What a week...

Tuesday evening, Mark, one of my friends from TS Sturdy, asked 'So, now that Uni's over, I bet you're getting bored at home.' Chance would be a fine thing...

Founders Day - the entire NTC gathers for a large parade, to celebrate the founding of the organisation. This year, for the first time, it was our regions turn to host, and the God of NTC - Stu Ginnaw - had done most of the work. I felt guilty not being able to assist him sooner, but Uni had to come first. So, in the final week of planning, I hoped to come in, and help prevent Stuart having a mental breakdown...

Monday (6 days to go)...

I had cocked up my final assignment at University (the DVD quality was crap), so I spent most of the day sorting that. Sorry to Kat and Holly, I didn't want to worry you about it, so I went and sorted the problem with Lorne etc...

I rushed home, so that I could start printing parking permits for Founders Day, and hopefully make the 5.45 post. I did get to the letterbox by 5.45, but the postman now collects at 5pm. Damn. I would have posted them sooner, but despite setting a deadline of 31st May, the majority of the Corps works to a different calendar. In the evening I went to band. Sounded good!

Tuesday (5 days to go)

I started to work on the programme for the event. Knowing that it would take some time for me to print the programmes, I set a deadline of 12 noon on Wednesday to start printing. This being my only other pre-weekend job, I didn't rush too much. I had the first couple of pages done (of 16), by the time I left for TS Sturdy's band practice.

On my way home, I phoned Stu (Ginnaw - the God of NTC) to see how things were going, and if there was anything else I could do in preparation. It was at this point that we found out that the officer charged with getting raffle prizes sorted had failed - big time. For our big grand prize draw, over 3000 tickets printed, we had a £100 top cash prize, and... two bottles of wine. Oh dear.

Wednesday (4 days to go)

With the raffle now in dire straights, I asked Mum (who is a genious with this kind of thing) to help me go on the scrounge for prizes. We spent 5 hours trawling the streets of Littlehampton and Angmering, and we had done okay. We had a couple of shops to visit on Thursday, but at the moment, things were looking okay. We had £60 of make-up from Boots, a crystal lamp from Bunces Hardware, and £10 of chocoloate from Sainsburys (of Littlehampton). We had also been donated 10 balls of wool (?), which we traded in, and bought an art kit (from Angmering's craft shop).

All of this was great, but the programme (my main job) hadn't got a look in. Whilst I kept doing the programme, I called Stuart again. He needed to park 2 cars accross the barrier to the field, so that we could gain access on Saturday. I offered Ernie (my car in case you didn't know) for the job, on Friday night. I was up until 2.30 am getting the programme done, when I just had to go to bed. There were still 4 pages to go...

Thursday (3 days to go)

I got up at 10, and started work on the other programme pages. I really needed to start printing by noon today. Noon came and went, and there were still a few pages to go. Them Mum and I went and visited some more stores for prizes (this went amazingly well) - Somerfiled (Littlehampton) donated a portable gas stove, and Esporta Health Club offered 2 day passes and some vouchers. The receptionist at Esporta suggested we tried the gold club next door. I was dubious, but if you don't ask, you don't get. Amazingly, they gave us two day pasess for two, and £40 of top-of-the-range golf balls. Things really were looking up.

- As a side note, nearly everyone we asked gave us a little something. Littlehampton's Sainsburys and Somerfields were really great, and could not have been happier. Others couldn't give us anything because it had to go through head office - fair enough. But Tescos, Tescos wouldn't give us a bean, and their manager had the power to. I guess that they weren't happy enough destroying Littlehampton's businesses, they also want it's community to fail. Or maybe £3bn pound profit isn't enough...?

Then we got home at 4, and I realied that the programme still wasn't done. Amongst calling Stuart, and eating dinner, I carried on with the programme until at 10pm. I finally got Dad to proof read it, and printing started at 10.40pm. I saw that it was taking about an hour to print ten. In order to achieve the order of 200 programmes, I would have to keep the printer running continuosly...

I set the printer for 30 copies, and went to bed, setting my alarm for 3.30am. At 2am, the printer ran out of ink - way before it was estimated to. Dejected, I slumped into bed.

