Time goes by. So Quickly.

Great. It took me 10 seconds to come up with the above title and now I have 'hung up' by Madonna in my head. Everything was going well until recently, and it feels like only a few weeks ago when everything was going swimmingly.

The last month has seen as a massive downturn in everything, basically in my life, but especially in my preparation for the trip. The company I work for (Ogre pty ltd) has completely and utterly shat itself in the wake of the doom and gloom. Not helping has been my so-far cruisy demeanour and performance this year. All this = I'm in a lot of trouble and have had to scupper any outside interests for a while, lest the axe of doom find thy cranium. As a result, I've only been to the gym 3 times since my last trim trail, which was 4 weeks ago.

I'm trying to paint out like this is everybody's fault but mine. But I've also managed to pull 3 all-nighters since then, and in-turn missing 3 trim trails. To make it up to the boys one afternoon, I turned up to the pub 5 hours after retiring to bed to meet the Everest boys to watch a game of social-networking witnessed by 15 rugby players form both Australia and England. There I had promised to buy beers for all Team Tenzing members up until Australia's first try. That didn't happen until the 65th minute. Luckily only Neil qualified for what I now see as a foolish promise. The beer purchasing was alright. Watching 80 minutes of rugby union was a ridiculous thing to put myself through and I never want to have to be punished like that again.

Since then we have had a couple of dropouts due to illness and work-commitments. Stepping up to the plate is a guy that I've played cricket with sporadically for the last 5 years, James Butler. Below is the email I constructed to introduce him to the team.

I have know James for 5 years now, and when he hasn't been serving suspensions
as part of a lengthy list of on-field misdemeanours, has been my cricket club captain. You'll soon notice we share a common love of regular swearing, quoting The Office, and mother jokes.
James bit my hand off for a chance to join Team Tenzing, and I'm sure will prove to be the absolutely ideal Tenzingite. James always shows unbridled enthusiasm for
anything he's involved in (and this has already transferred to The Everest Test), thrives in a team environment, has a great sense of humour, is generous with his time, and obviously captaining the 1st team at Harlow would show that he can commit to events outside of work. You would also assume that he has more than a fair cricket ability, however this is stifled somewhat by ridiculous shot selection and 'eccentric' running between the wickets. He has shown time and again that he is willing to donate his time to mentoring young players and even menial tasks such as general club admin, not lest of these fielding the endless questions as to why he continues to pick such a talentless, hungover grub as myself in the first team despite a distinct lack of wickets, runs, fielding ability, or friends

Other things to occur. Well, we are playing on THE F*CKING OVAL during the fifth F*CKING ASHES TEST (lunchbreak) next year. I swear when I see Charles B-N (who basically swangled this single-handedly) I am going to drop to my knees (fill in the rest yourself). And after we have played on The Oval, I am going to send the video and pictures to every single f*cking school teacher of mine who ever said 'why do you keep writing fantasy stories about you playing cricket against the English in front of a packed house, it's NEVER going to happen' - And I am going to include personal diatribes against every single one of them. Even Sister Annette is going to going to hear about it. Let's see what she has to say in her hilarious Irish accent then. I am then going to ask them to revisit every single piece of creative writing that I did and remark it, based upon me fulfilling that dream. And don't think you'll get off lightly either Miss Saraceno.

On top of that we will have bi-weekly net sessions at the indoor nets at The Oval. Think that sounds salubrious? Think again. Essentially it's a multipurpose gym marked out with plastic stumps with a couple of surly second-teamer's wearing the 20/20 kit looking upset that they never made the big time.

We have a massive event on Saturday that involves some Freeze's (click here for an example) where we intend to hold an lbw appeal pose for 3 minutes and record the reactions of passers-by. Somebody suggested a Flash Mob, but ever since the 'incident' where I mistook Flash Mob for meaning showing my genitals to an entire Mob, I have been banned by court order not to take part in one ever again. After that it's off to Lords for a meeting, followed by the hellishness of a bleep-test, and then a net session. I assume my legs will be wobblier than Steve Harmison's when he boards that plane this evening after the whole day is done.

Finally, it has been my role to organise the Christmas Cards. Without doubt, the gayest part of organising the trip fell to me. Unbelievable. So expect one of those if you're family, friend, foe, or somebody whom I think might have a compatible kidney.

