The Composer was built for comfort not speed! He hated ‘games’ at school. Cross countryA running is no sport at all! Running along a canal for miles in the pouring rain while the ‘games master’ sits in the staff room drinking coffee is almost tantamount to child abuse!
The Composer does enjoy one ‘game’ orientated sport – its trampolining. Some clever person once said, “What goes up must come down” – in terms of a trampoline, that is so true! It’s the one ‘game’ at which The Composer can claim some success. It was also a pleasant way to spend 2 hrs every Monday afternoon whilst mastering the art of catering, without actually going to sleep behind the bakery ovens (that’s another game and another story).
The month of July saw the arrival of ‘The Games’ hot on the heels of that other game – football in the shape of the world cup. The ‘Friendly’ Games in Glasgow saw guests using Composers as their base to visit and watch a variety of ‘Games’. Despite the 180 mile round trip, all agreed it was the perfect way to enjoy Composer hospitality and the fun of the Games, all in one package.
Composers at Woodlands host their own ‘games’ every week starting with the arrival of guests, moving on through days of requests and challenges and ending as the guests disappear over the finishing line (the main exit) on their way home! In the week, our Play Paddock hosts a variety of energetic and not so exhausting games as children tire out parents and adults find ways to avoid having to play 1-aside football with enthusiastic Rooney/Lampard/Gerard protégés (change the name according to your favourite team!)
The final game we play is called the ‘rubbish game’ which involves working out how, despite our best efforts at signage, guests play their own ‘game’ of depositing rubbish in any of the bins we provide, without reading the signage or thinking that ‘it may just be in the wrong one’!! – and it often is. Rubbish sorting and re-cycling is not a favourite sport, nor will it ever become one, but ‘Composers at Woodlands’ do take the game seriously. We don’t have huge ‘Green’ credentials awards, we just get on with it quietly to ensure we use, re-use, re-cycle and dispose of all our waste in a careful manner.
Second only to cross country running, sorting out rubbish is the Composer’s least favourite ‘Game’ but it has to be done! If anyone can find a way to make this game more fun, please let us know! The Commonwealth Games are over – rubbish sorting will never end!