Muffy and me - a cat's tale

Whenever I am asked whether I miss office life, I always say that I don’t miss the office, I miss the people.

 I’ve spent two years and two months running my own business out of the spare bedroom at Warrillow Towers. I’ve looked at renting an office, or at least a desk in one, but it’s not easy to find and what space is available is expensive for what you get.

 There’s almost nothing in Tamworth so when someone for whom I have done some PR work offered me a desk in an office just over 20 miles away in Solihull, I decided to take a look.

 The office was good, the desk five times bigger than the one on which my computer rests as I craft this post; but weekly travel and parking costs would almost double the amount I was spending on the desk. So, it was back to the drawing board and this tiny desk.

 At least I know I’m not alone; the topic of working from home cropped up at a networking event this week and one of my fellow delegates, a solicitor, revealed that his daily companion was the family dog.

 Mine is the family cat, Muffin. A giant half-Maine Coon, who is 2ft 6ins long from nose to tail when sprawled across the bed behind my desk, he came to Warrillow Towers on the rebound, as it were.

 In the autumn of 2007, Mrs W and I lost our much-loved cat, Kylie; You can tell how old she was (roughly 18) because she was named after the Aussie pop moppet when she was still starring in Neighbours in about 1989. I was living the bachelor life in a dismal one-bedroom flat when she (the cat, not the Aussie..) came into my life.

 It was around this time of year - I recall I was watching a Five Nations rugby match on television. I had the front door open, as I often did in the hope that someone, anyone, would visit and break the dreariness of my weekend existence.

 I was in the kitchen making a cup of coffee when I heard a plaintive ‘miaow’ behind me. My visitor was a tiny little brown-and-white tabby. She belonged to my neighbour who was, to be frank, a bit of a reprobate. She hopped on to my bed, made herself comfortable - and was still in my life almost two decades later.

 Not long after, the reprobate was evicted for not paying his rent and left her behind.

Muffy ponders his next move on
 the chessboard - clearly an intelligent cat! 

 Mrs W (then Miss G) and I had been seeing each other for about 18 months at the time and, as committed animal lovers, were determined that the cat would not be left alone. I took her in to my bedsit, we took her to the vet, had her checked over and she soon became part of the family, moving in with us when we married in July 1990.

 She had quite a life, getting stuck in the roof of the half-built apartment block next to our flat, regularly vanishing into the yard of the Co-Op dairy down the road, losing the sight in one eye after a disagreement with a car, yet still being lively and active well into her second decade.

 When she went to the vets in autumn 2007 for a routine procedure and never came home, we were devastated. We thought we would cope but the winter of 2007-8 was just too quiet at Warrillow Towers so, in the following spring, we decided to look for another cat.

 A workmate of Mrs W’s worked voluntarily for a cat-rehoming charity and quickly came up with Muffin. His owner lived 12 miles away and was having to give him up due to an allergy to cats. We visited one night and fell in love with him.

 We like to think he fell in love with us; we call him the noisiest cat on the planet for his boisterous ‘miaow’ and a yelp which often sounds more like a dog’s bark than a cat expressing his feelings. 

 He’s not supposed to lie on the bed behind me as I work; Mrs W gets irritated by all the cat hair on the duvet cover. So I keep the ‘office’ door open and cast regular glances to my right as he snores on his bed on the landing. But I’m always alive to the sound of him stirring himself awake, stretching those giant limbs as he yawns himself into life, comes and rubs against my leg and then leaps onto the bed.  

 When my mobile rings, it’s not unusual for the caller to inquire ‘What’s that noise in the background?’ as Muffy (as we now know him) shouts to make himself heard in the conversation.

 It’s not quite the same as having what the Americans call ‘water cooler conversations’ with your colleagues but when I do get up to make a cuppa, Muffy chases me excitedly down the stairs.

 Would I go back to work in a big office environment? Emphatically not, for all sorts of reasons - not the least of which is that I don’t think I would find a company who would let my cat sit behind my desk all day. 

Are you listening, Prime Minister?

Rarely, if ever, does this blog enter the political arena. Almost eight months after I began these musings, I defy anyone who doesn’t know me as a close personal friend to say which way I voted at the 2010 General Election - and then you might still be wrong.

 Although I have a degree in politics, I generally keep my views to myself. Sure, I watch BBC Parliament far more than is healthy, I choose The World At One and PM as my radio listening of choice, but I would no more start a political argument in a pub than order a pint of Carling.

