rivers, pig farms, twenty20 cricket+mobile phones

Had a very enjoyable day yesterday with a group of Year 8 pupils on a Geography field trip to a river and a pig farm(!). At the end of the afternoon, a group of us from school had intended to meet up to watch the twenty20 cricket in Bristol. It was raining in Midsomer Norton, so I called the cricket ground and a very helpful lady informed me that “the sun is shining here” so our group duly made arrangements to meet at the ground. Of course, by the time we arrived in Bristol it was pretty heavy drizzle and absolutely no prospect of there being ANY play whatsoever (we reckon the lady on the end of the phone must have in a call-centre in Bombay!). Rapid changes of plan ensued – James decided we’d all meet at “The Cambridge”, so James+I collected Giles from Temple Meads station and then got Moira to drop us off at the pub in Clifton Village (communication difficulties meant that initially we weren’t able to get a message to Pat – who was returning to Bristol from London – but we DID eventually let him know the change in plan). Having waved goodbye to Moira, James realised that he’d got the name of the pub wrong (it was “The Clifton”)! By some miracle of communication, Andy+Helen turned up at The Clifton pub…. but we were having great difficulties in contacting Pat to let him know that we’d got the pub name wrong. Meanwhile, he (of course) had walked in the rain from the cricket ground to The Cambridge pub beyond Clifton Common (an awful long way from Clifton Village!). Obviously, we weren’t there so he walked all the way home to his flat (about 5 minutes from the Clifton pub!!)(he reckoned the whole adventure took him over 2 hours!)….. before he was eventually persuaded by Helen+Andy to join us (he’d got into his jim-jams by this time!).
Oh what fun we had!!
Photo: data collecting in mid-stream (if only mobile phone communications had proved as simple!).