Weird stuff on e-mail...

[Nick]

Much as HEXUS maintains a professional front, we like a laugh just as much as any other bunch of blokes living the dream and playing with all the latest cool technology instead of doing real jobs.

So an e-mail went round yesterday, asking for a bit of info off of all of us and of course, as seems to happen EVERY time a general mail to the HEXUS crew is sent out, someone just cannot resist spamming everyone with a weird, off topic funny answer... and it snowballs from there..

It got to the point yesterday where I was left with no choice but to threaten reprisals... but as soon as I said it, I was ordered to reveal all... so, dear Rys, I'm only following orders.

Last weekend I had to go up to Sheffield for the Stirling Services airsoft event, which was a real blast but as the event covered two days I needed somewhere to crash... sadly, all the local hotels and travel lodge type places were full unless I wanted a 45 minute drive out of the area to get my head down. Luckily, our very own Rys lives within 10 minutes of the venue, so a little pleading later and I'm booked to crash on his floor.

I roll up and pick up what I thought was him and his missus from the restaraunt they were eating at to find that his other half has either changed an awful lot since I last saw her or both she and Rys had been very skilfully hiding a secret of 'The Crying Game' magnitude...

Rys hops in the front seat and a fella loooking like Wayne Rooney on a good day hops in the back... In that split second of awkward silence that followed my options were:
A) say nothing
B) ask who the hell this bloke was in the back of the car
C) compliment her on how well the hormone treatment was going and promise myself I'd never get booked in a twin room with Rys.

Fortunately, Rys then introduced the fella worryingly behind me as a mate of his and explained that his other half was inside still sorting the bill out... That's a proper Scotsman for you, takes his bird and a couple of mates out to dinner and then buggers off while she pays... excellent!

So we get back to Rys' place, have an uneventful coffee apart from turning his mate bright green with envy about what I was going to be getting up to whilst he faced an afternoon with his inlaws.

We'd spent most of the evening tripping over two simply ENORMOUS PC cases in Rys' kitchen.. One was the new Chameleon from SCAN, a water cooled monster of a machine weighing in at 50-60 kilos with a thermal colour changing paint job... and there was another huge case there, though I can't remember what was in it or who it was from just that it was equally bloody heavy!

Anyway, the upshot of this was that the reason Rys hadn't taken these up to his office was because just a few days before he'd decided to do some stair surfing on his arse and had scuffed himself up pretty badly. In his battered and bruised state, he reckoned he was in no fit state to lug these two monstrosities upstairs.

Being a helpful chap, I quite happily volunteered and grabbed the Chameleon case, heading for the stairs.

There's something you really should know abut Rys' place should you ever be there and offer to cart something up for him. First off, his office is on the second floor, giving you two flights of very narrow stairs to negotiate. Second, Rys' stairs are the only stairs in the world with a bloody overhang!

I kid you not, these damn things are a 4 in 1 ratio at least. The north face of the Eiger is a cakewalk compared to these things... Don't believe me? Just ask the big man how many nights he's kipped on the sofa cos he was too plastered to risk the stairs!

So there I am, halfway up and thinking I might have made a big mistake as I'm now on the tricky midsection, no decent handholds, I'm not wearing crampons and I've not even rigged up a safety line.

Anyway, I make it to the top, now known as base camp, and I'm on the second step of the final descent section, a tricky 90 degree bend to negotiate and just to make things more fun, his missus turns the bloody lights off!

Darkness, bare wooden stairs which have already claimed the arse of one young climber and an awkward 50 kilos of computer with a stupidly expensive paint job are NOT things you'd like to even mention in the same sentence, let alone actually experience...

Anyway, with me screaming that walking up stairs in the dark is not much bloody help, she flicks the lights on and I finally dump the by now INCREDIBLY heavy weight on the floor of Rys' office and watch the shelves next to it resettle as the floor boards shift...

I head downstairs for the best part of the evening... Rys is as the top of the first flight of stairs, the other machine at his feet and him looking as if we really are attempting Everest without oxygen... he's bent over, panting like a 40 a day smoker and sweating like an Eskimo in a sauna... I swear, you have never seen a picture of health such as this...

To be fair, he was still injured and his hand did look pretty bad, but I suspect that after that display of athleticism, he needed a day's bed rest, which is why Matt and I didn't see him at the Airsoft event the next day...

What is nice though is the invite up to see him next weekend... probably to take him back from the restaurant and bring those bloody boxes back down!