 But the current furore over the Government’s planned reform of the National Health Service has prompted me into putting finger to keyboard.

 I like the NHS; in fact, I owe my life to it. Having been born in 1964 with spina bifida and hydrocephalus and being the only one of three siblings who survived more than a few days with it, I am eternally grateful to the GPs and consultants who pulled me through my early childhood. The shock when it came back to bite me in the rear in the form of epileptic fits which I had not suffered for more than 40 years was crippling, in both a mental and physical sense.

 Over the past few years since the return of my epilepsy, I have spent rather too long in surgery waiting rooms, in consultants’ offices, having blood tests, brain scans and the like. Mrs W has endured similar experiences for different reasons; and we and many like us will tell the politicians arguing over the fate of the NHS that it does not need more competition. It does not need opening up to the free market; all the vast majority of people who use the NHS on an occasional basis want it to do is to work in a joined-up fashion.

 Let me tell you a story. Here is a patient who needs to have three tests done at an eye clinic. The patient is not yet suffering from any condition but has a family history so the NHS, quite rightly, is monitoring the situation every three months. 

 Yet the patient receives three separate appointments for three separate tests on three separate dates and it requires the patience of a saint and numerous telephone calls to persuade the authorities that it would be a good idea to do them all on the same day.

 The patient subsequently books the morning off work and attends a local hospital, only to discover that the clinic is only able to complete two of the three tests and wants the patient to return at a later date for the third - meaning more time off work.

 Cue a full and frank discussion as the patient produces a letter from their GP, confirming that all three tests will be done on the same day. Cue a harrassed receptionist, seeking a way out of the problem.

 A solution is eventually found and the first two tests take place just a few minutes after the appointed time. The patient is then told to go and have a cup of coffee in the restaurant as they have 20 minutes to wait before their appointment with the consultant.

 Duly refreshed, they return to the waiting room at the required time to find precisely three people ahead of them in the queue - and wait a further 90 minutes before being called in to the inner sanctum.

 Harrassed, tired, hungry and needing to get to work 20 miles away lest they let down colleagues, they undergo the test......which takes less than five minutes.

 Completely oblivious to their feelings, the consultant announces that nothing has changed since their last visit, “so I’ll see you in nine months. Goodbye.”

 And the authorities wonder why patients often have a dim view of doctors.

 I wonder how many MPs, the people in whose hands the fate of the NHS lies, have undergone that experience? How many have turned up at A&E at 9pm on a Saturday night, frightened for the health of their 80-year-old mother and still been there at 4.30am on Sunday?

 Politicians can talk until they are blue/red in the face about turning patients into stakeholders, into giving GPs control of their budgets, but all of it is meaningless until they can answer some basic questions. How can a patient arrive at their local hospital and produce a letter of which the consultant seems completely unaware? How can four consultations take 90 minutes? How can some doctors be so astoundingly rude to worried, anxious, patients?

 Until our politicians see the argument from the other side of the desk, all talk of NHS reform is nonsense.

A tale of two crimes

A snapshot of recession-hit, ‘why should I care about you?’ Britain at the end of January 2012.

 I began this week with a visit to a lady who I believe is going to do an enormous amount for the cause of naturism in this country. I won’t name her, because this blog post isn’t about her, but anyone who has any involvement with me on Facebook and Twitter won’t find it too difficult to work out her identity.

 We talked for hours on Monday afternoon and only a prior engagement in Tamworth forced me to end the conversation; she is enthusiastic, hugely intelligent, determined....just the kind of person British Naturism needs.

 We had never met before Monday but by the end of the day we were Facebook friends and following each other on Twitter.

 Then, on Tuesday, she posted on FB that another motorist had smashed into the back of her Smart car, crushing the rear panel, then driven off without reporting the incident.

 She can’t afford to claim on her car insurance, because it would put her premiums through the roof, so she will drive around in a bashed-up car for the foreseeable future until she can find a way to get the panel replaced.

 CCTV? Yes, there was a camera in the vicinity but it was pointing away from the scene of the crime so is no help whatever.

 Crime? Yes, that is what this was. The perpetrator has presumably given no thought whatsoever to the consequences for the car’s owner and not felt the need to own up to their actions. Thought for other people doesn’t come in to the mind of people who do things like this. Getting away from the scene as fast as possible so that their thoughtlessness/stupidity/ignorance doesn’t come back to haunt them is the only thing they think about.

