Monthly Archives: December 2010

After my last couple of celeb and action-fuelled blog posts there’s not much of excitement to follow them up really – aside from the annual work Christmas fancy dress party that took place last week.  As ever, the team threw themselves into their ideas and some of the costumes were frankly stunning.  Lots of photos on Facebook to showcase this!

Myself and Matt bedecked ourselves in zebra-print suits and hats and home-made beards along with expertly-crafted-by-Matt furry guitars and finished off with a pair of sunglasses apiece to strut our stuff as Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill of ZZ Top fame.  Whilst at the time of donning them we were feeling rather smug at our excellence in fancy dressing, I must say that I would suggest we were trumped by a number of our colleagues’ efforts!

A jolly fun evening was had by all – very little by way of drama, and t’was preceded by an afternoon of ten-pin bowling action for the newly purchased ‘department champion’ trophy – to say I can recall going bowling for about 14 odd years I was quite pleased with getting through to the final, where I was defeated by our inaugural team champion Neil – with an impressive score, albeit perhaps more applicable to darts, of 180.

Of course, where there’s a Christmas party, sure as eggs is eggs there’s a Christmas Day to follow – I’ve prepared pretty well this year so I’ve been sorted for gifts for some time.  Which leaves the weather as the only real talking point.  I don’t like to be held back by nature so haven’t really let the smattering of snow we’ve endured prevent me getting to where I need to be.

Unfortunately the football world seems to have succumbed to over-reaction as does the rest of the nation – so Forest have already had two games called off, mercifully last weekends game vs Palace went ahead and saw the Reds stroll to an easy win.  Whether our Boxing Day trip to Middlesbrough (which I wasn’t planning on attending) goes ahead remains to be seen..

So yeah, aside from that – seasons greetings and all that guff… to be honest, I’m slightly more looking forward to Forest’s reacquaintance with local rivals Derby County on the 29th…

It’s been fairly eventful of late – since I last wrote about didgeridooing I’ve also taken part in a charity footy match which was great fun, and gave me a chance to play alongside my boyhood hero – Steve Hodge.  My mate Neil at the BBC did the legwork in organising the event, venue and some celebrity players and asked me to rustle up a team from Boots to face them.  It was a great evening.

There were blushes for yours truly though – early in the game Hodgey went down like a cheap whore in the penalty area and the referee awarded a spot kick.  Lurking at centreback he shouted back “Skipper! You have it…” at me.  Gulp.  I duly listened to my team-mates shouting “Smash it!” behind me and did just that… against the crossbar – d’oh!

The game ultimately ended 5-5, thanks to a controversial last minute penalty where Pudsey Bear took a tumble in the penalty area giving the BBC a penalty to finish the game off and share the spoils.  I really enjoyable day – not least thanks to the ex pros Steve Hodge, Lawrie Dudfield, Michael Johnson and Nigel ‘the elbows’ Jemson.  Not to mention our managers Kenny Burns and Steve Sutton.

Following that up for Children in Need itself our team at work actually threw themselves into the event much more so than in the past (thanks largely to Kate) and raised a fair chunk of cash with a couple of stalls at our head office.  The usual all night stint in the call centre gave me my annual dose of feeling great about humanity and meant it didn’t feel too bad about the early start the day after to travel to Cardiff to see Forest actually win away!

However, more eventful potentially is today’s shenanigans – Jimmy and I hotfooted it to Birmingham this morning to audition for Total Wipeout and made it through all the stages today so are both eagerly awaiting contact from the production company organising it, in less happy news Matt – who was on the afternoon audition session – didn’t get through, so then there were two.  Gutted for him.

Within a couple of weeks we should find out whether or not we’ve made the final final shortlist – from which they’ll select the 160 lucky people to take part in the show being filmed in January and February.  To say that it’s potentially unfeasibly exciting is understating it – it would be awesome!

Aside from Matt’s unlucky news, the day was further marred by arriving home to find we had a dead dove in the garden.  Perched on one of the seed feeders that Cat keeps well stocked for our garden-based feathered friends, the cold weather had obviously proven too much for it to cope with.  So a quick bit of digging and it was at least laid to rest with some degree of dignity.  Poor bugger.

To end on a happier note: BRING ON THOSE BIG RED BALLS!!!