G'day from Oz

Well after a couple of long flights finally made it to the other side of the world. Currently holding on by my fingernails to stop me falling off.
Completely uneventful travel out here, apart from the torrential rain on the way to Heathrow, wow didn't it come down, and yet still there are loads who forget to turn their lights on while driving through it.
Had a nice lunch before the flight a chicken burger and a pint, as you do. Then the first flight to Dubai was off and slightly delayed. Hey ho, we left an hour late, but made up time on the way, so landed in Dubai 20 mins later than scheduled.
The transfer was fun, had to go up and down in a couple of lifts and then a train to go to the departure gate. Not so well signed that we didn't go up and down in the same lift a couple of times first.
Finally we were on our way, for the incredibly long section.

Watched 2 films during the first flight, Paddington 2 and The Shape of Water, a strange but haunting film, a bit fairytale like, with a few bits that just left you scratching your head going WTF! And only watched one film on the 2nd part of the journey in between lots of eating and napping. They certainly did feed you well. The film I chose to watch was 3 billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. I thought it was one of the most brilliant films I have seen in a long time, very moving and funny in places at the same time.

Anyway finally got to Sydney and was met by Sue, who with Darren and little Jos are kindly putting up with me for a few days with a remit to show me the sights. Well obviously there are a couple that will be essential tourist bits, but I know they'll have places they like to go that are less touristy and probably much nicer for it.

With the 10 hour time difference at the moment (changes this Sunday) I'm not sure if I'm early for bed at 15.30 UK time or late for bed at 01.30 Sydney time.
I'll let you know in the morning.

So all arrived safe and sound and ready for the next bit of the adventure.

Toodlepip for now chaps.

Heading for a Land Down Under

Baugull nyungai, Jingeri, Jingiwalli wahlu
(Good day, Greetings, How are you?)

Just practicing my Yugambeh for my upcoming trip. (That's the local aboriginal language for the area)

I want to break into song (Down Under - Men at Work) as in a few days I will be heading off to the Gold Coast, in Queensland, Australia to volunteer at the Commonwealth Games.
As usual it took me plenty of time to make that final decision to commit. I always have a great sense of excitement in applying, then there is the wait to see if there will be an interview and then the long wait to see if selected for a role. And then the realisation that I've actually been offered a role on the other side of the world. Ooops.

This interview was a little different from the normal, turn up and speak to an interviewer face to face, or an over the phone discussion, as not being able to get to Australia, we were invited to do an online "one-way" interview process.
Sat in front of the computer the questions appeared on the screen and we had a bit of preparation time, before we recorded our video answers and uploaded them onto the interview system. There was an option to re-record the answers, but I felt that answering in one hit was more like being face to face, and if I wanted to change my answer I did so as part of the process.
Whatever I said must have been enough to make them think I would be a suitable addition to the team and I was offered a role with the Athletics Field of Play at the Carrara Sports Stadium.
I accepted and then started to think about what I should do.

Those who remember my Rio deliberations will know how much thinking I put into that before making my final decision. This really wasn't much different, though perhaps a little quicker.

A couple of other volunteers were deciding about taking on an AirBnB for the duration of the games, and eventually we found a house not far from where we were all volunteering. Though not as close to my venue as in Rio, it sounds like a lovely place in the suburbs. Accommodation sorted.

Visa next (very easily done online) and then the fun finding flights, which I kept putting off while not being able to decide how long I wanted to be away and how I wanted to structure my time. Seeing we never get notified of shifts very early it is always tricky planning the details.

I then got an email changing my role from Field of play to "Sports Presentation Team". I'm intrigued, as the information on the role isn't overly specific. So it will be fun to find out.

Shifts arrived for 7th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th April, all afternoon/evening shifts, so leaves daytime free to explore a little, but does pose the transport home late at night issue. Time to fire up the Uber app?
I contacted a flight specialist who put a package together for me with Flights out to Sydney, then to the Gold Coast a couple of days later, a hotel in Brisbane after the games and a fight home from there. (Believe me it took a lot longer for me to make a decision than it did for her to find a suitable package......what do you mean you're not surprised?)

Really lucky too, that friends from my running club had moved out to Sydney a few years ago, and they have very kindly offered to put up with me for a couple of nights while I am in Sydney. Though I think maybe my departure from them on a 7am flight (with me having to leave them early hours of the morning) might mean I have to sneak out quietly.

So now comes the important gathering of things I need to take and can't live without. Time to sort out my ipad to update the blog while I'm away, find my travel adaptor and make sure I have enough stugeron to help me sleep on the flights.
Time to start a few lists then.

Will be updating as and when.
Catch you soon

It's Snow Joke

Birmingham March 2018, IAAF world indoor championships.

