SNCL Rounds 5 and 6 - What else can go wrong?

I am sitting at home thinking about today.  OMG  What a day!  It was Rounds 5 and 6 of the SNCL at Dunfermline.  It has been a disaster.  When people say us Senior Arbiters don't make mistakes, wow do I have a shock for you.

The day started pretty badly.  Loading the boards into the car I noticed we were one short.  Instead of the expected 8, I only had 7???  Now these boards are not the lightest, they are not the sort of thing you can sneak into your pocket and walk off with suddenly from Perth, somehow we only had 7 boards.  What's worse is I never noticed!!! (In my defence I did not pack the car to come back from Perth and I had 8 sets of gubbings for the electrics)

Come in 8188 I am missing you!

It had to be one of three places.  Either Dave had it and didn't notice, It was mixed up with the wooden boards or someone has very large pockets!

John McNicol had the wooden boards in his car, so a quick check ruled that out.  Knowing Dave was using his boards today, I sent him a message to check to see if 8188 (the serial number) had made its way down there.  Thankfully it had!!  Phew what a relief, the thought of standing tall before the man turned my knees to jelly!

Find that board or I'll set Clement on you!

So the day started well...  It quickly fell away!  For reasons I will never understand, I loaded the wrong fixture list last night.  At the start of the season, we had a couple of teams still to confirm, I made up 2 fixture lists, depending on whom we were going to replace the team with should they not play.  Divisions 1 and 4 were fine as they were not affected, but 2 and 3 had the completely wrong fixtures.

I have never been so grateful for team captains coming up to me to query if they had the right opponent.  Quick check of the site where I have the master list confirmed if I was not drinking last night, I should have been!

In a fit of insight, I accidentally printed off an extra blank set of forms.  They came in useful and we started only 10 minutes late!

Play starts.  Blessed relief, I can relax and get cracking on the mountain of paperwork needed for SNCL.  Session is going along quite nicely when I am called to a board.  Player is claiming a draw.  Nothing wrong with that I hear you say, said player has 17 minutes left on his clock.  There is a reason we should be issued with titanium bound versions of the rule book...

As if fate could not deal me another blow.  The final game to finish on the live boards ended in a time scramble.  Neither player noticed the half drunk cup of coffee near the clock but after a hurried hand sent it flying, I had 2 live boards and pieces to dry out.  AAARRRGGHHH!!!!

I need a lie down after that :D  Just one of those days...