Friday (2 days to go)

Founders Weekend would start today. I was up at 8am (having had barely enough sleep), and I went out and bought some ink. I reduced the demand for colour in the programme, and prayed that it would be enough. Knowing it wouldn't be, I started my personal printer going. It's not a double sided printer, so every programme had to be printed twice (once on each side). Instead of taking 6 minutes to print, it was now taking 12!

Mum (again) came in to help (after saving the raffle), and her local church offered to help us out. They kindly printed 120 (ish) programmes on their colour copier. It was gutting - where it would take my printers 6 and 12 minutes to print a programme, their copier could do one in just 10 seconds!

Regardless, I soldiered on, until the NTC printer was out of ink. Then my printer ran out of black (no worries), so I reloaded it. It was a faulty cartridge, which I then spent half an hour replacing. I got home, started printing again, and decided I should have lunch (it was 2pm afterall). To sum up the day, we were out of white bread, and I had to have thin sliced brown bread. Nuts.

I also went to pick up my uniform from the dry cleaners, as agreed. They hadn't finished it. The lady assured me it would be ready by first thing Saturday morning. Oh, Friday was going so well.

My printer valiantly continued on. Leaving my printer to run more, I went to NTC, with as many programmes as I had, and got the cadets to collate, fold, and staple them. I left early, to commence 'Operation Barricade'. On the way through, I checked my printer. Had it finished printing? No, it had just run out of paper. I reloaded, and carried on to Littlehampton.

Staurt brought me home, after we declared 'Operation Barricade' a success. I printed the other side of the programmes just printed, and also wrote some letters to go with the raffle vouchers, and made up some tags for the donated prizes. I aslo had recieved some angry messages from people with incorrect parking permits, or missing ones. I printed those of too. With 206 programmes printed (I have no idea how), I finally stumbled into bed at 2.30am.

Saturday (1 day to go)

And so the weekend began. I was up at 8.45am, ready for Graham (the boss, and my friend) from TS Sturdy to arrive at 9.30am. He hadn't arrived by 9.15 (and he is usually very early), and I was beginning to worry. It's okay though, because he knocked on the door at 9.20...

Dry cleaning still not ready - Dad had to collect for me.

We had agreed ages ago that we would hire a van, which I would drive, and Graham would ride shotgun. We headed for Lancing. We would have picked up stuff from Intrepid's garages, but my keys were in Ernie, in Littlehampton. We still picked up chairs and tables from the Lions hall, where Paul (my first lieutenant and friend - who has an upside-down head) met us. Together we piled into the big transit of fun, and headed for Southwick, the National Headquarters is.

Unfortunatley, even the traffic was against us. Gridlock. The usual 10 minute journey took over 40. We actually phoned the guy meeting us at NHQ to let us in, and asked him if he could move Southwick closer, because it would be easier than us getting to him. We did eventually arrive, and I backed the long wheel base Transit down the tightest road in the world. On one side is Shoreham Harbour (yes, where I nearly parked my car in the drink last year) with many cars parked along the bank. On the other side are lots of overhanging low balconies that could take out the roof. I didn;t hot a single thing.

The rest of the day consisted getting everything sorted out in Littlehampton, and returning to Lancing and home for stuff (more than once to home). I borrowed Mum and Dad's 'pop-up' gazeebo for my stall. I knew that it had the odd broken pole here and there, but Mum and Dad insisted that I would never get the thing up. I couldn't work out what they were so worried about. I took the gaffer (duct) tape, expecting to joing the odd snapped pole back together.

I opened the bag to find that Dad had completely unbolted the frame. I reconstructed the frame, to find that half of the poles were missing. Determined not to be beaten, I reconstructed one side out of spare poles, and gaffer taped more poles together to form a roof support. The legs had to be held on place by metal stakes hammered 1ft in the ground. Through the power of gaffer tape, the stall, missing half of it's poles, stayed up the entire weekend.