All ready for a nice few days volunteering, and then in came the snow courtesy of "Emma" otherwise known as the "Beast from the East" with its cold Siberian temperatures and snowfall leaving most of the UK completely blanketed in the white stuff, and as usual the UK services being completely unable to cope in all sorts of areas including transport.

My journey started on Thursday morning with a 7.40am Megabus from Southampton to Birmingham (my pride at getting a £5 fare there and a £1 fare back on Sunday was immense - That'll be the accountant in me then)
The snow started late Wednesday evening, and by morning it was laying with no sign of disappearing.

The journey North through whitened landscape took around 4 hours, and once off the bus I headed to the Arena, to meet up with another volunteer (Karen) and find out about collecting my accreditation and then uniform for the championships.
Once that was sorted, I had some lunch and then headed to find my hotel, where I changed into my nice new uniform and headed back to the arena for my first shift.

After a short briefing, Karen and I were located at a backstage area, near Press entrance, athlete post event exit and the "Clean athletics" testing areas. Quite a busy place to be, and you needed to be on the ball as people were able to come at you from 5 different areas and my job was to make sure that they were actually meant/allowed to be there.

We had a lot of head-scratching when we realised that athlete accreditation included numbers for areas 8 and 9 and all the areas we had around us were 2,3,5, so once they left the track and had been through the media and kit collection areas, technically we couldn't allow them to go anywhere, except back up the stairs into the public areas. Not ideal for athletes who are "in the competition zone".
This we pointed out to some of the management team who scuttled off to make some adjustments.
Sometimes things look fine on paper, but it isn't until you start working with a system that you realise that a few tweaks need to be made. This happened a few times, but we managed to get it all working nice and smoothly after a while, and we started to recognise faces, plus could use our common sense in a few situations.

Being backstage is brilliant, though most of the time you tend not to see the competition, you can

hear it all going on, and get the sense of excitement in the arena itself. Sadly with the weather getting even worse, people were finding it hard to travel so while the athletes were local and catered for with transport, many volunteers didn't make shifts due to lack of trains etc. Most of our volunteer shifts were running with no team leaders and almost half the numbers we were needing. But as with every challenge we did our best and managed. Many adding extra shifts to cover for those who couldn't make it in.

With snow spikes attached to the walking boots to get me to and from shift. The thermal long johns and base layers (almost as much as trekking in Nepal) helped keep me warm during shift and I kept moving around and dancing to the music being played in the Arena. I think it kept many of the photographers, security staff and even athletes and kit carrying volunteers amused as they came through the area. In fact one of the security guys who works on that point at the Arena regularly, Leon, gave me a book he had been given by Craig Revel-Hallwood after the latest Strictly tour. Leon called me the dancing queen and thought I'd appreciate the book. What a lovely guy.

All shifts blend together after a while, and being moved to a different location initially on shift 3 put me at the access to the Arena where the TV presenters had to come through, so I had to check Colin Jackson, Michael Johnson, Gabby Logan and Denise Lewis through. Backstage gets pretty busy with loads going on all through the day, even during competition time, so there is always a need to be on the lookout, and we had a few police officers came through trying to check out whether we were enforcing security properly. We did get to know who they were after a while so tended to make sure they got extra checks, but to have done that with everyone who passed by us would have caused major hold ups. Even so we managed to stop people who didn't have the correct accreditation and had a lot of frustrated team managers we had to send off in different directions, which again we mentioned back to the management team and they reviewed their access controls again.

As with every volunteer role there are issues, some are bigger than others, and some people make more of them than others, but it is always nice to be appreciated for what we do. Sometimes we do wonder whether those that organise the events have ever actually worked at the lower end of the system to see exactly how things work in practice as opposed to in theory, but they did have a lot on their hands with coping with the weather and a large number of no show volunteers who just couldn't get to shift, even volunteers who had to step up and take on team leader roles were struggling to find people to cover some duties.

I was lucky to be sited inside the Arena (even if cold) unlike many of the spectator services team who were outside in all weathers directing people. Some as far as the Main train station, negotiating the building works going on in the centre and outside in all the blizzards. Kudos to them for sticking at it, and for their team leaders bringing them in to warm up on a regular basis. Hopefully when we get asked to feedback to them about our experience they'll be able to take some of the comments on board.

Meanwhile time to prepare for the next one. I suspect the Gold Coast will be a lot warmer and have some very different challenges.

