Logging

In a few weeks time I am off to Sheffield, my adopted home town.
I've been gone well over a decade now but am still in touch with most of my friends and ex colleagues there, so it is with the lightest of hearts I am due to catch up with my old Spinal Injury fiends at a formal " reunion" dinner at the Dam House, avenue near Walkley, a suburb where I bought my first house back in the 1980s.
One of the friends on the guest list is a blowsy, garrulous and sweet natured middle aged nurse called Ruth.
I've know Ruth a year after she completed her nurse training and we were firm friends from the get go.
Like me, Ruth has a penchant for storytelling.
She does her storytelling best surrounded by drinking buddies in the pub and this story was sparked by an episode of the tv show The Inbetweeners which was apparently responsible for the holiday " craze" of logging 
click here for what " logging " is all about

Now Ruth can deliver a story with all of the skill of Victoria Wood and would often set the scene of this one by underlining that much known and much accepted teenage right of passage of the " a gauche Brit's first holiday abroad"
She hadn't prepared herself for the cheap booze.
She hadn't prepared herself for the spicy food
She hadn't prepared herself for adhering to the 1970s  rule of not drinking the water! 
And she certainly didn't prepare herself for the terrors of wearing an all in one white bathing suit.

Couple all this with a maiden trip on an extra long water shute
And you have recipe for disaster.
I remember her words as if I was listening to her tale for the first time back in 1990....this is how I remember her story

" I was halfway down when I got the sensation that all was not well but I hit the water arse first, rather proud that I had made it in one piece and stood up in the thigh length shallows. Then a woman nearby pointed and shrieked. Then another and another joined in whilst an older lady grabbed a towel from her lounger and started to wade towards me...the wet shit stain went all the way up the back of my white one piece bathing suit. I looked like a negative of a badger as the large brown sieved stain, emanated slowly outwards in a rough circle around me......as the screaming started"

I hope at the reunion , we hear this and all the other funny stories of our salad days.

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The post cards entries today are particularly wonderful .......enjoy...big thanks to L  too

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and the reverse