I had also agreed to be security overnight. Some of Implacable's cadets' parents joined Brian Turner (an NHQ officer, and Graham's Dad), and Tyler and John (the miracle workers of TS Intrepid) joined me for a fun evening. I went out and got Chinese, as well as all of the kit I needed for sleeping. In my haste in the van, I took one roundabout a bit too quickly.

Not illegally quick, but apparently faster than I should have because, as I went round, something didn't feel quite right. It was at that point I realised I had put the long-wheelbase Transit into a skid. As best I could, I corrected the skid, and I ended up back on the straight and narrow, and on the dual carriageway. I must have gone as white as a sheet. That was easily the most scared I have been in a vehicle (and I have been a passenger in Holly's car several times...). However, it is possibly also the coolest thing ever - I can now say that I have (albeit unintentionally) power slided a long-wheelbase Ford Transit round a roundabout.

The security eveny went quietly. I went to bed on a camp bed in the back of 'my Transit'. I must have been tired, becuase I rolled over in the pitch black on thge van (no windows)...

Sunday (the day had arrived)

...and when I rolled back over, I couldn't wprk out what the light on the ceiling was. It was a hole in the roof, and it was daylight! 6.30am, and Tyler came up to the door, and told me it was time to get up. Oh joy...

I needed a wee, but I decided I would just get 'this done' first... and that's how my morning went. I kept doing various different jobs, and people kept needing me for stuff. It wasn't until everyone had arrived, I had set mum up with the stall, and TS Intrepid were ready to march on that I finally found some time. Many people had come up to my 'information' stall, and asked for parking permits. I think by about the fifth request (and after much sleep deprivation) I was starting to get 'ratty' with people accusing me of incompetence, and not having passes, that I nearly shouted at one, and told them that they should have requested it two weeks ago!

Anyways, I wasn't the only person who had a busy morning. Stuart had woken up, and also decided to 'just get that done' before using the loo. Oddly, we both met at the public loos at the same time and compared mornings (no, we didn't compare anything else in the gents - you're all sick minded). With the ships forming up, ready to march on, Stu and I took our places with our ships.

I have to say that I thought the day went really well. Stuart had done a fantastic job. The day didn't go exactly how I planned. I had hoped to be on a stall to answer people's questions, and spend about 30mins with Intrepid's band marching along the prom. Nice and relaxed. Wrong. I didn't set down for more than 30mins in the entire day (except for driving). There also wasn't a single band engagement that I didn't end up running accross a field for.

The best one was at the end of the day. I helped Stuart do the raffle draw, and we were just finishing, when someone announced that the region would now march on for Sunset. I ran accross the parade field, picked up my baritone, and ran to the back of the field to fall-in. I was sorting my music, when the drum major brought the band to the ready. Hang on, I'm not ready... Then I was. I brought my baritone up to my face, and saw the mouth piece was missing. So I ran back behind the stalls, to my stall where my mouthpiece was, and then sprinted back to the band. Then we marched on.

Once the parade was over (and I think we all looked and sounded great - including our last minute ageement to brass enseble Sunset), I relaxed. The day was over, and we could all go home. No we couldn't, we still had to take everything down. I changed out of uniform, and then panicked when i found the van keys missing. Sam (one of my senior cadets) found them in the bed of the van.

Thankfully, a friend of mine, Natalie, from Zealous had agreed to help me in the van. We were off of the field by 6.30pm (which suprised Brian Turner, who has done alot of these, and was convinced that we would eb there until 8). Nat and I first went to McDonalds, as we were both hungry, and I needed to recharge before driving. We dropped some stuff off at home, then to Lancing, and finally to NHQ. I dropped Nat off at her house in Hanover about 9.30pm (incidentally, she lives on a stupidly narrow road, and getting the Transit down there was less than fun).

I dropped the van off at 10.15, and Dad took me to Littlehampton to collect Ernie. I eventually sumbled through the door (after the Police had stopped me on suspicion of drunk driving - no seriously) at 11pm. I laughed at the accusing Police officer, explained my day, and he smiled. 'So you're just knackered then sir?' I think he summed it up.

Well Mark - maybe I'll be more bored this week...