Bye Kids

Waved the recce bus goodbye first thing this morning. It's like saying goodbye to you kids as the leave for school, their lunch boxes packed with all their homework done. Once you see the back of them you breathe a sigh of relief knowing everything will be quieter with them away. I still had a back to back busy day, but I think I've broken the back of my workload, for now at least. Fingers crossed tomorrow let's me play catch-up as I've been letting a bit of housekeeping slide.

Green Recce

With our tech recces looming, it only felt right to needlessly stress out about every minor detail. It's not just food and coffee that's in my wheelhouse, it's bins now too! There's a big push to make these recces as sustainably minded as possible, I'm wrangling a lot of reusable coffee cups as a result and telling people where to put their waste. I just want to get a passing grade from the powers that be on our efforts to make everything nice, I low key reckon they'll still find fault with something but let's just pray it goes well.

Race Across London (Mark's 30th)

So Yesterday Rebecca and I took the coach up to London to compete in Mark's Birthday spectacular: A Race Across the World event all within London. Rebecca and I made up one of four teams that all met up in a location near Paddington at 11am, from there, there were four taxis awaiting ready to whisk each team to a different corner just outside the M25. The objective... Return to a pub as fast as humanly possible while doing a few light challenges along the way. 

Despite our phones needing to be on Airplane mode for the duration of the challenge, I thought it was going to be a cakewalk... Then our taxi took us into the countryside, and then a few more miles away for good measure. We really were in the middle of nowhere (turned out to be Horton Kirby, which is quite nice this time of year), but at least we got dropped off near a pub. Best ask the locals for directions. I anxiously approached the bar, afraid of being mocked or being told we really were stranded. As I asked where the nearest train station was an old boy halfway through a Guinness rose from his chair - he was put on this Earth to give us these directions. So we cut through a meadow, passed a cricket game and ambled along a main road, before we knew it we were already back on a train to Victoria!

Back in central London the challenges begin. To avoid some time penalties we had to get photos of us eating a food beginning with the first letter of our names. I got tortilla chips while Rebecca splashes out on a red velvet cake. We gobbled them down on a bus, as another challenge was to get photos of us using 4 different modes of transport (we ended up doing train, tube, bus and a Boris Bike... kinda). The bus took us towards Buckingham Palace where we figured we could fulfill our final task: best photo with a London Landmark. The palace was too far way to justify, but Wellington Arch, plus some tourist happy enough to take our photo did the job.

The cheesiness made it a winner. After that we hightailed it to the finish line. All the while Rebecca and I was self assured of our win. Our trip was lean, not an ounce of dilly dallying was permitted. So imagine how crestfallen we were to discover we'd come 3rd! The Birthday boy himself had done EVERYTHING before we had even landed back into Central London. We were well and truly beaten, but we nursed our pride back to with pints, pizza, pool and cocktails long into the night, each of us regaling our races across London. Mark did a spot of lucky hitch-hiking, his Mum's team caught a peddalo and Dan's taxi dropped him off a 10 minute walk away from his home near Croydon. 

I slept the whole way back home on the couch, totally pooped from all the racing around. But we celebrated Mark's big day in style. Every single tourist and taxi driver was envious of our game 'That sounds like such amazing fun' they each said - and it sure was.

Write Up Incoming

With an early start and a late finish for me today I'm totally shattered. I wanted to do a little write up of the shenanigans we got up to on Mark's Birthday, but in order to do it justice I need to not be craving my pillow. Stay tuned for tomorrow... Which is already technically today now but you know what I mean.

Friday Time Compression

 I wore my new running shoes into the office today, the universe must have noticed because I was put to work today! We all got called into a meeting to plan out the recce order of business - for me that mostly came down to the running of snacks and sustainability. This resulted in a few more curveballs than any of us were ready for on a Friday morning, luckily we are a super team capable of cooking up a plan and executing it swiftly. It was a lot of work though, it felt like we compressed about a weeks worth of work in half a day. I didn't even have the mental bandwidth to go out board gaming when I got home... An early night on a Friday!

The Phone that Didn't Ring

Literally as I sat down to write this I remembered I forgot to call back someone when I said I would. Hope I haven't dropped any more balls like that...

We've officially moved out of getting spaces ready work into doing stuff for the shoot work, a gear shift that made me realize why I hate prep. I basically hocked furniture and bought bananas for 7 weeks, that ain't why any of us are in the business, it's all about the crunch on set, quick problem solving and being out in location. I'm counting down the days til we get there now. In the meantime, I'll continue writing emails to get our logo printed onto some cups.

Tetris Fiend

Collectively, the whole office is starting to feel a little bit burnt out. Everyone is still in high spirits and cracking jokes but the slowdown is noticeable. As a direct result, everyone is becoming all the more appreciative of small favours and gestures (this is my world). We're all relying on each other to crunch out through the run up to the shoot, we'll get there, even if it's kicking and screaming.

A few days back I wrote about how I used to be in awe of Daniel's Tetris playing skills. Well that continues to be my reality because we played some competitive games this evening and he smoked me at Tetris. I thought I put up a good fight to start with, but it turned out he just needed to reconfigure his control scheme - immediately after I tasted his dust. I don't know if I'll ever get marginally better at the classic game, but it would be fun to give him a run for his money.