefore the strength of their listings in search results. Low DSR ratings effectively push seller’s products to the back of the queue, so potential buyers will never even see them. A seller who makes living selling two-pound items relies on selling hundreds of them. So unless the service was absolutely appalling and the seller called you up and threatened you, put dog poo through your letterbox or insulted your mother, think very carefully before you leave a casual four stars.

Postage charges is one area of DSRs where sellers typically lose out- if it wasn’t free it doesn’t deserve five stars right? Wrong. Take a trip to your local courier, find out the postage price per item and then order a thousand plastic pouches, address labels and Jiffy bags. You never thought they were that expensive did you?

Feedback works in a similar way to DSRs- sellers with poor feedback percentages will lose potential sales through search results. Even worse, the feedback scores are displayed on all their listings which can put some buyers off altogether. One click and anyone can read what useless waste of space you think they are, because they ruined your dinner plans with a faulty potato masher they sent you six months ago.

Next rule of thumb: use the messaging service- sparingly. eBay has a distinct advantage over an impersonal company because the seller is instantly reachable. That does not mean that it is acceptable to harass them via their inbox like a manic stalker. It however does mean that if you’re not happy, for any reason, you can just drop them a message and request a resolution. You’re 100% more likely to get your money back by doing this than by leaving a negative feedback.

Sellers take pride in their feedback and customer reputation. Thousands of ordinary people are making a living from their businesses on e-commerce sites such as eBay- by that I mean mums, dads and people just like you. If they make a mistake, or something goes wrong in transit give them a chance to solve it. They are the ones who will ultimately lose money, so it is just as frustrating for the seller to lose his goods in the post as it is for you. It may be hard to believe when you unwrap your leather belt to discover it has an extra scratch on it that wasn’t photographed with an 8X superzoom lens, but 99.9% of sellers are not setting out to defraud you. Taking transaction glitches personally is just frankly setting yourself up for high blood pressure and an early grave.

Be reasonable towards your fellow eBay community and they will be reasonable towards you. A polite message will nine times out of ten receive a polite and helpful response. Going at the seller like your next move is chemical warfare isn’t going to win you any favours. If anything, you might just blow your chance of getting the result you want. Yes their business is important to them but everyone draws the line somewhere, and there is only so much grovelling any one person can do to a bunch of faceless idiots. If you’re the fifth hysterical nutcase they’ve encountered that week, it might just backfire.

Lastly, decide what you want out of the deal and stick to it. Choose whether you want a replacement or a refund before you contact the seller- and for Gods’ sake don’t demand a partial refund. That’s not how business works. You wouldn’t go to the supermarket, buy a joint of lamb for a tenner then call up and say “On second thoughts I don’t think this lamb was worth a tenner, I’d like five pounds back” – so don’t do it on eBay. If it’s not up to scratch, it’s not up to scratch, so be prepared to kiss goodbye to it and get your money back.

Sure, there is the odd scammer out there taking advantage of the wonders of free trade. It’s a bummer when you can’t get a response and you have to get a refund from eBay- but the very least you can do is try. That egg poacher may have caused you a little disappointment at the time- but get over it and think twice before you destroy someone’s hard-earned reputation and potentially, their livelihood.

Bus Trip

One journey I will never forget was the one from Whiddon Valley to the Town Centre on bus 510. At quarter to nine in the morning, on a still and overcast day, the bus was filling rapidly at every stop. The hum-drum sound of the engine revving and the rattling parts filled the air as we bounced along the road. As we approached stop number three I could see a group of people patiently waiting to alight. As at every stop, the bus slowed to a halt and silenced before the slight whoosh sound of opening doors.

No sooner as the doors had finished the whoosh noise, a suited gentleman flew in head first at high speed. He appeared as if from nowhere; it was not immediately obvious that he had tripped as the passengers could not see the step for it was obstructed by the doors. He torpedoed into the bus at such a rate of knots it looked as though he must have had some sort of run up, or was possibly flung from a catapult. He splat-landed: face down, arms and legs sprawled out over the entire lower floor of the bus, his pinstripe suit laid out like artificial bat wings. His briefcase was still attached to the end of one arm, but he had lost his black umbrella which had speared the ‘buggies’ area, narrowly missing a child-in-pram and was wedged firmly in the seats.

This was hilarious to see because one simply did not expect to see it; people usually just step on.

After the initial shock, a few kind passengers rushed to help, not that there was much they could do. The poor man grappled to his feet in the most ungraceful fashion and brushed himself off in a state of pitiful embarrassment- as he sat down on the front seats, his face turned a deep pink raspberry shade, which I can well appreciate because to an on-looker the spectacle was absolutely hilarious.

