So I joined a sports club (name withheld to avoid embarrassing them that I am a member). And the club runs competitions, where gliders race around the sky. Exciting stuff, eh? And at my previous club, I foolishly volunteered to learn to be a scorer for this sort of thing. It involves dealing with flight recorder files and a scoring program.
This sort of event is usually held only once a year, unless they run an extra special event, such as a national championship. Which leads to the small problem of trying to remember how you did it last year… Setting up the system is the long slow bit that gets done once a year and is the hard bit. The actual scoring gets easier every day as it is the repetitive bit.
Having been known as someone who sits in a cupboard and plays with the software to late in the evening, they asked if I’d help with a smaller style competition, starting quite soon. They had lost their previous scorer, as no-one knew where he was hiding. I wonder why he was hiding – perhaps the stress had got to him, or he’s a faster learner than me. And so, being a slow learner, I said yes.
So here I am again, sitting this time in a shipping container disguised as a cupboard, trying to score a competition. And then they caught me at a weak moment and asked about next year and the year after! So I might be doing this more often!
Will I ever learn?