Day eleven in the NATO Northwood headquarters - last day

Day eleven in the NATO exercise and there is a distinct hang over vibe going on.

Nick is the most "ill", I feel pretty good to my surprise thought I was going to feel like the pits.

My head on the other hand is really not co-operating.

Nick ends up getting very upset about my copy, his head probably wasn't helping, you have to hand it to the boy he can spot even subtle mistakes when he feels like shit - I reckon that's something worth sticking on the CV.

Michael tells us he has certificates for us, but he isn't going to give them to us.

Why?

Nick's name is spelt wrong, I am called Mrs Sarah Morgan, Ciaran is called Mrs Ciaran Gold (in case you haven't picked up this fact Ciaran is a guy) and Jess, well, doesn't even have one!

The Navy eh, so efficient.

We all finish at 12 and I have my last lunch courtesy of NATO.

Then I head back to the B&B to pick up my stuff and head home.

It feels really weird leaving Northwood, I literally haven't left the place since I arrived - not even one stop on the tube!

We'll see how I adjust to the real, non-exercise, world.

It feels great to get back to a bit more freedom though.

Day ten in the NATO Northwood headquarters

Day ten in the NATO exercise and everyone apart from Mia is back from the ships so there was next to nothing from Spain.

As a result another quiet day, spent wondering what articles we could make up to pad out the scenario.

I ended up making up a bit of a heart wrenching, or at least what I tried to make heart wrenching, article on the state that Vaneo (town by the gas explosion) was in a few days after the attack.


Then in the evening I was introduced to what is known as a "beer call", never really come across the term before.

This basically involved everyone who had been involved in the exercise trouping off to a free bar that served beer and cider.

Having had no time to eat and a limited bar opening time I was decidedly tipsy/pissed by the time we went back and I caught most of the first half of the football.

Missed the second half thanks to an ill advised plan of going to see it at the pub, that turned out to be closed - so we ended up at one without a TV.

So I received the final score by text, rubbish.

Day nine in the NATO Northwood headquarters

Day nine in the NATO exercise and I'm slightly disappointed that it hasn't prompted any articles from the ships.

So as a result it has been quite a quiet day, with me mainly making up articles and doing the odd inject.

I think I must have been getting a bit restless because I came up with "Ping Pong panned", not my headline, my slightly silly story made up story, which you can have a look at for your own amusement...

PONTEAREAS - The Westland table tennis tournament in Ponteareas was cancelled today due to power shortages caused by the destruction of the Vaneo gas receiving station.

Westland's finest table tennis players are swiping the air following the cancellation of today's tournament.

The games are played indoors, making it impossible for the games to proceed.

"I'm glad it's been cancelled," says Marco Gonzales, one of the competitors. "My cousin died in the Jumblez attack, we were close and my mind has not been on my game."

Other players are simply frustrated, as much because of the overall effect the energy shortage is having as because today's game has been cancelled.

Franco Romero, last year's runner up, said: "I was in a bad mood even before the tournament was cancelled.

"I'm living off cheese sandwiches, it's ridiculous. We need gas".


Yep delirium was definitely setting in.

Also got another fun one about the mastermind behind the attack...

LISBON - Helena Ricardo has been revealed as the mastermind behind yesterday's suicide attack at the Vaneo gas receiving station.

A Dorian from Westland, who does not wish to be named, claims that he overheard Jumblez militia talking about Helena's role in the attack. They were talking about the attack in a bid to recruit Dorians from one of the refugee camps.

Ricardo was highly trained in explosives, martial arts and artillery at a Jumblez camp in the Pyrenees. She previously worked for the Jumblez Northland government as an intelligence operative, during their brief spell in power from January to March 2008.

When the leadership were indicted, by the International Criminal Tribunal for Northland, she went underground. She was believed to have been accidentally killed in May when Northland and the UN were disarming Jumblez but in fact she was just injured and went off to train in Uliz.