Unfortunately for me, none of the other passengers seemed to share my amusement. Their genuine concern for the unfortunate character of this entertaining scene simply added to the comedy of the entire show. Stifling a laugh for the remaining twenty minutes of the journey became physically painful. Fearful that I would look like some troublesome whippersnapper if I let out so much as a snort, I developed an acute whole-body juddering interspersed with a bizarre whooping-cough and a manifestation of swollen cheeks and bulging eyes.

Amidst the laughter, the only option was to tense my lower lip and scrunch my nose in order to contort my smile into a look of wide-mouthed horror which was my attempt at a sad expression of remorse. This might have been a suitable face to pull for the initial one second of the incident, but fifteen minutes into the journey I don’t think my seizure-like symptoms were fooling anyone.

I caught the disapproving glance of a middle-aged woman who had a full-balcony view of my peculiar behaviour, and for the lack of any suitable alternative I immediately bit into the padded collar of my jacket like a rabid dog to avert the inevitable outburst that was about to follow.

Unsure of which way to look to avoid making eye-contact with the other stony-faced passengers, I found my line of vision darting wildly from one to the other and eventually out of the window, where I resorted to pressing my face firmly against the glass, all the while trying desperately to keep my head up and hands away from my mouth in a determined bid to appear normal. My continued attempts to stifle my laughter eventually plateaued into a sort of chronic panting.

I was certainly relieved when the bus eventually pulled into the bus station after what seemed like an eternity. I’ll never know what happened to the flying gent at the front, because the very moment the bus ground to a halt I leapt from my seat and darted to the doorway like a manic ferret and shot off behind the nearest shelter to laugh my stomach sore.

March 02nd 2011

I even tried my hand at farming once. Because of this I am not afraid of all things countryside. I do not hold my nose overtly as the bus drives past a field in which the muck has just been spread. They all hold their noses as if to say, ‘It wasn’t me!’. I’m sure this leaves me as the culprit every time.

I gained a lot of first-hand knowledge from my love of the countryside. I can tell you that there is no point in campaigning about banning hunting. They will continue to do it anyway and if you are not careful they will bring all their animals to London and start chasing you too.

I’m also privileged to know that milk comes from the udder of a cow, not actually from a bottle in Tesco. You wouldn’t believe how many youngsters I have come across that have never stopped to question the origin of many of their foods. I doubt they’d ever eat an egg again if they discovered that it came out of a chicken’s backside. I have to admit, I found it difficult to eat chicken or eggs again after I actually observed a couple of these pre-historic creatures in the field, and witnessed them digging up and consuming the guts of their acquaintances and swallowing their own feathers.

Anyone who has worked on a sheep farm will know that where there’s a sheep, there’s a way to kill yourself. They seem to instinctively know when the hay stack is about to collapse, and go and stand under it. I don’t think I could record the potential hazards within my lifetime. Luckily we do not have to fill in health and safety files for sheep.

I remember witnessing one ewe give birth to her lambs on the edge of a cliff face. After she had plopped them out and straight over the edge, she looked around in confusion, wondering if she was having what us humans call a ‘senior moment’. The fact that she had 35 acres to choose from didn’t seem to make a blind bit of difference to her choice of birthing location. Don’t worry, the lambs were okay.

Despite that the industry is the industry, there is not a person I know of who is not softened to the dearness of a newly born lamb. It is hard to imagine the little blighter on your dinner plate six months later. However, by the third week of lambing it is very easy to imagine them on your dinner plate and almost impossible to see them in any other light.

It is not just livestock farming I have encountered. I spent hours trailing around oat fields in the scorching midday sunshine, my task being to pull wild oats. Yes that’s right, to pick out wild oats, from a field full of oats. Because of this, I am not stuck-up toffee nose. I know what hardship is. I should have been on the burger bap section of the televised series, ‘Blood, Sweat, and Takeaways’.

I don’t know if any of you have ever heard a crow scarer. These are the modern version of the good old fashioned scarecrow. The crows soon worked out that the man in the field, as scary as he may have looked wearing his straw filled pellet sack, couldn’t move, and even the ones who did move never seemed to fly after them. The sound of a gunshot going off at three minute intervals is much more intimidating. And I know, because I have been wild oat picking, unaware that one was in the row next to me. I can tell you that my reaction to that as I momentarily thought that I’d been directed to the wrong field and someone was taking a pot shot at me was enough to keep the crows away for 2 months.