 Fast forward to Tamworth town centre on Friday morning. With the sun not yet risen, a hard-working conscientious citizen opens their living-room curtains to start another day and realises that an ornament which has graced their garden for nearly two years has vanished. Next to where it stood when they went to bed the night before is a trail of telltale footprints.

 The citizen’s partner (your blogger) rises from his bed and spends the next hour combing every garden, bush, tree, wastebin shed, dustbin within half-a-mile of their home, looking for any sign of the missing ornament.

 Sadly, there is none.

 The ornament (a carbon-fibre statue of an English bulldog, since you ask) would cost around £40 to replace and it was almost in my mind to do so before Mrs W came home from work. But why should I? Why should I give people who have no thought for the property of other citizens the satisfaction that I had to put myself out and spend my hard-earned money to replace something they had stupidly and, probably, drunkenly stolen?

 It should be said that Warrillow Towers has been in this part of Tamworth town centre for nearly 17 years and this is the first incidence of crime we have suffered. But that is not the point. The point is that this country is creating a generation of people who probably think that stealing our ornament is funny; that smashing into my friend’s car, driving off and leaving her to face the consequences is not their problem.

 Well, it isn’t and it is. This country has to get back to a position where we all have respect for each other and each other’s property. We’re light years away at the moment, in my view. There are a million reasons for that, most of which David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and any other cosseted Home Counties-based politician have no idea how to tackle.

Rail, ale and a great day out

It’s 6am on Saturday January 7. Along with the rest of the Tamworth FC Real Ale Crew, I’m heading for Liverpool - via Birmingham.

 “You’re going the wrong way!’ I hear you cry. But wait.....there is method in our madness. The Lambs are, of course, due to play Everton in the third round of the FA Cup. Along with the 8-900 diehard fans, several thousand Tammies who have never/rarely seen the team play before are going to be at Goodison Park - and it seems as if most of them will be on the 7.30am train to Stafford (‘change at Stafford for services to Liverpool Lime Street’ as that nice lady  who does the station announcements has it).

 So the nine-strong RAC have a plan - the 7.09 to Birmingham means we can join the Liverpool train when it leaves New Street, at least guaranteeing us a seat. 

 That proved a wise idea because when it pulled in at Stafford, roughly 300 Tammies, most carrying bottles of Budweiser or cans of Stella, charged into the carriages.

 Now it wasn’t the quietest train journey I’ve ever had, but neither was it the rowdiest - and when we got to Lime Street, our different groups went our different ways. They headed off in search of the nearest Wetherspoon’s while we began a pub crawl which I definitely aim to repeat in the near future.

 The game? Oh, you know what happened. Tamworth played one of the best 90 minutes I’ve ever seen from a Lambs team and were heading for a deserved draw when, as a Villa fan I know put it, Everton’s Royston Drenthe hit the ground ‘just as you’re taught to fall over for a penalty when you’re on £30k a week’.

 Enough of that, then. The club banked a handy six-figure cheque and the town got a weekend of great publicity. 

 So back to the pub crawl. After breakfast and a rather wind-battered stroll around Albert Docks, we were off to Dale Street, the middle of the city’s business district and, it seems, home to some of its’ finest pubs. At 11.01, we were in the Ship and Mitre - 13 handpulls, separate pumps for foreign beers and four, yes, four floor-to-ceiling fridges full of continental bottled beers.

 We could have stayed all afternoon and one day, I will - but a stone’s throw down the road was the Vernon Arms. A proper old street-corner local, it had half-a-dozen real ales including a rum porter from Boggarts Brewery which tasted as if someone had made what is already a distinctive brew and then hurled three shots of rum in the glass. Fantastic.

The pub was also showing live football but as the American corporate giant which holds the TV rights to the FA Cup wouldn’t approve, we’ll draw a veil over that.

 Another few steps down the road to Thomas Rigby’s, which had the great advantage of having another pub, the Lady of Mann, in its’ back yard (the two share an outside courtyard and drinkers can stroll out of the back door of one pub and in through the front door of the other - perfect).

 Then, it was round the corner to the Lion Tavern where, as the CAMRA Good Beer Guide rightly notes, the pork pies were as good as the ale. 

 Pre-match prep completed at just after 2pm, our party quickly found three taxis for the £6 journey to Goodison Park - split nine ways, that was amazing value.