Ten Zingers Please

I almost let this slide but after my loyal following of Sean Moran asked me when the next update would be, I decided that I couldn't let me loyal fan down.
Quite a bit has happened in the last few weeks. The Official Site has gone live, and I don't think I'm alone when I say that it has made me moist. There is loads of good info on there in regards to the altitude, the people taking part, some awesome photo's of the pitch and the trekking route, the risks, the event (obviously), the legacy, and most important of all... the charity. Funnily enough, the organisers Kirt (the short one) and Wes (the not short one) forgot to invite me to the official photo session outside London Town Hall. At the time I was sure it was an innocent oversite, but combined with Haydn's inability to include my emails on team correspondance, I'm starting to wonder if there is a conspiracy against me. This all came to a head when, during a recent meeting where I was controversially overlooked as team fuhrer, I kicked my chair over, told them all to go and get f*cked, stole some of the donated money before running off swearing to never contact them again. Unfortunately I am niether quick nor strong of mind, and they caught me within metres of setting off and convinced me to stay on within seconds.

Apart from that Dean Jones-like reaction from myself, Saturday was an excellent day which featured the first full-expedition meeting for a long time, involving the naming of a couple of sponsors (Qatar Airways and Gray-Nicholls) along with some very exicting prospects which I'm sure Kirt would definitely not like me talking about just yet. The captains were announced, with fitness freak PC Gareth Plod backing up Haydn (whose blog I highly recommend) as Tenzing's Hierachy. Against us will be a team headed by Jules, who is supporting none other than my old beardo mate Glen, who doubtlessly earned his position, and definitely doesn't have to worry about having the complete puss rupped out his kiwi accent every time he talks.

Following this, the first square-off between Tenzing and Hillary took place. Kirt is keen to hammer home that the match on the mountain WILL be a competitive one and not just a jolly. Words that were obviously still ringing in Haydn's ears as he made us do 10 back-to-back 20 metre sprints as way of a warm-up. It was at this precise moment that I really wished I hadn't chosen 4am as a bedtime. Although, the stinging in my chest, cramps in my calves, and inability to breathe at least gave me a tester of what I'm up for at 5000m+

The game itself was a bigger fizzer than the third Matrix film. In short, we treated them like a plump christmas turkey and gave them a good old fashioned stuffing. Glen's favourite short film is called 'Bogwash', and in this case, we were definitely Rocco and he was the eager yet naive asian girl who wasn't really sure what she had taken on. After G-Plod and I opened the attack, they were 5/18 after 6 overs and the game was as good as dead. One of the wickets included my old-teammate Glen, whom I kindly informed on the way in that I was going to kill him with the next delivery... even though he was the non-striker. Unfortunately my next sledge got misunderstood and Kirt thought I was being polite when I asked if he was sure he didn't want to bat with a helmet against Blinky - Kirt politely declined and Haydn banished me to the boundary as pennance. Maybe next time I'll just stick with puerile questioning of players sexuality and repeated swearing.

I was certain that we would see Blinky completely lose it after he was called for a wide whilst walking back to his mark, but the need to impress his new captain saw him contain that unrequited anger that he normally shows whilst playing for me that usually results in a post-match apology to opposition players and thier mothers/umpires/spectators/passers-by/the archbishop of canterbury/women in general.

The game turned into a whitewash, with Hillary giving us a fright before we knocked off their total of 95 with only 10 wickets spare. I contributed a solid 0 off 0 deliveries after several retirements. This was as good as I could hope for after turbo-drinking 3 cups of Pimms safe in the knowledge that I wouldn't be going in at 6 before I was told with about 30 seconds spare that I was going in at 6.

Not only on the field was it a whitewash, but I must say we defeated Hillary in the after-match function too. We had them covered in every department from skirt-chasing, through to alcohol consumption and even fashions. If Hillary are going to compete on April 21, I'm afraid they'll require a Cleveland Indians style recovery.

Not all went swimmingly for myself. After the exertions of Saturday, I woke up on Sunday with my back feeling like it had been trampled on and a sore shoulder. Although that may have had more to do with passing out across 2 bean bags and the floorboards at Blinky and Glen's place.