Drunken Nights

I have no idea how it happened, but it did, and I wasn't best pleased about the situation. Allow me to explain.

Normally, before I start my shift I sit in the office with a coffee and watch the news. From the moment I set foot in the office, the door is closed and I for that brief half hour I don't care what is happening on the site. It's my moment of tranquility before it all descends into chaos when I start my shift. As soon as I set foot outside the door, I knew it was going to be one of those nights. Whether it was something in the air or not, I've no idea, but my spidey-sense was tingling, let me tell you!

I walked around the first field, which was relatively quiet, then into the second field of tents. It was just as I walked in that I noticed not one, but THREE vehicles parked on the grass next to four tents and large group of drunk, happy punters. So I hot-footed it over to the tents and made my presence known to them. I asked them to remove the vehicles from the grass and asked them to quieten down as people were attempting to sleep. They put up a bit of a fight, but they knew I was right. As I walked away from the group, I heard one of them utter the following statement;

"That guy has an attitude problem. Who does he think he is? A warden?"

I was about to return to them to clarify my position, but decided against it.

As I crossed over into the third field, I was immediately greeted with a lot of shouting and screaming by a group of Geordie's. Again I asked them to quieten down, then explained the silence policy to them. I knew they weren't listening, as they continued to talk when I was telling them. A lost cause, I thought, so I gave up and continued on my rounds.

The rest of the park was very quiet in comparison to the two cases I mentioned.

After I had locked down the two buildings and locked the gates for the night. I decided to pay another visit to the first group. I could hear them talking from the gate, which is a fair distance away, so I knew they were still up and about. I walked over to the field and noticed that the vehicles were still parked on the grass. Again, I asked them to remove the vehicles and park them in the parking bay opposite their tent, which they did. Only because I stood there and made sure of it.

A quick jump into the next field where I asked the Geordie's to quieten down, again, before going off round the park. I soon realised that the second group weren't going to quieten down, so I decided at that moment to call Alex out. Luckily, he was at the gate anyway, he couldn't sleep and decided to come down and walk around with me for a while.

After around ten minutes, he had spoken to both parties and another group who decided to give Alex the V-sign as he was walking over to tell them to quieten down, this only annoyed Alex even further. They quietened down eventually.

After Alex had left the park and returned home to sleep off his anger, I observed one of the first crowd's party urinating against the hedge. I found out that this is one of my all time pet hates with this job. I walked over, pointing the torch at him, and had a word with him. I pointed out the toilets to him and his reply was, "yeah, whatever." and he returned to his tent. I wasn't going to report them, but he had single-handedly convinced me to do so.

After about two o'clock, the site quietened right down and the only person who was making any noise was the person who had the most irritating cough ever. It was so annoying, that I managed to convince myself to think he was doing on purpose.

At the end of the shift, I went back up to the crowd who were urinating/parking on the grass/causing a disruption, to obtain their ticket numbers for the report, when I noticed that they were awake and three of them were urinating against the hedge. This was at around seven o'clock, when other punters were starting to rise.

I submitted a report without the ticket numbers, as I had guessed that Alex would know who I was talking about anyway.

Chilly Chilly, Bang Bang.

Don't worry, I haven't frozen and drifted downstream during the recent cold spell. I've been out there, through thick (layers of clothing) and thin (layers of ice on the car windscreens) working hard to create a blog posting for you all.

Let's start with Wednesday night.

After I had locked down all the buildings and closed the gates, for the second time due to a punter arriving back at one minute past eleven, I had a quick walk around the park to ensure that all was quiet. In one of the toilet blocks, there was three German males. When I went to the block, I noticed that the doors were closed, so I opened them and went to check on the female toilets. I returned to the gents toilets, to find the doors had been closed. Again, I opened them and went inside to question the three males.

"Can you explain to me why you have just closed these doors, despite the fact that you just watched me open them?"
"Because it's cold."
"Then my suggestion is that you go to your tent, climb into your sleeping bags and go to sleep."
"Oh... sorry."

I walked back to reception and just as I came around the corner, a vehicle pulled into the drive. I waited for the driver to realise that the gates were in fact closed and that he (or she) would have to reverse into the parking bays provided. The vehicle didn't move. So I went to investigate. As I approached the gate, I realised that it was two of the local constabulary's finest. Apparently, someone had gone climbing and not called their sister to say that all went well and they were safely off the mountain and back on the campsite. The sister became worried and called the Police. They knew a rough description of the person's vehicle as well as a partial index mark. That was good enough for me, so I opened the gates and let them drive in. They checked the larger of the fields and I checked the other two. I found the vehicle and tent in question, so I walked back to let them know. They drove round and spoke to the occupant of the tent. When they were finished, the male Police officer and I had a chat. He has been out a few times when I have been on shift, so he knew me from then (and more specifically, from this incident). I think he was more than happy to stand there and talk to me all night, but his colleague wasn't, she demonstrated this by uttering the following statement,

"You two can stand there and talk all night, but I'm bloody cold."

before jumping back into the car. The male Police officer thanked me for letting them in after hours before driving off.