 Our cunning plan for after the game involved avoiding the 1805, the last direct train back to Tamworth, or so we thought, leaving the hordes to hurry home while we waited for the 1846 (change at Stafford and Birmingham for Tamworth) and took a bus journey back into the city for the White Star, just up the road from the Cavern Club (Apparently, a famous 60s beat combo have their roots around this part of the city). 

 Rather than music, the White Star deals in boxing and shipping memorabilia and still full of adrenalin, we could have stayed longer - but there was a train to catch and one final pub - the Cains-owned Dr Duncan’s by Lime St station. Finally, we had found a loud and rowdy venue but then, it was early on a Saturday night in Liverpool by now.

 That’s not to denigrate the beer quality, by the way; this was just as good as anywhere else and the nine of us can say we did not have a bad pint all day.

 And to top off the good news, the 1846 unexpectedly stopped at Tamworth, delivering us home just after 8pm. The perfect end to a perfect day - and no-one even felt inclined to argue about refereeing decisions.

A Christmas birthday party

Christmas excess was cancelled at Warrillow Towers this year; no presents, no decorations, no tree, no cards (to those of our friends who sent them - we will be making amends in the new year).

 There isn’t even that much alcohol in the house :( :(

 You only have to read the post below to realise why, of course; the afterglow of Sun Eden meant we were in no mood to prepare for winter festivities; summer, sun and the glories of the South African veld, still in our minds as we head into 2012, hopefully won’t go away for a while yet.

 That’s not to say that we didn’t have a family Christmas; although Mr W senior lives in Spain and is only arriving in the UK for a three-week visit on the day I write this, Christmas on the other half of the family was a very special time. My mother-in-law has tried for years to conceal her true age but an unfortunate encounter with her medical records this spring confirmed that she was, in fact, facing her ??th birthday.

 What made this even more special is that she was born on December 24. A perennial pain for those of us faced with buying two lots of presents for two consecutive days, the Yuletide financial grief is added to by the fact that one of her sons was born on December 16.

 Nevertheless, this year, we felt it was right to push the boat out for a special party, to be held eight days prior to the birthday. Relatives from the wilds of the Cotswolds and the far west of Ireland were contacted and cajoled into making plans to visit; friends in Tamworth were alerted; a venue was booked - and everyone was sworn to secrecy.

 Mrs W, of course, lay at Sun Eden for a fortnight, worrying whether anyone would bother to turn up on the big day and how and whether her mother could be cajoled out of the house. When the morning of December 17 dawned wet, cold and miserable, it seemed her fears might come true but when the phone started ringing mid-morning with calls from relatives checking that everything was still OK, she started to calm down.

 And we will never know whether Ma had the slightest inkling that something was going on.

 In the end, everyone played a blinder. The birthday girl’s niece and her husband arrived from Ireland while her sister looked a different woman from the sorry figure who lay in a hospital bed, gravely ill, earlier in the year; Mrs W’s brothers were on top form and the restaurant owner was totally relaxed about us sitting down to eat 40 minutes later than planned, then having to push an ever-so-slightly relaxed group of people out of the door four hours later.

 It was one of those afternoons which reminded me that you really must look after your parents as they get older. My own mother died at just 49 years and seven days, while Mrs W’s dad tragically got to nowhere near that age.

 Occasions like Ma’s birthday party are where lifelong happy memories are made. However much trouble planning such events may seem beforehand, you never know when it might be the last big thing you do for your parents.

 We wouldn’t have missed it for the world and the stunned, delighted, look on Ma’s face when she walked into the restaurant will stay with me for just as long as anything we did in South Africa.

 And it was definitely worth cancelling Christmas for. Happy New Year, everyone.

Two weeks of magical moments at Sun Eden

I have a pair of old slippers. The soles are coming apart, the inner lining is breaking up. They’ve been lying at the end of the bed for three days when I decide to tidy the room and throw them away.

 I casually mention my plan to Mrs W, who is standing not two feet away; half-looking at her and half-looking at my slippers, I plunge my hand into the shoe.

 Thirty seconds later, when I have finished screaming and scraped myself off the ceiling, I begin the search for the large brown frog who had been snoozing inside, cosy and undisturbed.

Welcome to South Africa; a country of wild contradictions, of boundless beauty, of unbelievable wildlife and, for the most part, genuinely friendly people.

