November 6, 2012, by Beca
Life’s a Battlefield
Post it war
First thing Monday morning, I’m half awake, stumbling round the house in search of my staple breakfast of weetos and I run into this.
It made my day. Yes, my day was made before 8am in the morning. Despite living together, myself and my housemates actually don’t see as much of one another as you’d expect if you’ve never lived in student housing before. Everyone runs on different timetables. I myself spend most of my time at home either working (/facebook) or asleep and the rest of the time everywhere else. So…. the odd note gets left by myself and my housemates such as telling people not to mess with the heating or to clean out the fridge etc. But this time, one note was one too many.
It all stared with a small yellow square asking someone to do their washing up, then there was a no and a four page post-it essay on the immaturity of leaving post-its. And you’ve seen how it all ended.
Fighting Nature
As a zoologist, one of the career paths I could go into is conservation so on Friday I went to my first ever conservation group at Attenborough Reserve. We were working on a special area of the reserve which is being protected for its grassland meaning that the few lone hawthornes had to go. They didn’t go without a fight, I’ll tell you that much. My hands are still looking rather battleworn along with a lovely scratch down my calf. As for the fire, well the stuff didn’t particularly want burning either but eventually (about an hour later but shhh) we had it lit.
Beckingham
My whole 6 hours sleep of the weekend took place in a, thankfully rather toasty, billet in Beckingham which for those of you that fail at Geography (ie, me) is north of here, near Lincoln land (but most definitely not actually in The North). It was my first weekend camp in uniform and I got myself double duty sergeant aka, screwed over. It wasn’t so bad; make sure cadets are awake, make sure meals run smoothly, make sure all are in bed when they’re supposed to be. It just meant from arrival to departure I was wandering around like a headless chicken with a purpose and sleep didn’t really happen. Fortunately, everyone behaved themselves so I didn’t get dragged out of bed once I was in it.
Saturday was spent out in the field assessing some of the newer cadets on various things inc, leopard crawling (your standard ‘army crawl’). It felt great that the tables had turned from the previous weekend in which one of the OTC Lieutenants was putting us all through our paces and it was me crawling along the floor. We set up some bashas (shelters), did a bit of map reading and cam’ed up. I even took a photo =D
PS. I know I missed my neck and ears… it was intentional !
Lest We Forget
On a significantly more serious note, Remembrance Sunday is this weekend. Due to other commitments I won’t be there, but many of my friends and of course, cadets, will be parading this weekend alongside various TA and Regular units in Nottingham City Centre. Go along and show your support if you’re free.
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