Trainer was a Liverpudlian and, despite being reasonably civilised for someone from those parts, still displayed traces of a typical scouser (theft and violence) in the examples he gave.

Course was in Reading (fill in your own jokes along the lines of “Ruby’s been taught how to read”), so I’ve had a week of train travel which has been quite enjoyable. Trains have achieved a 90% punctuality rate (per total journey) or 95% (per individual train), as far as I’m concerned. Today’s first train was 15 minutes late. I thought this would mean a 15 minute wait at Basinghole for the shuttle to Reading, but luckily a cross-country train arrived shortly after I did, so I was able to jump on that.

Had a bit of a panic this morning when I couldn’t find my return ticket (I found only one rather than two tickets in my pocket). But I found the return ticket in my wallet, so disaster was averted. OK, ‘panic’ and 'disaster’ are slightly over-egging the emotions. Worst case scenario would have been that I had to pay £11-odd to purchase another ticket for my homeward journey – a bit of a pisser, but not really that significant in the grand scheme of things.

I spent one journey musing over the Boolean logic expressed in a sign in the quiet carriage*. I also noticed a large industrial plant in the next village – presumably the mill where they make paper for bank notes.

Blond is one of the few words (possibly the only) in the English language that is gender-specific. A blond man but a blonde woman. It’s also curious as being an adjective that is generally used to qualify only one noun - hair (although also used to describe a person, it is the hair colour that is really being qualified).

Tests of my training ability came in small abundance this week (can you have small abundance? I don’t know. Oh well, I’ve used the expression now). Wednesday I arrived at SJA and my boss asked if I could go through some Manual Handling stuff – first for cadets and then for adults. Yeah, no problem – I can throw something together at short notice. Hey, I’ve even brought my laptop which has a PowerPoint presentation on it. And I can adapt the training material to suit the different audiences. Think Manual Handling is dry and boring? Not when I teach it, buster.

First problem was that we didn’t have a projector. That’s easy enough to work round – I had a board and pen, and the cadets were few enough and small enough to group round the computer when I needed to show them something. Proves my view that PowerPoint doesn’t make a presentation; it enhances it. People who give “death by PowerPoint” either don’t know their subject, or don’t know how to present it.

Projector arrived in time for adult session. Then laptop battery died – and I’d not take a power lead. Of course I had a backup plan – a borrowed laptop and some version of the PowerPoint on a memory stick (“I’m not sure what order these slides are in, so I’ll just press the button and see what happens”).

Last night I went to one of the far-flung and fox-hat territories of Trumptonshire (and there are several; many places north of Camberwick Green I only know of because the railway line goes through them) to give a short talk to a neighbourhood watch group. I thought I was going to talk about basic first aid, so you can imagine my surprise when the leader introduced me with “Here is Ruby Barefoot who is going to talk about accidents in the home”. I talked a little bit about accidents, but mainly about first aid required after such accidents. I think I got away with it – but had to leave for another appointment immediately afterwards, so don’t know if they muttered and complained about me during the coffee break.

One lady asked “I do a lot of running and get blisters; what would you advise?” “Stop running” was my reply. Well, what did she expect? More to the point, what did you expect?