Hockey Tour

Tomorrow I'm up at 6am to don my mechanic's outfit and get on a coach to Amsterdam. Such is the schedule for the annual Medic's Hockey Club tour. Fancy dress is compulsory and mechanics are easy and cheap to arrange, I got my overalls from eBay two weeks ago for a fiver. Then it's just 10 or so hours until we hit the hash cafes of liberal little Holland, who mind their own business when you're behind closed doors. There's a faint possibility of us bumping into the Van Gogh museum or Anne Frank's annex but I sincerely doubt that we'll do more than drink, sleep, and cause general irritation. There's an even fainter chance or us playing hockey, although we have games booked for both Friday night and Saturday afternoon - last time we toured, only 4 people volunteered to run around on a crisp February morning on the outskirts of Edinburgh. We still won.
I'm glad I've long since finished my stint as a fresher, so I won't have to suffer the indignity of being tied to another fresher for 24 hours, being thrown out of 2 clubs, being forced to drink inordinate amounts of booze and sleep in a bunkbed with approximately 20 other people. I don't think those are compulsory, it just happened to me.
Buzzed the car up to Winchester on Monday night with the Uni chess team. Admittedly, not the most scintillating conversation ever, but with Pete Tong turned up to the max I won't pretend that I had conversation in mind. I drew against a good player on board 2 (each player plays their equivalent on the other team) and it was looking like everyone else was going to lose, until in the space of 5 minutes, 3 of Winchester's players ran out of time. I've not seen that happen to anyone at all for years, let alone 3 people in the same match. Apparently the result relegated them. Typical!