[Lifesaving] St Andrews Competition 2014

After what seemed like an interminable length of time with no lifesaving to do, the BULSCA calendar restarted at the weekend with the second official St Andrews league competition. Which meant that it was road trip time - yay!

My friend Chris (the current BULSCA chairperson) and I got a lift up with one of the other judges, Emily, who'd bravely volunteered to drive the whole way. I say bravely, because it turned out she's having massive issues with her knees, which were strapped up the whole weekend and were painful/difficult to walk on. Good thing driving means sitting down the whole time! Despite leaving Coventry at about 17:30 we made good time and saw very little traffic (helped by taking the toll road past Birmingham); we'd have been there by just after midnight if we hadn't taken a small detour for a tea/coffee break at Chris' mum's house in Penicuik. As it was we arrived about 1:30am.

The person writing the wet SERC wasn't able to make it up for the competition itself, so I'd said that I'd act as SERC manager for the day. Sadly I didn't get a copy until the Friday morning, which left me little time to look over it and sort out the props that I would need. Fortunately they were fairly simple, requiring only a few clothes and bags, plus some fake phones and a gold medal that I dug out of my stockpile.

Resetting the SERC between teams. There were a lot of clothes to shove back into bags each time, and trying

to get some of the first aid kits into the bags was difficult to say the least. (Credit: Adam Martin)

The scenario was a post-competition beach trip; the casualties were competitors who, having been to the social and got drunk, decided it was a good idea to go for a swim. The actual teams would be other competitors who'd been sensible and gone for dinner, then had a text telling them to come to the beach. The shallow end was the beach area, and the long side that was in bounds was a pier 10ft from the water's surface that teams could access, but not use as entry, exit, or support points. Casualty wise there was a cut foot at the far end of the pier, then an annoying drunk, a hypothermic swimmer, a non-panicking swimmer, an unconscious swimmer, and a pair of locked swimmers spread out around the pool. Most teams handled it reasonably well I thought, though there was a fair amount of variation in terms of how they went about it. Overall it went very smoothly, despite the fact that we were one judge short of the required number, which meant some juggling around of responsibilities.

It turned out that I had the most BULSCA experience of any of the judges in the wet SERC, so I took overall/captaincy marking. It was an eye-opening experience, and very strange to be focusing on captaincy from the other side. I saw a lot of different approaches to what was a fairly simple incident, and it gave me cause to think about some of the marks I'd received over the years.

Once the boring speed events were over and done with we retired to the pub to catch the end of the England-Scotland rugby match, then headed to the social. Which was great fun, and far more relaxed than a lot of my more recent competition social experiences have been. There was proper food, a ceilidh complete with proper band, and then a pretty chilled out party. I got the chance to catch up with a lot of people, and meet some of the newer members of the St Andrews Seacows.

There was proper ceilidh at the event, complete with live band. It was hilarious. (Credit: Adam Martin)

Being in St Andrews for a competition, or indeed any lifesaving event, and not swimming was a strange experience. One that I enjoyed mind you, and wandering around the town to show Emily the sights on Sunday morning was a lot of fun. But although I still refer to members of the University as 'us'  and the place itself as 'here' when talking about or describing it, I don't find myself missing it quite so much. The people yes, but having been in Coventry for nearly six months now going back was like my first few months there in St Andrews - it seems small and quaint. I have a lot of happy memories from my time there, and I'd almost rather not go back so as not to spoil them. I'll be back for any future competitions they have, but I'll very much have to dissociate them from my experience as a PhD student there.

One part of St Andrews that I do particularly miss is West Sands beach. But I don't miss the way that it was always so much more windy than anywhere else in the town. We went down to see it, and Chris and Emily decided to go into the sea for a swim. Not just a paddle, a proper swim. They didn't stay in very long, and I'm still not sure why they thought it was a good idea; I'm glad I was wrapped up warm on the beach taking photos!

Chris and Emily 'enjoy' the North Sea. With wind chill I swear it was close to zero. Needless to say, they didn't stay in for long! (Credit: David Brown)