Friday 11th September 1998

This was both the largest trip ever undertaken by the Touring and Drinking Club, and also the most complex, as the personnel were making their way to Bologna not from one starting point as on all previous trips, but from six. Mark Z was flying in from Russia, Jimm was coming down by train from Sweden, Dejan coming down by train from Switzerland, Keith flying in from Newcastle, Val and Paul flying in from Heathrow, and the remaining eleven members were flying in from Gatwick. A logistical nightmare, but one that actually went without a hitch when it came down to it. Val and Paul were flying out on an afternoon flight, so they took both the twelve-man tent and Sara's tent with them so as to pitch them during the hours of daylight, ahead of the midnight arrival of the main party.

Keith's flight  arrived about half an hour before Val and Paul's so they met each other at Bologna airport, where they were in turn met by our hosts and taken to the campsite.

Back in England, the main party began to assemble.

Gilly picked up Sara and Chris on her way through to Martin's. Chris was just coming in from work as Gilly and Sara arrived; they gave him five minutes to change and pack, which he did! The three then arrived at Martin's to find him with all of his kit spread out on the floor, and very unready to go - the only one of us who had not been to work! Sara did a heroic job of getting Martin organised, at which point Chris exclaimed "I suppose a sleeping bag would help this weekend". Fortunately Martin's mother came to the rescue with the loan of hers.

Liz made a call from the bar to check on our companions' progress. The M25 was not surprisingly still doing its usual Friday night impression of a car park, making the Gilly party even later. Discussions were held in the bar about the likely ambient temperature within the approaching vehicle, and the concept of someone driving a car after having just left virtual reality. The stragglers finally arrived at the airport shortly after seven, and made up for lost time by doing a lightning-fast check-in and then joining the others in the bar.

We all hung on in the bar for as long as we could, then made a dash for passport control and the departure lounge. Peter took on the Martin Reed role and got stopped going through customs - they obviously know the dodgy characters when they see them! Chris announced that he had *got* to buy a pack of cards and disappeared, while Sara's ever-increasing agitation factor caused the rest of us to be herded sheep-like and sans Chris to the plane.

Eventually Chris arrived and we filed onto the plane. Once on the plane queues were formed for the toilets, in order to hastily get rid of what had been drunk in the bar, and Ed was told time and again by the stewardesses to sit down.

One significant task not yet done was to assemble the seventeen players into two teams, and a number of possible combinations were put forward, most of which were met with horror by everyone but the person making the proposal. Martin's original preference was for two teams of roughly equal ability, but Peter and Gilly both said that they had played in tournaments where this had just led to neither team doing particularly well, so that they would prefer one team to be stronger than the other. The debate was decided by a point made in Leone's introductory information for the tournament, which stated that if a country was bringing two teams, the teams should be labelled 1 and 2 - in our case "GB1" and "GB2", no less! - with team 1 ideally being the stronger. Two team lineups were devised, which put slightly greater firepower into the first team without leaving the second team as cannon fodder, and this seemed to meet with approval from everyone.

We arrived at the airport on time and passed through immigration without incident. While we were waiting for our bags to come through on the carousel an Italian businessman came up to us, noticed the abundance of green and red shirts and said "you are obviously a team, what do you play?". Given the answer "underwater hockey", he did the unexpected thing and only got more interested. We did tell him that he should come and watch the tournament, because that would be the perfect opportunity for him to see what it was all about, but he said that he was flying out again the following morning and would not be able to. Nevertheless, email addresses were swapped, and maybe we'll see him on the Bologna team the next time we go over.

The green-shirted team made its way through the green channel where we were met as promised by Leone and Max. Dejan was also with them, and hugs and handshakes were exchanged all round, probably mostly from relief that we had finally managed to cut through all the red tape and that he was really there, after it having seemed for so long that an Italian visa was an unattainable dream.

We loaded our kit and ourselves into the two minibuses that Leone and Max had brought, and were taken to the campground. We were very relieved to find that Val, Paul and Keith had already done the hard work of putting up the twelve-man tent, so all we had to do was to put up the internal divisions and crawl into it.

Peter's two beers had by then hit home, and he was having great difficulty with his tent. Fortunately, he was saved by Doug and Ed, who figured it out. Doug then decided that he was going to sleep in the hammock that he had brought with him - a brave if not foolhardy move considering the number of flying biting things that were already homing in on the newly-arrived fresh meat. He erected the hammock between two young trees just outside the main tent, and settled down for the night, daring the elements to take him on. Sure enough, shortly after we had all settled down, a phenomenal storm blew up with thunder and lightning, not to mention wind and torrential rain.

Five minutes passed with no commotion, then suddenly Doug burst into the main tent, soaked to the boxer shorts - the skin was already soaked to the skin - whereupon he fell over the pile of kit in the middle of the tent and promptly fell asleep where he landed! Martin had already been failing to get to sleep even before the rain came, so he finally got to sleep at about 4am. Probably nobody else fared much better . . .