April 17th 2009

Let me introduce you to Hilda. Really, Hilda is a hoot in small doses. She has the mentality of a 6 year old, and yet is 40-odd. She will do a job, if you explain thoroughly enough, and when she has done it she will come to you and say, ‘Finished!’ while you have to then spare your time to go and find something else to occupy her. I’m not sure how she has been brought up but I do know that it was not entirely the same as the rest of us. Both Jess and myself have had a flash of either her bust or her buttock as she has lifted her top and pulled down her trousers to show us her new bruise that she acquired today.

I once told her to Hoover the shop, and reminded her to keep an eye on the lead and warn any customers that looked as though they were about to trip over it. She leapt into this task with an enormous burst of enthusiasm as she ran around the shop tapping each customer on the shoulder and informing them, ‘Excuse me, mind the lead’, even if they were quietly minding their own business at the complete opposite end of the shop to the Hoover. When I came out into the shop floor she announced loudly so that all of these customers could hear, ‘I did what you said Belinda, I’ve been minding people of the lead’.

‘Well done Hilda,’ I said, as I saw the other customers smile and shake their heads. Perhaps I should get Hilda to permanently guard the step. That could be rather effective actually…

Her odd behaviour comes as no surprise when you meet the family. Hilda collects thimbles, her mother collects dolphin ornaments and her father collects spoons. She once asked Jess if she collected anything, to which she replied ‘no’, and it was at this moment that we found out that her brother collects porn movies. She must have seen Jess’ reaction, as she asked her, ‘That alright isn’t it?’

I must say that working with a mixture of ages and abilities provides many more laughs than working with an office full of bitching women of your own age and character. Yesterday, Hilda made us all a nice cup of tea, I glanced at it as she put it down and thought, ‘That looks good, I’ll wait for it to cool and drink it in a minute.’ Then I heard Hilda scream from the kitchen, ‘Urgh!’ and a few moments later, ‘This kettle doesn’t boil very well does it!’ I stopped for a moment as I thought, well a kettle either boils or it doesn’t, and in my experience, that one does, before I then heard her exclaim, ‘Oh, I forgot to switch the plug on’. A few more moments passed, as you could almost hear the cogs turning in her brain, then she rushed out to gather up our cups and said, ‘Yours might be cold too’ before scuttling off to make us some new ones. I creased over with laughter. On her return, I asked her, ‘How did you get the tea out of the bag?’ to which she replied, ‘I squeezed it’ and then I sniggered even more as I developed a mental image of her slogging over the cups for ages mashing the tea bags. I said to her, ‘You must have been there for hours!’ and she said, ‘Not hours, but it did take a long time.’

The story of the unfortunate Soreen

Don’t worry, we still love you Soreen

It all began on a rather overcast day in sunny Devon. I popped to the supermarket to pick up my usual milk, eggs and a loaf of sweet Soreen.

As soon as I peeled back the wrapper, I felt a cold wash of fear come over me. I knew instantly that something was wrong. That evening I found myself writing a letter to the owners of Soreen.

Squidgy enough for you?

Well, no, actually. I purchased your not-so-moist fruit loaf yesterday, at Rose Lane supermarket, sometime in the early afternoon.

After sawing off a few slices for my family, we all decided it was definitely not right.

Shall we return the loaf or use it as a chock for our caravan?

I sincerely hope that this change in formula is not permanent; I would be somewhat disappointed as I have always been rather partial to a soft slice of Soreen.

Yours again now,

Belinda

So, we packed up the poor over-baked loaf into a jiffy bag and onto some wheeled trucks. With the assistance of two strong men, we loaded it into the boot of our car to take it to the Post Office.

We waved goodbye and off the sad and sorry Soreen went in the Post Office truck, bouncing down the motorway. Well no, not bouncing; clunking- the truck listing over to the left.

The Soreen, as it plopped through the letter box at the Soreen factory landed with a thud. Looking up from their tea break, the alarmed Soreen bakers exclaimed “What on Earth was that?”

According to the bakers at Soreen, our loaf was subjected to various tests before it was finally confirmed that this was indeed no ordinary Soreen.

Looking back, I can’t imagine what actually possessed me to get the ban-saw and lop off a few slices for us all.

The bakers claimed that it was a “natural variation in consistency”… Yeah right, it was more like someone had swapped the flour with cement. Someone definitely mis-read the recipe.

They admitted however that “it did seem a little firm…” Obviously no one there dropped it on their foot. It was just a strike of luck that none of whom attempted to sample it were denture wearers.

I forgive you, Soreen.

