Bletchley Park
I was reading the ‘Hmm, Stick it up my Ass’ post that I had written a while ago and was reminded of a very similar incident that occurred about 14 years ago.
I was booked onto a leadership course at the wonderful Bletchley Park. The week before the course began the training company rang me and asked if I was willing to give a young lady a lift down. She lived near me and would struggle to get there on time if she caught the train and she didn’t drive. I was single at the time and I only needed to hear the words ‘young lady’ for me to agree.
I had a small soft top sports car at the time and it was summer, I was in (I thought!). I rolled up to her house at the agreed time and I’ll admit I was pretty excited. When I saw her, to say I was disappointed would be an understatement of great proportions. You’re going to think I’m shallow now but bear with me. Firstly I was angry with the training company, they had mislead me. She wasn’t young and I even wondered if she was a lady, but secondly I was thinking “How the flip is that going to get in my car? And if it does my suspension is going to get hammered”. I had to pop the roof down to get her in. Imagine trying to push a beach ball into a shoe box.
If the training company had said, “Would you mind giving a woman with a nice personality a lift?” I probably would have made a polite excuse to avoid the situation, and if they had have said that they would still have been lying, massively lying! I tried to make conversation but all I got in reply were grunts and one word answers. She turned the radio off at one point and said, “I’m not a fan of music”. The journey took 3 very long hours. When we got there we were split into teams and luckily Fatty (I can’t remember her name, it may very well have been ‘Fatty’) was put into a different team than me.
Our accommodation was newly built and the walls were paper thin. I was bunked up in the corner of the building and only had one neighbour. On the second morning of the training I was abruptly awoken by what sounded like a hippopotamus with diarrhoea. Massive parps of gas followed by plopping noises and grunts were made for about 10 minutes, I thought someone might be dying. At breakfast that morning I was telling my team about my farty alarm clock and we all laughed. After breakfast we all walked back to the accommodation to collect our learning material and as we entered our rooms virtually simultaneously a heavily pregnant girl on our team, and coincidentally my neighbour, gave me a very dirty look.
One afternoon I was having a cigarette outside the main building when I spotted an old Ford Escort estate driving down the long gravel driveway billowing black smoke from its rear. It came to a stop in front of the building and an old tramp like fellow got out of the car and came up walking towards me. “Crash us a fag old boy” he asked without asking. He went on to tell me what a piece of crap his car was and he effed and jeffed and made me laugh with his stories. I told him I would have to get back to work and said ‘Goodbye’. Later on that evening I saw him again, he was the guest speaker for the evening and was Brigadier Alex Birtwistle. What an absolute inspiration and a laugh.
One person from each team had to give a five minute talk each night which was judged by the guest speaker of the evening. I told a tale about ‘Horse Face Face Lips’, a chap who I used to work with. I can’t remember the point of the story but it got plenty of laughs. The guest speaker after my speech said, “John would have loved that”, declared me the winner and then went on to tell us about her time as secretary to John Cleese!
Most of the people on my team were policemen, and Christian policemen at that. On the last night of the course we were to have a formal dinner where each team presented a ‘skit’. Brilliant, I drafted a skit based on a joke about nuns:
Four nun's got in a car accident and died. Of course, they went up to heaven and St. Peter was waiting for them at the gate.
"Ladies, please confess your sins so that you may pass through the gates," says St. Peter.
Well, the first nun walks up and says, "St. Peter, I must confess I once saw a man's penis!"
Don't worry, says St. Peter, go wash your eyes in that holy water and your sin will be forgiven.
The second nun comes up and says, "I must confess I once touched a man's penis!"
Ohhh, says St. Peter, go and wash your hands in the holy water and your sins will be forgiven...
...meanwhile, in the backround the THIRD and FOURTH nuns are going at it, yelling and cursing at each other.
"What is the problem, that you should make so much noise at the gates of heaven?" asks St.
Peter.
"Well," says the FOURTH nun, "there is NO WAY I am going to gargle with that holy water after HER arse has been in it!!!"
I added a little “and the moral of the story is…” at the end and boom, there you go a skit with a massive amounts of laughs.
I ran it by a few folk who all thought it was brilliant and I began to give people parts in the skit. The most senior policeman, and by his reaction the most Christian, became furious. “This is blasphemous” he announced, “I’ll have nothing to do with it and neither will any of my men. And if it is performed I will make a formal complaint to the training company”.
I told him to write one then and not to include me in it. I didn’t want to be part of an embarrassing, unfunny and crap performance. He and two other cronies did the Corbett, Barker & Cleese ‘Class sketch’, as did 2 other teams!
At the very end of course someone told me that Fatty had been looking for me. I knew what she wanted, she wanted a lift back didn’t she? No way Jose! I avoided her and made my exit quick. The suspension survived.
