I feel compelled to mention Darek's parking abilities ( or lack of ) at this point. We stopped for a drink at a motorway service station and pulling into a parking space, he got a little too close to the car in front, well actually, he made contact. Rumour has it that the said car even shifted a few feet!
We arrived in Leeds all in one piece and after sorting out the rooms in the hotel, we all trotted off down the road for a pizza. The food seemed to go down well and Erik, rather impressively, managed to consume all of his own meal plus half of mine as well! We had thought that after experiencing Graham's taste in music things could not get much worse. However, we were proved wrong by this guy in the pizza place with his keyboard. We all heaved a huge sigh of relief as he left shortly after we arrived!
The rest of the evening was spent playing Trivial Pursuits with endless complaints from the non British members of the team that we were playing the British version, so they were naturally at a disadvantage they argued. Seeing as the Brits couldn't answer half of the questions anyway, I don't think this was a valid excuse.
Saturday started with a most pleasant cooked breakfast at the hotel then the men and women parted ways and proceeded to make their way to their respective sports centres. Now this is where the problems really started! The organizers failed to book one of the sports centres so the men were not playing where they thought they were. And when they did get to play in the end, unfortunately they didn't make it to the quarter finals. But apparently it was pretty close so they do deserve some credit for that!
As for the women...We were still only four and just to complicate matters we turned up at the wrong sports centre. We blame the taxi driver! Once we had found the correct place, we awaited the arrival of the rest of our team. Eibhlin arrived but there was no sign of Chico. We had a choice of either playing with five or trying to borrow a player from another team. The latter option didn't work as it was against the rules and no one would give us a player anyway! So we sussed out a system for five on court and were prepared to play and then along came the Manchester coach and ruined our day! He refused to let his team play us as did Leeds. The only person on our side was the Durham coach, I think his name was Vince. They agreed to play a friendly with us and even lent us a setter. I can't even remember if we won or not, it wasn't important to us, we were just glad that we were playing. So if you ever get to read this Vince, cheers mate!
We got back to the hotel to find that the showers were cold and that Chico had arrived - a bit late but 10/10 for trying!
Saturday night we had another pizza, minus the terrible musician thank goodness! And yet again Erik astonished me with his great appetite by eating his own meal plus half of mine! After that it was off to the Hilton for a disco and I am proud to announce that the Reading team were first on to the dance floor! A good time was had by all, especially Scott who managed to pull!
The men had to play again the next day and needless to say, Scott's setting abilities were not quite up to standard due to the exhausting activities of the night before!
We didn't stay to watch the finals, we all just wanted to get back home and go to bed. The journey home was pretty uneventful apart from a minor argument concerning the meaning of the word waif and the fact that Gerrit hogged the newspaper by conveniently falling asleep with it in his grasp!
Written by Rachel Thompson