Her training was clearly advanced enough for her to have orchestrated the highly sophisticated attack on the Vaneo gas receiving station in Westland, which resulted in the deaths of 82 people.


My original article said that she was severely disfigured.

But as "Helena" was a re-working of an English name of someone on the team who said she'd like to be part of the scenario everyone was worried she might be offended.

I was honestly just being creative, but Michael decided it was some kind of "chick thing"..?

Day eight in the NATO Northwood headquarters

Day eight in the NATO exercise and we have finally reached what we like to call “shitstorm” day.

We found out about it last week, I think Wednesday, day three.

Basically they were planning to pretend that there had been a terrorist attack on a gas receiving station and distribution centre.

To make sure that our articles came out making sense they gave us all this time to research what would happen if something like this occurred in real life, so I’ve had great fun over the last couple of days weaving works of fiction based on the facts we had at our disposal.

So today all we had to do was fire off e-mail after e-mail until they had been hit by forty stories from the four of us: articles detailing the attack, human interest stories, energy price stories, economic stories and political analysis stories (my favourite) all as fall out from the attack.

I would have liked to see the effect that this deluge was having but I can guess that it wasn’t that pretty.

Day seven in the NATO Northwood headquarters

Day seven in the NATO exercise and I’m getting a bit tired to be honest, not really physically more mentally.

It doesn’t feel like a weekend so I was surprised after lunch when I was greeted by Sunday papers, which always irritates me as there is rarely anything in the Sunday publications that I want to read.

Apologies if today’s blog is more like a diary than usual but although I did find articles I wanted to blog about in today’s paper, despite it being a Sunday, I promptly forgot it when I got home.

Football didn’t inspire me either, still I guess it’s a trade off against yesterday’s game.

Day six in the NATO Northwood headquarters

Day six in the NATO exercise and I’m wondering where my brain has gone.

I used to have this lovely, sharp brain that used its initiative and was generally pretty on the ball.

Now I have a brain more like this guy that I went out with for a bit at University.

Nothing wrong with the brain as such, academically quite astute, just incapable of coping with picking up details, or in his case opening his own door.

Needless to say I feel bad for having laughed at him now, even if it was an affectionate laugh.

I don’t want his brain.

I want my brain.

The worrying thing is I’m not entirely sure when I lost it.

I think it had definitely gone missing round the middle of last term.

There was certainly no sign of it over the summer term or in the past couple of weeks.

It doesn’t help that the brains of the people around me seem to be perfectly fine.

They haven’t lost, wounded or inebriated theirs.

It’s just not fair.

Day five in the NATO Northwood headquarters

Day five in the NATO exercise and I feel a bit more confident, hopefully that will last.

I’m battling with Jens Lekman alongside all the work.

I can’t quite decide whether I like him or not.

I only really like I’m Leaving You Because I Don’t Love You and Friday Night At The Drive In.

They are all incredibly twee, but those two are a bit more bearable, in fact fuck it I actually quite like them.

The end of the day and the boss of the guy who’s in charge of us came in.

I think I must have been a cow in another life because I had quite a bad foot in mouth moment in an attempt to be chatty.

That’s the problem with being chatty sometimes it just comes round and bites you in the foot.

Ah well, I doubt I’ll see him again.


Yay Turkey!

Day four in the NATO Northwood headquarters

Day four in the NATO exercise and I’m losing faith in my ability to write good copy.

The second article that I submitted to be sent out at 12.30 needed significant re-working by “nice Nick”, because the details were confused.

So it ended up going out after 12.30 even though I handed it over for subbing at 11.30.

In my defence I had been given one inject the day before and then a slightly conflicting inject today and as I had written up some of the story it might have lost some of its sense in the re-working process.

But either way it wasn’t good for the ego.

I clocked a painting of Thatcher from the Falklands conflict at lunch today.

Oh joy!

But hurrah, no quiet time today.

Day three in the NATO Northwood headquarters

Day three in the NATO exercise and things are getting a lot more interesting.