Some very Special Olympics

I originally wrote this in August 2017 and completely forgot to post it, but with more volunteering pending I thought I'd get this done now. (slightly amended of course)

I was based at Ice Sheffield, for the Artistic Gymnastics, and wow what a great few days we had. The competition was superb across all levels of competition, I am in awe of any one that can balance on the beam, even without having to do all the fancy flips and walkovers.
But one of my greatest memories will be the first day that competitors came into the arena for the first time and saw where they would be competing. The expression on their faces was one of sheer amazement, followed by delight and maybe a little bit of nerves kicking in.
As a volunteer we get to meet some amazing volunteers (and also competitors) with their own great stories. It really is a very satisfying event to be involved with.
The National Games take place every 4 years, the previous one in Bath in 2013 I was working with the athletes for the track and field events.
Both events were absolutely fantastic for participation and atmosphere, with families and other spectators cheering the athletes on. A wonderful way to spend a week.
If anyone wants to find out more about the Special Olympics either locally, Nationally or worldwide, check out the link and maybe I'll see you volunteering at the next games.
https://www.specialolympics.org/

It's been too long now since I got home from a great week in Sheffield supporting the Special Olympics National Games. How time flies and how remiss of me not to do a post sooner.


Each day the volunteers formed a welcome line to cheer them in as they arrived, and at the end of each day we did the same to congratulate them all as they left, with cheers and high fives, their smiles were very rewarding.


So many medals came back from the first day of medal presentations, it was great to hear them all jangling like bells round the gymnast's necks as they returned full of smiles. And that continued throughout the few days of competition.
One of the great things about the Special Olympics is that everyone that takes part gets recognised. First, second and third get the traditional Gold, Silver and Bronze, but there are ribbon rewards all the way down to 8th place, and for any others that may have not managed to gain a place for whatever reason there is a participation ribbon.

The home straight

The final weekend, meant a replacement bus service for a couple of stops before picking up the train into London and then the tube across to Stratford, then a repeat on the way home. All times slightly changed, but all part of the London experience.
We were very lucky to have been given an oyster card for travel and as my total travel costs were in excess of £130 the travel card was very welcome. I know many other volunteers also appreciated the help towards the travel costs, some like me having longer journeys and many shifts and others with shorter journeys or few shifts. Many people still don't realise that as a volunteer, we pay for everything as a rule, so anything we are offered as part of our daily experience is always very welcome.
In this case we had Travel, food, uniform, and the occasional thank you gift in appreciation, though most of us just do it as we love being involved and gaining the once in a lifetime experience. Plus of course that all important support for the athletes and giving everyone a memorable experience.

It was a little busier for the final weekend, as there were many more finals taking place and of course Team GB were starting to pack up for the journey home themselves with the athletes too starting to leave for their own journey home. Such a shame not to have been able to get a team photo, but my memories will last forever of meeting such a great bunch of people.

Each event session meant an update of the medal board outside the Athlete room with each new medal gained and over the weekend we ended with 18 Gold, 8 Silver and 13 Bronze medals. 39 in total, well in excess of the targets they needed to achieve.

I managed to attend a few medal ceremonies, as well as helping to move some of the kit around in readiness for the IAAF championships that follows next month. It is a shame that I won't be able to experience that too, just to see how different the atmosphere is with the elite athletes competing.

It has been lovely working with the Team and all the athletes and a little surreal at times, watching the coverage in the athletes lounge with Maria Lyle, Richard Whitehead, Dave Henson, Kare Adenegan, Hannah Cockroft and others, all screaming and shouting for their team-mates to do well and including me as part of their cheer squad.

To be honest before I started my Team Attache shifts I was aware of the bigger names, but many of the others I didn't know. Now I feel like I know them all so well, which is so lovely, and as I was leaving to go across to the stadium one of the Team Managers presented me with a thank you card from the Team, which was really nice, as I felt I could have done so much more to help, but as a home games they were pretty organised and had most things covered well. I know some of the other Team Attaches had to do a lot of things that the Team GB guys themselves already had sorted. Home advantage definitely meant I had less pressure to sort any issues on my own.

As volunteers we were lucky enough to be offered tickets to the final session, to go and enjoy the atmosphere and for the closing speeches, so leaving my team for the last time (who were all going across to support our final athlete's race) I headed to the stadium.
Sadly with timings being tight, I left before the final medal ceremonies had taken place, so missed out on the thank you to those of us "pretty in pink".
A final session that saw torrential rain at the start and glorious sunshine at the end. A very good analogy of the Para Athletics to be fair. Overcoming adversity and shining through.
The competition over the past 10 days has been awesome. So many different athletes competing in many different classifications, meaning that many athletes were able to experience the cheers and roars of the crowd and the applause and cheers of the medal ceremonies.
The crowds were truly magnificent in their support and all seemed to be enjoying the spectacle of the "superhumans" on the athletics track and in the field events. And even the mascot "Whizzbee" got caught up in the competition.

