1st April

Changeover Two

By Logs Sally Dalman

At ten to two the very loud music and singing coming down the drive announced the arrival of Alpha 3. Looking very tired, bedraggled, tanned, fit and smelling slightly they gave us a loud rendition of ‘Alpha Cool’, sung to the tune of ‘Daddy Cool’, to celebrate their arriving first at fieldbase and beating the other two groups home. Who said they weren’t competitive? Alpha One arrived 5 minutes later, looking slightly less tired, bedraggled but just as tanned and, if it is possible, with a stronger aroma. Alpha 2 arrived half an hour later (late as usual!) and everyone was welcomed by DPM, Tiny Tim, or as he prefers to call himself, Tasty Tim.

I spent the afternoon raiding the supermarkets of Mysore for porridge, and buying kit to replace that that had been broken or ‘borrowed’ by the villagers. The evening was spent chilling out and catching up with old friends; amazing after 2 months that we class each other as old friends already.

Wednesday started very early for the logs team as we had a bbq to prepare for. The bbq had been awesome at the previous changeover so we had to really outdo ourselves and better it, if we could. Can you better perfection? Ummm, can ya, can ya???? No of course not. We went to the meat market, which hasn’t changed in centuries and has resident birds of prey swooping around rather than the gulls and pigeons we are used to at home. It is also a great place to go if you are considering becoming vegetarian, as there is a lot of livestock squawking incessantly and being slaughtered on sight. We then spent an hour in Mannars Market haggling over vegetables and salad to get what turned out to be a 20p discount!

The afternoon was spent chopping the veg and getting more and more excited about the Pirates Party planned for later that evening. The fieldbase staff had been so excited about the party that they had spent the evening before changeover in their costumes playing with the plastic swords and drawing beards on each other. The bbq went really well, the chicken and sausages magnificently cooked by our resident ‘almost naked’ chefs, James, Laurie and Bruno, complete with chef’s hat.

The staff could contain themselves no longer and had to get ready during the bbq, and spent an extraordinary amount of time making sure their beards, gold hoop earring, leather belts and eye patches were in the right place and that all of our matching costumes still matched and generally having an enormous amount of fun. We then charged the participants in a mutiny on the bounty style, but they just stared at us with bemused looks on their faces, then jealous looks, and then finally, fear (as we did look very convincing and sounded very savage and pirate).

The skits that took place later were as good as ever, and amongst other things contained a Big Brother theme, singing ‘The wheels on the bus’ complete with actions, dancing, lots of shouting and a song about a girl from Bristol, that is far too rude to repeat, but Jason will be teaching everyone before they leave. Alpha 2 won the skit competition, and whilst I don’t wish to cast aspersions, the glamorous assistant on the scoreboard was an Alpha 2 PM, so I think we can draw our own conclusions!

During the week leading up to changeover a festival had taken place around India, called Holi, where everyone throws powdered dye at each other and no one is allowed to change their clothes all day. The fieldbase team had had such good fun joining in we thought it would be a great idea to attack the participants with dye. The plan backfired slightly, and we got covered from head to toe in bright pink, green, yellow, orange, purple and reds. They then helped us to wash the dye off by throwing us in the swimming pool that they had built earlier in the day, which was incredibly kind of them. We all decided to stay in the pool because as soon as we tried to get out we were thrown back in so we all took the opportunity to wash our hair. Everyone then danced the rest of the night away comparing dye splats and sword fighting.

Friday morning arrived too soon, with everyone sporting varying shades of yellow and green in their hair. Turns out that the dye is a lot more permanent that we had realized! After phase 3 project allocations the kit was handed out, whilst Thomasin (who was sadly leaving us on Saturday) and I spent the afternoon at Mysore Palace. We enjoyed a very pleasant afternoon, happily knowing that everyone else was really busy at work whilst we sat in the glorious sunshine and ate ice cream.

After a final dinner of curry (no surprises there!) most of the group chilled out watching the longest film in history, the Bollywood classic ‘Om Shanti Om’.

Whilst it’s great to see everyone again, it’s great to see them leave again and let the peace and quiet reign at fieldbase once more!

A special message for the lovely Sally who celebrated her birthday Fieldbase style last week...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SALLY

Love Plop...