Friday Fun

23rd February 2007

Today being the last day of half term, and with Robert being in, me and Stu were determined to make the most of it. Firstly I rolled in at about 9:20am (again) and then at about 11:30 went for a dinner "hour" until 1:10pm! We probably only left then as Rob came and fetched us so he could go home for his dinner! To be fair, we were just about to go when he came as we were on our last 50p on the pool table.

The challenge of the dinner break was firstly to beat Stu as often as possible, which I probably managed 80% of the time (as expected :P), whilst also trying to finish at least 1 frame with the white and black ball remaining (obviously before the balck is sunk as the winner). This is due to the white ball being too big for the table so when it gets potted it doesnt return until we pay again! When this happens we then use the black as the white and often we potted this too and then just used random colours to finish the game! We managed to not pot the white once! This is due to both me and Stu having the reflexes as a deaf, blind and dumb mule.

The last frame was fun as we both played with our weak hands and unsurprisingly I suck with my left! I'm pretty sure both my left arm and left leg are there purely for show...

The afternoon mainly consisted of clockwatching as we counted down the hours and finally the minutes until we went to play 5 a-side. We'd been looking forward to this for 2 damn weeks after last weeks power cut caused us to miss it. There was another fun element to the day, which was pretty much the highlight of the week for me!

There is a student named Ricky, who unfortunately is in a wheelchair. He's a good lad and an avid football fan who loves Blackburn, poor misled fella. He uses the centre a lot and always comes to have a chat with us. Even with it being half term he has been in 4 out of the 5 days this week. He can be a little tedious as he does request a lot of things he could do for himself but I guess he is used to people waiting more on him around the home. Its never too much to do the odd job for him.

Now this week, I noticed there were 2 poles with small wheels on the back of his wheelchair. Note the diagram below:



Now, if you look at the green line on the image, this is where the wheels should have been. The red line is where they were, and had been all week. I asked Ricky about these wheels and he said they were for helping him lean back to go up and down stairs and curbs etc. I was still puzzled by this and said that he would surely be lying almost horizontal for the wheels to be put to use but he assured me that he only needed to tilt backwards a little bit before the wheels were on the floor.

I was still not convinced of this so Ricky said he would show me by leaning back, putting the wheels to use. We were in the IT Centre, in between 2 banks of PC's (on solid pine desktops) so probably not the most ideal place for this demonstration. I suggested he maybe do it in a more open space as if he leaned too far, he was likely to catch his head on the desk. I was reassured this would not be the case as the wheels would prevent this. Thus the demonstration went ahead and Stuart - for education purposes only ;) - decided to record it on his mobile.

Warning: Anyone of a nervous disposition should not click the play icon on the following video. Also note, nobody was overly harmed in the making of this video. Had there been any more serious injuries, we wouldn't be taking this incident so lightly. We have the full permission of the said wheelchaired person to publish this moment of absolute hilarity to the world!



It was an absolute classic. Clearly, Ricky was convinced that his wheels were in the appropriate position. They were not. The extremely loud crash is not just the noise of him and his wheelchair hitting the floor, but if you listen carefully, you ick up the thickening thud of his cranium smashing the desktop on his way down. Yes, it looked as painful as it sounds!!

After this, we went for the ritual game of football, only to be dissapointed by the lack of attendance, It was half expected with it being half term but we were assured it would be worth it by the number of attendees supposedly coming. In the end we had just 6 and tried to make the most of it by going 3v3. Its never a good game 3v3 as theres too much room and we play rush keepers so it seamt the main target of the match was to score as many open goals as possible. Boooooring!! I hate that. Every time I got the ball with an open goal gaping, I waited for someone to attempt to take the ball off me before sticking it in after.

We won the first game before teams were changed a couple of times and I lost the next 2. I kinda lost interest - which is so not like me, just due to the lack of numbers. I did manage a couple of tricks but nothing worth remembering. I think I'll use this game as experience and the final time I attempt an indoor bicycle kick. I've been doing them every week for the past few months and although I've come close a few times, I've always come off fairly injured too! This week I have what looks like an extra elbow and a very painful hip!

After the football, me and Stu went for a couple of pints (of Pepsi - or what I now found out is Syrup from a box + Carbonated water - yummy....). Then I got home and had my tea which consisted of 6 pancakes with chocolate spread and 2 pancakes with mint ice cream followed by a bowl of cereal!!