 We are enjoying the holiday of a lifetime at Sun Eden (www.suneden.com), a naturist resort some 30 miles from Pretoria and 70 miles north of Johannesburg, deep in the bushveld of Gauteng (formerly Northern Transvaal). The nearest supermarket is at least 15 miles away, the new Dinokeng Big 5 game reserve sits just next door, supply of hot water to our otherwise outstanding chalet is hit-and-miss, to put it mildly.

 But the whole place is wonderful, even the frog (who vanished behind the king-sized bed and re-emerged unharmed 24 hours later, to be gently dropped into a nearby mud pool) and the shongololos (see here - http://www.focusonpictures.com/zuidafrika/insectplus/insect5.htm), brightly coloured millipedes who are ubiquitous on the floors and walls.

 After a trying couple of months, it would have been all too easy for Mrs W and I to throw off all our clothes, pull up the sunloungers, pour a cold drink and spend 12 days watching the warm sun drift across the sky, with occasional visits to the swimming pool five minutes’ walk away.

 Had we been on desert-like Fuerteventura, we would have done. But you can’t come to a continent as magical as Africa and lie in the sun for 12 days.

 So we visited the Cullinan diamond mine, where some of the largest precious stones in the world, including some which lie in the British Crown jewels, have been found; we enjoyed a couple of quite spectacular drives around the game reserve, rattling around in the back of a truck while experienced game rangers pointed out wildebeest and zebra and giraffe and rhinos and some of South Africa’s thousands of bird species; we visited Mahela View lion camp, where the owner keeps three tame lions out in the wild while carrying out an extensive programme of educating tourists about this most magical of animals; we even enjoyed a wondrous day at the Tranquility Spa lodge (www.Tranquillityspalodge.co.za) , a new venue in a valley at the side of the Bobbejaansberg mountains with a fantastic view over the African landscape.

 The latter supplied two of the most memorable moments of the holiday. The owners, a former airline pilot and his Welsh-born wife are friends of our hosts at Sun Eden and we were invited, on just our second night in SA, to his 60th birthday party.

 As we enjoyed drinks on the terrace and watched a perfect sun gently slip below the horizon, a giraffe appeared on the other side of a fence at the end of the garden, gave us a disinterested glance and slowly bent his enormous front legs to drink from a pool of water.

 It was a breathtaking moment, a birthday party of a dozen people watching quietly as one of nature’s most extraordinary creations stood not 50 feet away in his natural habitat. At the time, I cursed myself for not bringing my camera; it was only when we got home that night that I realised it had been in Mrs W’s handbag all evening.

 The other great moment? We took advantage of one of Tranquillity’s reasonably-priced full day spa packages. If you’ve never spent a hour sitting nude and sipping cold lager with your other half in a jacuzzi in the spacious grounds of an African bush lodge before taking lunch and then undergoing an extraordinary full body massage, it is an experience I recommend wholeheartedly.

 Contradictions? This part of Gauteng is predominantly Afrikaans and although we did not discern any real sense of animosity between white and black neighbour (in fact, it was often the opposite), we didn’t have to look far to see white farmers living in opulent surroundings while their black employees went home to little more than tin shacks.

 We drove back to Johannesburg Airport down a four-lane highway which was quieter than an English country road on a summer afternoon, yet watched black workers walking miles down dirt tracks to catch one of the state-sponsored buses which ferries them to and from the big towns. And we were, of course, many miles from any of the cities where I am sure you will see a different South Africa - the one where the Minister of Justice has just been jailed for 15 years for corruption, for instance.

 Of course, this blog wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the naturist side of our holiday. For obvious historical reasons, naturism is still relatively new in South Africa; Sun Eden is one of just a handful of venues although a new British-owned resort, Vasnat, opened up in Cape Town while we were in the country.

 Strict attitudes to the human body, which were part of the religions of most South Africans for years if not centuries, are fading away and we found the members and guests at Sun Eden just as relaxed, friendly and non-judgmental as naturists all around the world; indeed, we can already count some of them as friends.

 And there is something about Africa which lends itself to naturism. Sitting in the garden in the nude, enjoying a vast breakfast, while impalas and springboks grazed in the grounds and brightly-coloured birds twittered in the trees is another great memory; South Africa’s fondness for braais (barbecues) meant we spent many an evening chatting outside into the late hours with an iced glass of wine in one hand, a barbecue pork chop in the other and not a stitch of clothing to be seen amid smiling, happy people. 

 We had no preconceptions about South Africa but now we have no doubt that we want to go back to the veld. Sun Eden, to which you can book accommodation direct without going through a British travel agent, is the perfect place to do so.

