Royal Cornwall Show 2011

I spent a few days at Royal Cornwall Show with St John again this year. I went up earlier this year though, because I'm far too keen and volunteered to help with the setup before the show started. 3 of us travelled up on the afternoon of Tuesday 7th June, and we were joined by 10 others on the evening of Wednesday 8th June. The show itself was on Thursday 9th, Friday 10th and Saturday 11th June.

I decided than rather than have a post full of writing, I would give a run down of this weekend in pictures. Here we go :D

At Royal Cornwall Show 2011...

... we ate far too much junk food (trololol at this awful photo, I really don't know why I'm sharing it with the world, but just look at the concentration on our faces over our burger van dinner haha)

... we tried to cool our drinks with an ice pack (note: sadly this does not work :( )
... I got suspended from the roof of the tent by my oh-so-lovely boyfriend (this is the first of many fails I made that week...)
... we borrowed Liskeard's Landrover...
... and made the first Tremough LINKS road trip... to buy 18kg of cheese (costing £80). Oh the looks we got as we walked out of the cash-and-carry :P
... we worked hard cleaning the medical centre
... I discovered I cannot roll under metal barriers, and thus I would make a poor Mission Impossible-style spy. This also goes down on my list of fails that week
... we were not impressed by the rain on our first morning on duty
... we saw alpacas :D
... we carried on working hard in the kitchen, helping cook for 150 people in SJA, the Red Cross and the Police

... we discovered Barry, our first "interesting" looking bird of the weekend, in the Young Farmers tent

... we saw some cool birds of prey (a Bengal eagle owl and a Eurasian kestrel)

... we found our next interesting bird, which looked like it had a cool mop of hair haha... and a bird with a really long tail!
...we watched some camel polo
... we celebrated the end of 3 days of hard work on duty by picking up Frankie (who clearly LOVED every second of it :P )
... and then, having lost all our energy, we collapsed into heaps on the grass before packing up tents and piling in the minibus to come home.
I hope you enjoyed my little photo rundown of this year's show :P

Obviously this is only a very brief snapshot of what I actually did that week(end), as I was either too busy to be taking photos, or I was out on duty and treating people which I obviously can't take photos of. I spent quite a lot of time in the medical centre this year which was good, because it meant I actually got to do some first aid rather than just doing nothing as usual! I also got to treat a fairly serious casualty while out on a foot patrol, so it was good to put some of my PTA skills to the test.

Overall I had a fab time at the show once again. Bring on next year! :D

The epic saga of the steel toe cap boots.

Health and safety regulations in St John require us to wear steel toe cap boots while we're out on duty. Up until now, none of us have worn them (other than those who already have them). So after getting told off at Helston Flora Day about the state of our division's uniform (which, to our credit, is for the most part nothing to do with how smart our members are, it's to do with lack of funds and the changeover to new uniform meaning we can't buy pieces of uniform to make up for the stuff we're missing. That's another story entirely, and I will go on about it forever if I get started haha) we decided we needed to get the boots issue sorted a.s.a.p.

So I got my Google on and found us a company in Penzance who sold boots for a reasonable price, and sent a nice email to the company director who very kindly agreed to give us a discount and deliver them for free.

After what seemed like an eternity and a million emails (which people didn't respond to, grrr!) trying to find out everyone's shoe size, the boots were ordered and were scheduled to be delivered yesterday.

So, at about 4.30pm yesterday, as I was about to head home, I went to FXU to see if they'd arrived...

Nope, no boots.

So I walked up to the post room and asked.

No boots, but a package from St John Supplies with some extra bits and pieces (including hi-vis and epaulettes which we were originally told we couldn't have...) which we weren't expecting to arrive so quickly.

I figured the company had got held up making the delivery so decided to go home and try the next day.

In FXU at lunchtime today... still no boots. Same story in the post room.

At 4pm, when I wanted to head home, still no sign of the boots in FXU or in the post room, so I emailed the company and was told that they had definitely been delivered at about 11.30am yesterday.

So I trekked all over campus checking in the porter's lodge, the Peter Lanyon building reception, the main campus reception, the main FXU office... no one had a clue where they were.

I headed back to the library to log on and pester the poor woman in the office again to ask which office they'd been delivered to and who signed for them. One of the FXU committee had signed for them, meaning they'd been in FXU all along. But I'd asked in 2 different FXU offices and no one had any knowledge of them being there. How do 19 pairs of boots go unnoticed?!

Luckily I bumped into the FXU committee president, and she phoned the guy who signed for the boots to ask where they were...

... turns out they'd been in the main FXU reception all along, but the guy who signed obviously didn't think to put them in the other office with the rest of our stuff or tell anyone else that they were there. D'oh. And the girl who was on the desk when I asked in that office earlier had no idea they were in 3 large boxes about 2 metres to her left.

Major communication fail.

But it's all sorted now though, and we've got nice shiny new boots to wear to Royal Cornwall Show next week. I know it doesn't seem like that much of a big deal, but I'm quite proud of myself that I managed to organise this whole thing by myself and see it through from start to finish with basically no help from anyone else (as I've been running LINKS basically single-handedly for the past month while suffering and recovering from glandular fever, check me out haha).

Today was the first entirely good day I've had in while.

Nothing bothered me today, and things that would have normally made me angry or grumpy I was able to just brush off and get on with the rest of the day.

So why was today so good?

• The careers thing (which was supposed to start at 9am and finish at 4.30pm) finished at 12.15pm, and I only had to go back for a couple of things in the afternoon which were actually useful
• I had a mock job interview, and found out that I actually did pretty well and wasn't just sat there with a blank mind and unable to answer any questions as I'd expected I would be
• Doing the mock interview today and the CV and application forms session yesterday means that I've now only got one more section to go before finishing my Exeter Award
• The SJA shirt I bought on eBay (we're not technically allowed to sell or buy uniform on eBay, so shush) arrived, it's in pretty much brand new condition, and it fits me quite well even though it's size 8. Woo! And it was only £7 including delivery, bargain.
• The steel toe cap boots that I organised ordering arrived (after an epic hunt, but I'll save that for another post...)
• Lots of people on my course who I spoke to today asked if I was feeling better after having glandular fever which was really nice.
• It was lovely and sunny and warm :)
  

There's probably loads of stuff I've missed off the list, but those were the main things.

Yay for still feeling happy and energetic at 9.4opm on a Friday evening! Especially after getting out of bed at 7.30am :P