We are supposed to wear white polo shirts on race days. The crew I plug into when I’m not driving around in my air conditioned car are called “Global Crew”. I’ve got a baseball cap and T-shirts and all the swag in all sorts of colours. But on race days, it’s white. There’s a lot of securing things that might blow away or fall over. Even closing windblown tent flaps is hugely helped if somebody throws themselves bodily against the dusty inflatable entry rib. Emma gave me two. Both looked like I had been rolling in gravy by noon.
This evening I managed to get to the launderette after my late pick-up. I hurled a load of clothes in, including my shorts and my two brown Polo shirts. It’s all hanging outside my room now and I’m hoping that the morning sun will burn enough moisture early enough that I won’t start the day with a damp bum. No matter if I do though, as I’m barely driving tomorrow unless something goes tits up, so I’ll likely be under the sun the sun the sun the pounding constant sun.
I picked up Joe the journalist and took him back to the airport. We like the same things. He’s the only person I could have a much needed cricket conversation with on the day I picked him up, and his wife is an actor. Joe has been on a press junket while I’ve been filling up sandbags. He’s had a lovely time, and so have I. I’d be curious to see his side of things, but at the same time I’m enjoying my side enough to not be looking over the fence. I wonder what he writes and where he writes it. On the airport run from the lagoon where he’d been filming, we happened to go past another lagoon where the local flamingos stand in huge numbers. It’s right by some salt mining, and they are all bleached white – unless they open their wings to fly. Then the furled section shows an underside of bright pink. They dip their prehistoric heads into the brine right next to the road, digging for whatever they dig for, besides a mountain of salt. “They must be bad eating, like seagulls,” I observe, happy to finally see a flock of them so close up. “Otherwise they’d all have gone for Christmas decades ago.”
Shuttling interesting people and buying random crap. That’s been the day. That’s been the shape of it. I’ve been trying to persuade them to design me a dedicated electric SUV with solar panels and a wind fan in the grill that can carry its own hydrogen battery for emergency night time desert recharge. I am happy to be a pioneer of such a thing. We seem to be frequently in hot countries. So far they just all think I’m joking. Or perhaps the next season will all be in Svalbard or somesuch…
Tomorrow I’ll have more stillness, and an early start warrants an early bed so I’ll get both.
AlBarclay 