Martin goes on military manoeuvres

I’m joining five other people in staking out a white brick house where we know a group of terrorists have been hiding. We’re armed to the teeth with pistols, a machine gun, grenades and flares.

 Lying on the floor with our guns trained on a clearing below us, we can see some of the bad guys gathered about 30 yards in front of us, standing around a Land Rover, talking and smoking. As far as we know, they are oblivious to our presence.

 Suddenly, slightly to our left and about four feet in front of us, there is a rustling in the trees, a loud noise and something comes bursting into view.

 Terrorist, escaping hostage or bird? We have a split-second to decide. 

  Startled by the noise and keen to prove ourselves in military combat, my partner and I let fly several rounds from our pistols.

 It’s a good job they were blanks and the whole thing was a teambuilding exercise, or the pheasant which we shot would have been on the main course of that evening’s menu at our hotel.

 Welcome to Blackdown UK Corporate Training. The house is not in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else where Her Majesty’s Forces have been doing business in the past 20 years. It’s in a forest in the East Midlands where Blackdown, a company formed by a group of ex-Army veterans and business professionals, has its’ base.

 Blackdown, as their training brochure puts it ‘provide quality training products and services by taking the military way of thinking and applying it to business scenarios.’

 In other words, they train people to expect the very unexpected and how to cope when it happens.

 I’m on a media day which is giving a group of journalists a taste of Blackdown’s itinerary. The really adventurous can take their survival expeditions to Sweden and France, but we will stay in this forest for a day which will prove unforgettable enough.

 The first thing to know is how to survive in the open. How long can you last without air, shelter, food or water? Our instructor Phil, the epitome of an Army man standing well over 6ft tall and with the archetypal military haircut, tells us the first thing we will need is shelter, so our two two-person teams are sent out into the forest with a tent sheet, bungee clips and pegs and told we have five minutes to construct our own shelter.

 I’m afraid to say your blogger’s team was still working out what was what when the whistle blew. As Phil pointed out, in a real scenario, it could have been snowing or raining sideways, we could have been caught in a sandstorm...we could have been dead.

 Having learnt how to use a short-wave radio (got that bit!), we moved on to orienteering, finding our way round what seemed a vast expanse of forest with nothing more than a map and compass. Given time, I’m sure I would have worked it out but as Phil’s colleague Ben (a pocket battleship of a man) pointed out, in real life time is the thing you may not have.

 After lunch came the bit we had secretly all been waiting for - pistol training and close-quarter battle. I quickly got the hang of handling and firing the pistols so, with paintball weapons taking the place of machine guns, it was on to close-quarter battle and into the ‘kill house.’

 This is a converted two-storey cattle shed with life-size pictures of the bad guys (and their hostages) scattered throughout. Can you tell the difference between terrorist and hostage in the dark, with a split-second’s notice, with guns and grenades going off all around you?

 I did surprisingly well, even managing to get off a couple of rounds while sprawled on the floor in the dark after stumbling over my own shoelaces. Unfortunately, when the lights went on and we debriefed, we discovered that in my adrenalin-fuelled enthusiasm to shoot at something, anything, I’d killed the hostage as well as the terrorist.

 Never again will I ask how something like that happens.

 Finally, on to what Blackdown call ‘Vehicle Contact Drills’; in other words, what to do when your car is ambushed. With Phil and Ben driving the cars and doing most of the firing, we learnt that priority No 1 for a VIP in this case (think Wills and Kate suddenly being collared by Al Qaeda) is to get the heck out of the car, roll away as fast as you can and let the security experts do their jobs.

 We had taken in an enormous amount of information in the last five hours but now came the finale - the bit we’d all been waiting for, the simulated battle.

 I won’t give away any secrets, in case this piece tempts you to get in touch with Blackdown and try it for yourself but highlights included running away from an ambushed car and heading straight into a bush full of thorns; gathering our group together following the ambush and realising the spot we had chosen was a bog two feet deep in mud; stumbling down a bank and falling over (again) after a tree branch broke off in my hand and, of course, the unfortunate incident with the pheasant.

 I couldn’t walk for two days afterwards but it was worth it for an unforgettable experience which I highly recommend. Blackdown is not cheap but for companies looking for teambuilding days with a difference, I can’t imagine anything better. 

BlackdownUK can be contacted via www.blackdown-uk.com.