Mmm... eyeballs...

So could I really go for someone's eyeballs in a life or death situation? Maybe, perhaps. But, to be honest, I think I'd be so distracted that I'd end up tugging somewhere around the nostril area. Maybe the surprise of such an attack would put them off their, y'know, murder attempt.

This weekend, as you can probably not guess from the preceeding paragraph, was orientation and general training for my travels this year. Which meant having the most excellent privilidge of meeting the dozen or so other bright young things going on similar programmes and who don't get glazed over eyes when I talk about how much I want to live in leaky tents in the middle of nowhere. And lovely they are too. (I have to say that because, of course, many of them may read this and as we cross paths over the year I'll no doubt be writing about a few of them.)

Training and stuff is, of course, immensly handy but it's always the meeting people part which I look forward to most on these type of weekends. Similarly, when you do a creative writing class: it's great to sit there and have someone talk to you about technical points, some of which will be really handy. But the high point is always getting alongside the other writers, and really getting to understand what makes them tick. When you subsequently sit down to look at their writing, you understand a whole lot more about why they've chosen to write in a certain form or why they know far too much than is healthy about knife wounds (the latter being one of the scarier conversations I've ever had with a writer)

That said, there's tons of fabulous bits of the orientation which none of us shall forget: why people really aren't interested in your Visas at one in the morning, how co-ordinated manouvering down streets can help prevent targeting from petty thieves, why sleeping with your kidnapper isn't such a great idea. And, of course, the eyeballs.