Welsh Weekend Jaunt

As you know, last week I went on a team-building weekend for a festival I'm working on in August. I had't been hugely looking forward to it as I'm not really fond of large groups or humiliating myself in front of... well anyone really. But it actually turned out to be quite fun.

To be fair, I could have avoided the entire team-building aspect of it entirely as it's really only a way of bringing you together and breaking the ice, and I managed to inadvertently do that immediately by myself. When we arrived we were the first ones there; the others were coming from London and had left later so were caught in traffic. I picked the room with the least beds in it as I'm not really a 'sharey' person, then unpacked and went outside.

I then considered that the woman organising the event might want that room and she probably didn't want to share with me as she didn't know me, so I moved my stuff to my second choice of room. When everyone arrived later I was told that rooms were allocated and obviously I wasn't in either of my choices but in the one I least preferred. No matter, I duly moved my stuff again and went about my merry way. However later, I discovered that I had misplaced my knickers...

So I had the unenviable task of asking strange women if they had seen my pants. After 2 women I found one who informed me that they had indeed found my smalls on one of the beds - so ice well and truly broken there! The 'adventure centre' we stayed in was lovely and situated in a proper little village with no street lights, sheep in fields and one pub at the end. If you looked out, apart from the pylons, you could have been at any point in history.

The only thing that dampened it a little was that I came woefully unprepared (or over prepared depending on how you look at it) and had bought only very warm clothes - well this was Wales after all! So I ran around like a ninja in entirely black clothes whilst we baked in 80 degrees heat. I had actually bought gloves and a scarf if you can imagine... idiot. I'm well-known amongst my friends for always being inappropriately attired but it's usually because I don't bring a coat not the other way around!

The team stuff wasn't too humiliating and I opted out of any that were on 'health reasons' - I like to think I helped in my own way by taking photos and laughing at everyone. Our team won every task which was good and the day went pretty fast. The next day we went to the site and the Druids blessed the festival so the event would go well and it wouldn't rain (like you do) They had blessed it the year before and it was the first year it didn't rain so fingers crossed! Interestingly they did the same thing last year for Glastonbury and it didn't rain then either.

I'm not sure if it bought me closer to the other managers as I failed to recognise members of my own team later in the day and I found one of the girls highly irritating, but I really liked a couple of them and everyone seemed happy to let me wander off on my own with the newspaper supplement without hassling me which was brilliant - so bring on the festival I say!