It's always a great atmosphere for Para Sports, I hope the IAAF Athletics starting in the next couple of weeks gets the same great atmosphere, even if they have fewer events taking place. 47 compared to the 213 events of the Para Games. But there will be more athletes , more heats and almost double the number of countries arriving to compete. London Stratford will be very noisy indeed. I know the Volunteers in Pink will do a brilliant job to make both spectators and athletes welcome.

It has been a truly memorable experience. And all the athletes did us proud, from all teams and all countries.
Though of course I think Team GB were the best (Well I would wouldn't I?)

So now it is back to the day job, a bit of a breather and I am heading off to volunteer at the Special Olympics in a couple of weeks time. A completely different type of role as I am to be at one of the Venues as the Event Services Manager, more new skills to work on. Which all adds to the variety of volunteering and gives me new experiences each time.

Join me for that next volunteer experience.

Hitting the target

Wednesday's shift was a late one, starting at 1pm.
Another quiet day at the office.
No morning session meant there wasn't much activity until later in the day when half a dozen athletes were competing, so headed across to the Hero Village to watch a few medal ceremonies. Sadly no GB athletes in this session, so was cheering for my fellow Team Attache friends' teams of USA and Ireland, and was delighted to be able to get a photo with Jason Smyth, The Irish Gold medal sprinter.

On Thursday I headed home for the day, my 2nd day off out of the 2 weeks, and it was far quicker to travel the distance from where I am staying to get home, than to travel by train into London and across to Stratford, yet to home is about twice the distance. Mind you the train journey to Stratford does require a lot less effort.

In my absence the Team won  2 Bronzes on Wednesday evening and 2 Gold, 1 Silver and 4 Bronze on Thursday. (How dare they? 😉 )
My next shift on Friday started off fairly quiet, so I was able to head across to the medal plaza and see all those 'Thursday won medals' being presented.
What a great couple of hours that was, and I managed to get a few pictures with some of the athletes I have been working with for the past, nearly 2, weeks.

As I write this, we have won another Gold with Kadeena Cox gaining a medal at the Friday evening session, so we now have 14 Gold, 3 Silver and 13 Bronze in total, 3rd in the table behind China and the USA.
Whoop Whoop
2 more shifts remaining until the games end. How many more can we achieve before then? There are 4 more sessions, but some are heats, though still loads of finals to come.
Go Team GB.

It's been an awesome couple of weeks working with the athletes, The final weekend is going to be busy as the final events take place. I'm pretty sure the team have already met their medal targets, so bring on the fun for those that are still competing. This team are bloomin' awesome and how great to have been part of it.

Medals and More

Well the competition seems to be going well. Team GB (My Team 😍) are doing well, though I am not sure how they are doing compared to the targets they have been set to achieve. But I am very proud of all of those that have been competing. Each day I get to know them a little more and chat with different athletes and feel like a proud Mum when they do well.

11 Gold, 2 Silver and 7 Bronze at end of play on Monday seems a good haul to me.

Sunday and Monday have been very different days, I have walked through Stratford Centre to find a post box (to actually post something, not just for fun) and spotted the "Meridian Line", that runs through from Greenwich.
(I was very excited about this)

Headed off to meet another athlete at St Pancras and escorted them back as well as meeting one at Stratford and bringing his equipment back to the hotel. Then filling in with any odd jobs needed, topping up the Athetes' room water and yogurt supplies.

Team GB management and coaches are a very well oiled machine, so most everything is covered, though with so many winning medals, I was sent across to one ceremony to accompany Olivia Breen collecting her gold for Long Jump. She was so excited and didn't stop talking and smiling all the way.

Had then to accompany one of the athletes (Isaac Towers) across to the warm up track ready for his race later in the evening, which sadly I didn't get to watch, and I think he came 7th, which was brilliant as he has a long future ahead of him.

Another of the athletes Andrew Small, who had won a bronze on Saturday at the session we had been to, also came over to the Stadium, and he was keen to buy some programmes so we wandered off to find some and then headed into the stadium to watch some of the races and we spent time chatting about the events and how he was getting on with his competing. A great companion for predicting the race results as he was very aware of all their abilities, though in any race it's always what happens on the night, and some of the races seem to be taking place so late, I'd be half asleep, not sure about having energy to compete.


During the day though I did bump into so many volunteers I knew, which was great fun, though was quite a hot and humid day for competing, with any luck it will be cooling down a little for the next few days.

I am now looking forward to seeing what the next few days have in store. (Though it seems to be going really quickly).
There's still plenty of competition to go and each day means I get to see more of how the behind the scenes stuff works.
Its a great way to spend my "holiday" and I feel very privileged to be involved.

So let Tuesday begin....
Catch you soon