Surviving those O’horsier than thou

With summer just around the corner, for many of you who are parents, your thoughts will be turning to the joys and the perils, the thrills and the spills, of the annual Pony Club camp. Undoubtedly you will be preparing yourself and your child for the week long indulgence in the somewhat irritating yet highly entertaining game of one-up-horsemanship.

As a seasoned camp-goer myself, always attending with my latest home-broken colt with the lot number still stuck to his bottom from the sale I’d just got him from, I can pass on my own experiences to reassure you that these ‘horsier than thou’ types can be easily defeated, the outcome being somewhat triumphant, and often highly amusing.

At the beginning of this year’s camp, I was not reminded of the rules of this horsemanship game gently. After battling with my uncontrollably excitable horse Ambrose all morning, I relaxed into a chair for our first stable management lesson of the week. One of a selection of various bits were passed to each of us, and, after studying mine dubiously however determined not to falter, I confidently announced the name of mine. “French-link, loose ring snaffle” I said, to which a chorus of jeering twelve year olds replied, “It’s a Dr Bristol, silly, don’t you even know that yet?”

The next morning they watched me with a scrutinizing eye as I groomed my masterpiece, staring at him with a transfixed and slightly vacant expression as though he’d just appeared from Mars.

“Why isn’t his mane pulled?”

“It just isn’t”

“Why doesn’t he wear a martingale?”

“He just doesn’t”

Then, to the final question, “Why hasn’t he got shoes on his feet?” I looked down with a horrified expression and a hand over mouth and sarcastically replied, “oh my goodness, this one must have been born without them!”

If it has not struck you already, do not be under the false impression that this ‘game’ is only played amongst the children. During the mornings lesson prior to camp I can remember over-hearing one of the mums standing next to my mother crowing on about their new five-hundred acre equestrian centre, and their brand new Oakley Supreme eight horse lorry with full living accommodation, central heating, home cinema and Olympic sized swimming pool, remarking, “and I got a wonderful section B riding pony for my daughter”, to which my mother skilfully replied, “that sounds like a jolly good swap”.

I can actually remember the child in question telling me all about this new estate of hers. “You know I get on my pony in the morning, and I could ride him all day long and still not get around the whole of our property” she bragged. “Yes” I agreed, “I had a pony like that once too”.

Do remember though, that however many point-scoring comments you manage to pass off, your horse will always set out to humiliate you. The most earth shattering moment was on the Wednesday morning, when Ambrose was such a pig to tack up that every soul was mounted and lined up in the arena except for my good self. After finally applying the abundance of shrapnel to him, I undid the stable bolt and the door burst open, the horse charged out in a crazed frenzy, followed by me, frantically chasing him around the yard in a many times failed but desperate attempt at tightening the girths.

My spectacular display to the entire camp was gracefully complete as I hauled myself up into the saddle and promptly fell straight off the other side. After picking myself up of the floor and dusting myself off, I looked up, horrified to see my test examiner standing watching, with a cup of tea in her hand, jokingly exclaiming, “Belinda, I think that will have to be an instant fail”.

Much to my relief, in return for Wednesday’s embarrassing fiasco, Ambrose decided that implacable behaviour would be appropriate for the last and final day. ‘See, we can do it’, I thought to the mob of stunned spectators as we sailed around the ring, performed beautifully in front of the judge and picked up our red ribbon and glistening gold trophy for ‘the best rider’. “Well done” I announced to the other competitors, “very fairly placed I must say”.

The challenge of one-up-horsemanship can be a difficult, leave alone ludicrously expensive one to attempt. However rest assured that beating anyone in a game of one-up-horsemanship is the most triumphant feeling there is to be experienced.

Resignation Letter Template

Free to use or share, even commercially. Just don’t blame me…

Dear [insert bosses name here],

I am writing to inform you that it is with grave excitement that I am deciding to resign.

I would like to take this chance to thank you for the immense opportunity, and the endless hours of time you invested in training and supporting me. I would also like to apologise for if I ever looked interested.

I have put considerable thought into this move and can reassure you it was no rash decision; I’ve been thinking about it for the past 18 months, which as you know is the entire duration of my employment.

In case you would like to know a bit about what I propose to do, I have applied for university in the hope to let three years pass under the blissful ignorance of a duvet with a bottle of Budweiser Sellotaped to my head/ bought a wagon and a piebald cob and hope to make a living stealing metal parts off people’s motor vehicles/ learned six songs on the guitar and plan to stand outside the subway singing ‘Wonder Wall’ [delete as appropriate] ; plus, I’ve got a massive back log of socks to pair.

Please accept this correspondence as notice of my six week resignation period, beginning from the date of this letter.

