Monday 21 March 2011

Long way down

Saturday! A new SPICE challenge. I'm booked on the "York minster hidden tour".

First problem:
The instructions say 'meet your contact Ian at the entrance to the minster'.

Er, there are approximately 80 people that could be classed as near the entrance. In groups of various size, who keep coming and going in a tourist sort of way. True, I can discount 50% of them if I assume Ian isn't Asian. This isn't going to be easy.

A woman walks past holding what looks like a printout with their logo on it. Said woman then meets a random man. I phone 'Ian'. Random man goes to answer his phone. QED: he is Ian. Just to be sure I say "Are you Ian?". He is. Woo!

Problem 2:
We are now all to go for a 'free' cup of tea. I am stuck with the world's most boring man. He likes skiing. He has nothing else to talk about. I resort to watching out the window at the passing people.

Tour starts. We descend into the vaults with mr & mrs earnest our tour guides. It's all a bit difficult as I think they assume we know anything remotely about how said place works, and it's history. Personally I'm professionally ignorant, as I know 2 things. 1) it was on fire in 1984. 2) I've never been anywhere near it before as parents too tight to pay.

The tour gets more deep, as we are shown hidden bits. That's a bit of 12th century wall, followed by excited description of it's building technique. Yes, it could be said this part was a soupcon dull.

Final problem:


Clicky to get the big picture. Observe how tall the person is at the bottom. Now note how there are smaller windows above the big ones. Yes, they took us up there.

Yes, there's bugger all in the way of stuff to stop you from falling down. (a 3 foot high crappy fence).
Yes, after being warned not to have lose items I dropped my phone. Only onto the ledge, so no one died, but rather embarrassing.
Yes, I got a sudden U2 earworm.... hello, hello, I'm at a place called vertigo... I'm normally fine with heights, but was feeling dizzy for some reason. Better to be back on the ground.

Final score:
Maybe a four. Interaction was poor, but no one died....

2 comments:

Amanda Huggenkiss said...

Are you sure it wasn't the "hidden bits" that made you feel dizzy?

C'riz said...

Dizzy could also have been tension of driving there :(

My new BFF also managed to say while we're down in the crypt looking at walls "Jesus Christ!!!" when the man says they're 3 foot thick. I missed the chance to say "Where?"

Oh, and no lie, I'm unintentionally taking the ski thing further today. I bought a used pedal cycle from ebay. It's an avalanche.