B5CCG::Black Omega Squadron::tournament reports

WORLDS DIARY

By Team Pump-ster, Ty Grover-Jones

FRIDAY

Having accidentally finding Cliff and Hayden, Richard said "Follow me I know the way from here." 15 minutes later, having seen a lot of Reading town centre (some of it twice) we managed to get hold of Mike in work who talked us in. Booking in at Heathrow was delayed while Richard got both his seats sorted out, a flurry of activity was seen at the newsagents where the entire stock of Playboy (featuring Claudia) was purchased and we were on our way. Arriving at Manchester we toured the airport in search of our boarding gate where we met Paul.

After a sandwich, bottle of wine and a cup of coffee we landed at Dusseldorf - again Richard had the VIP treatment by having a private bus take him to the terminal while we lesser beings had to make do with the communal shuttle bus. Having collected our bags we waited for half an hour before Richard joined us, swearing that we had arranged to meet at passport control.

After being assigned rooms Richard swapped with Paul to enable him to share with James, there was a glint in his eye and Paul was only too happy to oblige. The evening was spent in the hotel bar with several attempts at ordering a round in German producing a mix of drinks.

SATURDAY

Started well, Richard had a big grin and James looked very uncomfortable sitting down, a lift was arranged to the venue which turned out to be in a hall built onto the back of a bar. The venue itself resembled Cricklade, Stephen, Hayden and Mike attended the "Audience with Claudia" armed with a bunch of cards and an un-healthy stack of Playboy magazines. The rest of us were busy writing out deck choices and sweating on the result.

There have been enough reports to enable you to construct the days events so I will skip that bit and just say that Paul and Richard qualified for the sunday.

We met up with Collin Burgemstrasse (or however he spells it) and true to his word he bought us all a drink, cheers Collin. Then teaming up with our Belgian chums we went to a chinese restaurant, there were eleven of us so we got the back room all to ourselves, the conversation varied from national team play to dangerous reptiles, the noise atracted Kevin of Precedence was was in the next room with the Germans (unknown to us). A brisk walk back to the hotel worked up a thirst so we headed straight for the bar.

SUNDAY

The Worlds with all its controvesy - a long day that saw Paul reach the final.

By the time the dust had settled most eating places had closed and we ended up at a kebab/pizza place where the staff spoke as much english as we spoke german, matters were made worse when we discovered that Kevin was a vegitarian, in a race against time we managed to get our food order and eaten before the place closed. The hotel was all closed up by the time we arrived back so we all retired to bed, James at this point had developed a haunted look but Richard was still smiling.

MONDAY

Our first sunny day, Kevin looking like The Creature from the Black Lagoon came down to breakfast to wave us off. We still havn't discovered what form of contraception Richard was using but James set off every metal detector he passed through on the return trip.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Stephen, Hayden and Mike for their generous contribution to the trip.