Yours sincerely and honestly,

[Insert your name here]

Why anti-nuclear ecofreaks should just chill out

What the heck is wrong with these people who keep campaigning against nuclear power? Don’t they realise I need to use my sunbed?

The UK has signed a deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% of the 1990 baseline figure by 2030, and their plans to revive nuclear power to help achieve it is fantastic news for all of us.

Nuclear power currently provides a whopping six percent of our electricity and makes a loss of about two billion per year, and this is just how we want to keep it. It’s unthinkable that the low-life common bastards might ever get to keep a penny for themselves, how on Earth would that force the cogs that maintain the status quo? Nuclear is the perfect way to winnow millions out of UK worker-bees and keep those Downing Street expresso machines serving cappuccinos all day long. We need to impress Brussels now, and we are going to do it in style. No ugly wind turbines gunna spoil our rep.

After all, nuclear is our heritage. The world’s first commercial nuclear power station in the world was built in Britain and what a tragedy it would be to break tradition. We should be proud of Sellafield- it’s the most hazardous industrial building in Western Europe and the people who live there are still alive. We’ve also managed to amass the biggest stockpile of civil plutonium- the most dangerous substance on Earth- in the entire world and for that we should receive some serious street cred.

There’s no point pulling the old ‘it’s dangerous’ cord on me. There was never any risk to those exposed to fallout from the Fukushima plant because the Japanese government just raised the safe recommended dosages. And as for all those hundreds of cases of thyroid cancer in Belarus after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, well, they were obviously just looking for it. Paranoid mothers across the country must have just got together and decided it was time to start checking their children’s necks for lumps.

Never mind all the pathetic scare-mongering stories from Russia, we need power. It’s our God-given right. Who gives a toss about all those kids with thyroid cancer anyway? And those families in Fukushima who were given one day to pack their valuables, leave their animals and homes behind in an exclusion zone they knew they could never return to- well, they can go bloody suffer, I want to watch Eastenders.

Besides, it will never happen to us. In Britain, we are the nuclear experts. We are so damned proud of our nuclear legacy that we are still showcasing an obsolete vintage Magnox reactor that was built in 1963. We’re the only country in the world that has avidly stuck by our original and best Gas-Cooled Reactors. As with all British products, they were built to last, and we are showing the world just how sturdy they are- in fact, seven out of the nine of our current operating power stations are still going strong as much as ten years past their retirement date.

We are the masters of engineering. We are just so bloody clever we’ve chosen to site five of the twelve past and present nuclear power stations on sites listed as ‘at risk from erosion and/or inundation’ because we have the sea defences and machinery designed to defy nature’s worst. It’s called ‘hoping for the best’ and it’s so far done us Brits proud.

Besides, we are not as stupid as the Japanese. Yeah, we let a fire burn away inside Windscale reactor for three whole days before anyone noticed, but we’d never let such a stupid thing as a tsunami happen. Clearly they’re idiots.

Another thing those dumb campaigners need to get over is this ‘nowhere to put the waste’ rubbish. Nuclear waste is inherently safe. It’s far safer than most industrial pollutants because after a few years it decays and becomes completely harmless. And 250,000 is a few, in the scheme of things- the Earth is 4.2 billion years old for Goodness sake.

As for what to do with it while we wait for those 250,000 years to pass, we have all our options sorted. We can either close our eyes and lob it into the ocean in leaking containers; continue to store the 100,000 and growing tons of it on site and spend millions per year of tax payers’ money stopping terrorists from bombing it while we deliberate for another fifty years what to do with it; or, being the ingenious Englishmen that we are, we could just find a massive great crack in some Scottish cliff and pour it down there, and hope the Irish don’t notice their fish are glowing in the dark.

Failing all of that, we could do like the Americans. They have a nifty idea, something I admit is smarter than anything even we’d thought of- stick it onto the back of lorries, drive them up the freeway and stash the entire country’s hoard of it in the side of Ben Nevis. A kiss and a prayer will suffice to stop any of the lorries from having a crash on the motorway and a dab of silicone sealant should be enough keep all the water out, because if it was to flood, it’d make Chernobyl look like an explosion from a 1950’s toy reactor and that wouldn’t be ideal.

So what if things do go wrong? Well, let’s not worry our little heads about that right now. As Dr Richard Smith said “cancer is the best way to die” so we should welcome nuclear power to keep our electric kettles boiling and dishwashers whirring away. We can pay over the odds for our retro space-age electricity, flex our atomic muscles to the world and if one of them does blow up we can just abandon Great Britain and enjoy a slow and painful death in whichever country will have us. It’s a win-win situation.