We’re actually working ahead of time now.

By the end of the day I had written one story that went out at 11, started one story and completed another for tomorrow and even started writing two for Friday.

As a result of this very weird false reality set up I was able to be busy all day and was thus a lot happier.

Oddly you can tell when I’ve got more on because the posts are shorter, perverse that.


Now I’ve just finished watching Russia vs Sweden, it’s always nice to be surprised.

I’m sure that there’s more Family Guy to come…

Day two in the NATO Northwood headquarters

Day two in the NATO exercise and I’ve finally written a story.

I started writing it up yesterday from a two line inject, but I had to wait till today for the quotes to write it up properly.

It felt good to be writing about something that wasn’t diet related, even if it was for a fake scenario it was still more interesting than how many calories there are in your average smoothie.

When that was done I went back to listening to some music because things were still a bit quiet.

I couldn’t resist the temptation to listen to The Killers, All These Things That I’ve Done…

“I got soul but I’m not a soldier…”

After doing preparation for another story for tomorrow I went to lunch and on my return discovered that I have some old episodes of South Park saved on my laptop.

I think it would be taking the piss to watch them in work hours, but it means I have something to entertain me at the B&B if the TV’s bad.

I don’t have the internet at the B&B due to the wi-fi not working properly on my machine.

Grr.


Watched Italy vs France in the evening, which was quite fun and given France’s performance so far I was quite pleased they didn’t go through.

Then more Family Guy before bed, am I getting old or what?

Day one in the NATO Northwood headquarters

Well today I found out that even doing NATO exercises could be boring.

As an add-on to our course, in the sense that not everyone does it and it isn’t assessed, I’ve been taking part in a NATO navy training exercise.

The idea is that whilst NATO does their normal training exercises in a fictitious country they are trailed around by journalists asking them questions, alongside more journalists subbing stories and asking supplementary questions from base camp, to train them in dealing with the media.

I am one of the journalists at base camp, which is obviously less exciting than running around a ship where the action is taking place but I still thought it would be quite fun.

As it turns out on our first day everyone was frustrated, partly because things were just being set up. But also partly due to the fact that the Spanish NATO force, which is role playing the scenario on this occasion, were refusing to tell the on-board journalists anything because they didn’t have security clearance.

Of course this is the time that I realise that the only game I have on my computer is chess, which is all well and good but it’s not the best thing to play when you’re killing time.

I don’t have the internet on my computer here, so I can’t kill time on Facebook, YouTube and Hotmail, or any of the other scourges of office management.

And no I can’t send my friends texts, because they have mobile blockers here – they sap your battery down to nothing so you can’t use your phone, I knew this in advance, so my phone was at home.

At first it was odd being surrounded by people in Navy uniforms, but soon enough this fact fades into the background.

They pay for all my meals here provided I have breakfast at the hotel and lunch and dinner in the mess.

And they pay for the hotel and give me a wage in return for me doing something that I love doing anyway.

Yes, it’s all a bit jammy.

Anyway, back to food.

Lunch was unremarkable, but you know it was free.

I must admit I felt intimidated by the hall with its high ceiling and modern chandeliers, I hope it didn’t show.

On sitting down I looked casually to my right to be greeted by a full length portrait of the Queen and Prince Philip, I have to say that was a bit freaky – the republican in me was screaming: “get me out of here!”

Then we went into a lounge area for coffee, well everyone else drank coffee I just stayed to be sociable, and I managed to read one article in the newspaper before we had to head back, to doing not a lot.


In the evening we went to the awful local pub for a quite frankly equally awful pub quiz.

Ciaran and Nick sulked as a result, they took real exception to the questions in the sports round, while me and Becky just laughed a lot – at them, the questions and our difficulty in answering them.

I kept half an eye on the football, but to be honest it wasn’t that inspiring so it was more like an eighth of an eye by the end.

Then we traipsed home to watch yet more family guy.