IT MIGHT be nice to work outside but it’s not if you don’t like insects is it?

Not everyone is the outdoorsy type, says JAMES MARSTON, and there are some advantages to working in an open plan office – someone is always buying cakes somewhere.

As my regular fans – well readers – will know I sit on the Ipswich Star sports desk where I, what is bizarrely known as, hot desk – I don’t really know what it means either. Anyway, I suspect this arrangement was made as no other department would have me.

Built for considerable comfort rather than unpleasant speed, I haven’t had much to do with sport over the years though I once reported on a hockey match that was cancelled due to flooding when I was a trainee reporter.

This week, aside from the Olympics and various machinations at ITFC, instead on concentrating on our work, the talk was about the recent sports department bowling night out.

I wasn’t invited – I was probably far too busy anyway – though apparently I would have enjoyed it as you can sit down and there is a place to get a cheeseburger, chips and a can of Vimto.

My colleague Mickey Bacon, who’s been sporty for many years and what he doesn’t know about speedway in Ipswich in the 1980s isn’t worth knowing, tells me I was sorely missed at this night out.

Mickey said the group even won a trophy – gold plastic.

I informed the group I never ever won a trophy unless you count a blue rosette for coming second in a gymkhana in 1983.

This morsel of information from my horsey past, instead of eliciting sympathy seemed to prompt a giggle. Perhaps the image of me in jodhpurs was too much.

Once the laughter died down, I told them they might think football is tricky but planting a ball in the back of a large net is nothing compared to sitting on the back of an out of control pony trying to balance an egg on a spoon when you’re eight years old and, furthermore, is no laughing matter either thank you very much.

I’m not sure they were convinced.

All this talk brought us on to the topic of performance enhancing drugs at the Olympics – where else – and how cannabis is probably a dis-enhancing drug though it might mean you weren’t quite so stressed if you were doing the hop skip and a jump in front of all those people.

Then the idea of a “drugs inclusive Olympics” were also discussed, presumably to include javelin’s being thrown several miles by hideously over developed arms, though it was agreed drugs were fairly prevalent anyway in Los Angeles in 1984.

So, tempted though my colleagues were to write an article about all the people who took drugs but hadn’t yet been caught, the likely legal ramifications of this exercise resulted in common sense prevailing and the mid-morning boiling of the kettle – an event which always requires the utmost concentration.