I noticed a couple of rubber-neckers during this incident, namely the German door-shutters. They quickly vanished when they saw the Police getting back into the car and driving in their direction though. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Remember the male from this post? Well, I was speaking to Alex during the handover and he informed me that the male had abandoned his "tent" and left. The lads noticed this when they were doing their morning checks, so they put a ticket on it asking the occupant to contact reception immediately on their return. Just before they went off shift, nobody had been in, although the tickets had been removed from the tent. I've been asked to keep an eye on the tent, should I see anyone moving around near it to let Alex know. Otherwise, the "tent" will be dismantled and put with all the other tents that have been abandoned over the season, then binned or given to one of the local charity shops. I've got my name on a brand new tent which was abandoned a while back. This job does have it's perks.

In one of the other fields a punter had decided that it would be a good idea to tie a plastic tarpaulin to some trees to provide a bit of shelter. The only thing it provided was a rustling, efficacious way of keeping people awake. I untied it and placed it next to the tent. I didn't want several complaints about the amount of noise it was making (and it was making a lot of noise).

As for Thursday night, it was relatively quite in comparison to that. The only thing that irritated me was the sound of a heater emitting from a mobile home. It made me think how they were all nice and warm in their home from home and I was left to wander around the site in the freezing cold.

Ah well, no rest for the wicked, back on shift in a couple of hours.

Long Nights

The nights are certainly getting longer. Well, maybe it seems that way at the moment as the punters I've had for the past few nights have had that special ability to do what regular punters cannot achieve. This crowd can read the park rules and abide by them. It's amazing, I know and I was a little shocked to only have to tell one tent to quieten down last night.

As the nights are getting quieter now, I've had the chance to catch up on some light reading. Last night I finished 'Blood, Sweat and Tea' a book which is a compilation of blog postings from this blog. It is an interesting read, if you like that sort of thing.

On another, unrelated, note. There is one punter which is causing Alex a great deal of confusion and worry. I have spoken to him on one occasion (but I didn't realise it was this male that Alex was talking about at the time) and he seemed reasonable enough, even though he was ill-informed about the subject he was discussing with me at the time.

He arrived a few days ago and booked in. After booking in, he asked the receptionist on duty if someone could set up his tent for him. She spoke to Alex and he, in turn, spoke to the male. He was wheezing badly, as though he was at death's door, and saying that he had recently had major surgery. Now, call me cynical, but if you're recovering from major surgery, you don't disappear off and go camping. Do you?

Alex summoned one of the day wardens to help the male set up his tent. It was only when the day warden reported back that Alex's suspicions became increasingly alarmed. The male had asked the night warden to set up his tent for him. The tent was brand new and still in the packaging. It was a child's play-tent.

Now this male is over six foot tall and quite thickset, so how he manages to squeeze such a large frame into such a small tent is beyond the realms of possibility. But he manages it every night.

Last night, Alex's suspicions were aroused again by this gentleman, when he came into the shop and asked to purchase eight cans of cider. I'll refer you back to the first paragraph where I mentioned he had recently had major surgery. If this was indeed the case, I'm pretty certain he would be on some form of antibiotics and would not be drinking 8 cans of cider. The shop assistant alerted Alex and he told her to only sell him four cans. The four cans were duly sold to the male, along with a groundsheet (one of the more expensive ones available in the shop) and a few other items.

He mentioned this to me and asked if I could keep an eye on him to ensure that he wasn't going to be a problem. I was also given strict instructions to call Alex immediately if I had to speak to the male in question. Thankfully, he slept like a baby and didn't wake up the entire night.

He's here for a few more nights, so I am relying on him to provide me with something to blog about if the rest of the site is quiet (which it undoubtedly will be).

That's all for this post. I'm off to bed now. Even though the nights are quiet, they take longer to pass and ultimately leave you feeling drained at the end of each shift.

Until the next time, keep the noise down please. . .

Lazy Days

Well, that's pretty much the end of the season and last night was Archie's last shift of the year. It was an uneventful night. Despite the high winds, there were no casualties. There was one tent which I thought was on the verge of collapsing due to the winds and the fact that it did not have any guy-ropes tethering it to the ground. The tent withstood gusts of up to 40mph (approximately) at times and was still standing at the time.

One tent wasn't set up correctly, so every time the wind blew, the walls of the tent blew in. The occupants were out several times attempting to fix their tent. Needless to say they packed up early in the morning and left just after the gates were open.

The final tent, well that didn't fair too well against the elements. The entrance collapsed, exposing the gas bottle and other items (which will probably never work again) to the world. In the morning, I checked their ticket as the tent had a number of tickets attached to it. One was for the 22nd and the other was the 23rd. I'm sure they were wishing they hadn't bothered re-booking for another night.

A short post tonight, I'll be having a fairly long discussion with Alex tonight to find out what will be happening now that we're one warden short.