Winter Olympics

Give people a large pile of snow and a week off and they will, inevitably, find ways to amuse and damage themselves. In an effort to promote the former, and reduce the latter, our GAs (the people who know stuff about snow) kindly organise the Winter Olympics, where we divide into four teams and pit ourselves against each other in games of skill and cunning.

As our team was largely comprised of Met people (for some reason called Boris and Doris), the remaining two members were promptly named Floris (the Doc) and Norris (Geek-Boy) and the Games began.

First up was ice climbing and Boris, being strong of arm and light of weight quickly shinned up the overhanging ice cliff in impressive style. Floris put in a noble effort, but being more used to chipping ice into G&Ts rather than off mountains, did not fare so well.

Norris and I stepped up to the next challenge - downhill slalom skiing. This was fun because we not only had to go between the flags, but we also had to avoid the large patches of pure ice that the wind had kindly cleared of snow for us. I had great fun skiing down, going for speed more than style, and shot through the final gates to the cheers from my team mates. It was at that point I realised that shortly after the gates the terrain becomes rather unpleasant and I finished with a graceful head dive into a snow drift.

Boris and I took on the Manfood Box Challenge. This involves stacking manfood boxes on top of each other, with one person standing on top, climbing higher with each added box. Boris was the stacker/climber, and I had the terribly challenging and very important role as box-passer. With my skilful passing of the boxes Boris managed to stack eleven boxes on top of each other before falling off, which was quite considerate of him as I couldn't actually pass the boxes any higher anyway. Boris was wearing a rigging harness and was top-roped to the roof of the hangar, so after we'd grabbed his ankles and swung him around a bit, he came safely back to Earth.

The skidoo race through flags over a variety of snow drifts and windscoops was entertaining. Boris races lawnmowers at home and put in a good effort. Being one of the last to go the course was rather churned up and I got stuck in one place, but my team mates came and helped pull the skidoo out, and I discovered that it doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would do when a skidoo runs over your foot. I finished with a nice sideways skid and received a barrage of comments about women's ability to park.

The final two events were bog-chisel throwing (like javelin, but not quite), and flare-firing. It was dark and there was a blizzard by this point, but Floris managed to be one of only two people to hit the target with a flare, which shows that doctors can be useful at times.

Boris dashed off to the kitchen as he was on cooking duty, and the rest of us drank tea and talked up our achievements, so that by the time dinner was ready some people had apparently run up the vertical cliff, stacked boxes so high that they needed oxygen and skidooed so radically that the skidoos didn't work any more. Actually, that last one is kind of true.

After dinner medals and prizes were awarded. The winners received a box of beer and the losers (us) a bottle of Lingham's Chilli Sauce. I could buy a box of beer in the bar for £12, but I'd have to wait six months before I could get chilli sauce, so we may have lost on the events, but I think we won on the prizes.