My Time With The Superbikes

From the Superbike website

I spent the past weekend "working" at Donington race track for the Superbikes World Championship weekend. My role has basically been to man an information point used mainly to give results out to riders and their teams. I was sat behind a table at the bottom of a flight of stairs, quite often with my nose in a book or scribbling down a new blog post in my notebook (Side note-I wrote this one while I was there too!). I actually rather enjoyed myself.

You know sometimes you get those really awful jobs, the ones where people don't even notice you or they do but they ignore you as if you weren't even there? The ones where you can feel a little bit of yourself being whittled away with each vacant stare until you feel as invisible as you must actually be for all these people to look through you as if you were nothing. Jobs like flyering, or those people who ask for money for charities in city centres (who everyone hates, lets face it) or the staff in fast food restaurants at 3 in the morning. Jobs that you do purely because you have to, not because you want to, where you can feel your spirit slowly dying with every passing minute?

This could have easily been one of those jobs. But this was not one of those jobs. Despite the fact that I was only there to give out bits of paper, despite the fact that I don't know anything about Superbikes, despite the fact people kept asking me questions I didn't have answers to-everyone said hello to me. Everyone who passed by my table on their way up/down the stairs smiled at me or greeted me in some way. I was literally the bottom most rung on the ladder in that place, and no-one there knew me at all, but everyone has been really nice to me.
I've had many conversations about the books I was reading-from joking remarks about how they hoped it wasn't Twilight or 50SoG to full on conversations asking whether they should read it themselves. People were constantly checking if I was warm enough (because my little patch of hallway was FREEZING), offered me wine gums or other sweets, or just a snippet of chit-chat as they passed by. I worked there for four days and already felt more valued than I had in some of my other places of work.
There was the odd occasion where people would sail right past me and my nicely stacked piles of results to ask the guy in the photocopy room for them directly, but most of the time he'd direct them back down to me anyway. I didn't really mind that-it could always be worse. At one point I saw two girls dressed in very very tight, very very white lycra body suits, decorated with a particular brand name and logo, wearing heels too high to actually walk in.
I mean really fellas, it's 2013, do we really still have to trick you into trying/buying something by putting it in the hands of scantily clad young ladies so you can ogle them for cheap kicks? She doesn't come with the free sample you know. If she was wearing clothes that meant you couldn't actually see her thong, would you shake your head in disgust and not be tempted?
"No, I wouldn't buy that product, she's wearing layers!"
"Euch, look how comfortable she looks! That's just not right."
I felt full of feminist ire (I had been reading Caitlin Moran in fairness) but at the same time I was rather relaxed and contented so couldn't get too outraged (I'll save that for another day!) because I'd had a weekend of people being really rather nice to me, reading good books and writing a large number of blog posts, (this one was my seventh, plus two half finished ones) so that I shouldn't struggle for content any time soon. Plus some of the bikers were rather easy on the eye so I was enjoying their visits too. (Hmm...does this make me as bad as the blokes gawping at the scantily clad ladies? I'll add it to the debate for another time.) I even got to see a race or two, too, which was obviously reallyfriggincool.

I won't miss the early starts though, and have been looking forward to my lie in this morning for days. Now I just have to find a way to keep myself amused this week whilst I've got the house to myself so I don't go either completely mad or completely nocturnal.

Goodbye Donington, you've been good to me (even if your icecreams are ridiculously expensive!)

-Jenni-

Dearest readers, if you enjoy what I do here please would you take a moment to go and vote for me and Rara (Jenni and Sarah) in this competition? We really want to win but we're lagging behind somewhat. Get your mum to vote, get your dad to vote, get your sisters, brothers, nan, dog, everyone you know to vote. If I win I promise you excellent blog posts about my trip (Blog posts may not be excellent) and cake (cake may not be possible) and undying gratitude and love (Virtually, nothing icky.) THAAAAAAAAAAAANKS.