Early Bath

So the training took place over four days and it would take far too long to go into detail and, to be honest, it would be bone-crunchingly boring for anyone who wasn't there. Let us, however, start with the people that were there...

We were not the first group of would-be tutors to embark upon a week of training that year, and, as is often the case in the 21st century, Facebook tainted our enjoyment slightly. Someone had posted in a makeshift 'let's get to know each other' page and accidentally let slip that he had been sent home from the training week but a month previous. An early bath, therefore, became a very real possibility.

During the first night antics, there was no party atmosphere in the chats I was having. We began to think back to our applications and the minor fabrications we had added. I saw myself turning up to camp and be immediately expected to create an entire nativity scene out of origami whilst playing a number of classics on the guitar. The reality was such that I would have been able to make an origami house, and play 'Amazing Grace' with lengthy pauses between each chord. I could practically visualise standing in front of the departures board.

Despite our greatest fears, everyone at our orientation got a camp in some form or other, even some of the stranger participants... I'm not going to mention any names, but there were two people in particular that only narrowly got through to the judges' houses after bootcamp (so to speak).

There was a gentleman, let's call him Jack, in his mid-30s; he had apparently been in prison in Thailand and had no experience of working with chlidren. He took pictures of everything and subjected everyone to his odd music. He gave feedback liberally and voiced his ideas readily - ideas that were ridiculous. I have no amusing anecdote about him because I avoided him at all costs.

I do, however, have an amusing anecdote about another member of our group, a young girl from Glasgow that we shall call... Hmm... Jill. She was Glaswegian and had an accent that you could hack with a Stanley knife lifted from a Glasgow street corner. We tried to include her, but she seemed to prefer the life of a space cadet than back on earth. Consequently we ignored her and all rubbed along fine. Having said all of that, it was never going to go well when she volunteered to do a lengthy demonstration of the song 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' and the jungle explorers came across some sticks. When a room of people are fed up of watching pointless exercises, they tune out - especially when Jill was involved. If, however, someone suddenly starts shouting a world that sounds a lot like 'sex' over and over, it's going to give people the wake-up call they needed.

Poor Jill.