I was booked onto a leadership course at the wonderful Bletchley Park. The week before the course began the training company rang me and asked if I was willing to give a young lady a lift down. She lived near me and would struggle to get there on time if she caught the train and she didn’t drive. I was single at the time and I only needed to hear the words ‘young lady’ for me to agree.
I had a small soft top sports car at the time and it was summer, I was in (I thought!). I rolled up to her house at the agreed time and I’ll admit I was pretty excited. When I saw her, to say I was disappointed would be an understatement of great proportions. You’re going to think I’m shallow now but bear with me. Firstly I was angry with the training company, they had mislead me. She wasn’t young and I even wondered if she was a lady, but secondly I was thinking “How the flip is that going to get in my car? And if it does my suspension is going to get hammered”. I had to pop the roof down to get her in. Imagine trying to push a beach ball into a shoe box.
If the training company had said, “Would you mind giving a woman with a nice personality a lift?” I probably would have made a polite excuse to avoid the situation, and if they had have said that they would still have been lying, massively lying! I tried to make conversation but all I got in reply were grunts and one word answers. She turned the radio off at one point and said, “I’m not a fan of music”. The journey took 3 very long hours. When we got there we were split into teams and luckily Fatty (I can’t remember her name, it may very well have been ‘Fatty’) was put into a different team than me.
Our accommodation was newly built and the walls were paper thin. I was bunked up in the corner of the building and only had one neighbour. On the second morning of the training I was abruptly awoken by what sounded like a hippopotamus with diarrhoea. Massive parps of gas followed by plopping noises and grunts were made for about 10 minutes, I thought someone might be dying. At breakfast that morning I was telling my team about my farty alarm clock and we all laughed. After breakfast we all walked back to the accommodation to collect our learning material and as we entered our rooms virtually simultaneously a heavily pregnant girl on our team, and coincidentally my neighbour, gave me a very dirty look.
One afternoon I was having a cigarette outside the main building when I spotted an old Ford Escort estate driving down the long gravel driveway billowing black smoke from its rear. It came to a stop in front of the building and an old tramp like fellow got out of the car and came up walking towards me. “Crash us a fag old boy” he asked without asking. He went on to tell me what a piece of crap his car was and he effed and jeffed and made me laugh with his stories. I told him I would have to get back to work and said ‘Goodbye’. Later on that evening I saw him again, he was the guest speaker for the evening and was Brigadier Alex Birtwistle. What an absolute inspiration and a laugh.
One person from each team had to give a five minute talk each night which was judged by the guest speaker of the evening. I told a tale about ‘Horse Face Face Lips’, a chap who I used to work with. I can’t remember the point of the story but it got plenty of laughs. The guest speaker after my speech said, “John would have loved that”, declared me the winner and then went on to tell us about her time as secretary to John Cleese!
Most of the people on my team were policemen, and Christian policemen at that. On the last night of the course we were to have a formal dinner where each team presented a ‘skit’. Brilliant, I drafted a skit based on a joke about nuns:
Four nun's got in a car accident and died. Of course, they went up to heaven and St. Peter was waiting for them at the gate.
"Ladies, please confess your sins so that you may pass through the gates," says St. Peter.
Well, the first nun walks up and says, "St. Peter, I must confess I once saw a man's penis!"
Don't worry, says St. Peter, go wash your eyes in that holy water and your sin will be forgiven.
The second nun comes up and says, "I must confess I once touched a man's penis!"
Ohhh, says St. Peter, go and wash your hands in the holy water and your sins will be forgiven...
...meanwhile, in the backround the THIRD and FOURTH nuns are going at it, yelling and cursing at each other.
"What is the problem, that you should make so much noise at the gates of heaven?" asks St.
Peter.
"Well," says the FOURTH nun, "there is NO WAY I am going to gargle with that holy water after HER arse has been in it!!!"
I added a little “and the moral of the story is…” at the end and boom, there you go a skit with a massive amounts of laughs.
I ran it by a few folk who all thought it was brilliant and I began to give people parts in the skit. The most senior policeman, and by his reaction the most Christian, became furious. “This is blasphemous” he announced, “I’ll have nothing to do with it and neither will any of my men. And if it is performed I will make a formal complaint to the training company”.
I told him to write one then and not to include me in it. I didn’t want to be part of an embarrassing, unfunny and crap performance. He and two other cronies did the Corbett, Barker & Cleese ‘Class sketch’, as did 2 other teams!
At the very end of course someone told me that Fatty had been looking for me. I knew what she wanted, she wanted a lift back didn’t she? No way Jose! I avoided her and made my exit quick. The suspension survived.
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| "Brigadier Alex Birtwistle" by Michael Fennell |
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