So another week goes by here at SEGA, and another fun activity seemed to come along. Having been here a mere six weeks, and managing to be treated to a two day conference within that time, I thought I was somewhat fortunate of my arrival date. Then, this week, one of our nice little agencies treated us to an evening of Go Karting in Esher.

We got an hour off work for the event (always a pleasure) and then headed over to Esher where the track of destiny was laid out.

Now before we get started properly, I need to tell you that Dave has recently moved to the Brentford office, bringing his tradition of competition to see who makes the tea round (this entails a mini golf competition ‘Tee for Tea’ in Old Street. I’ll tell you more about the complex methods as to how it is decided in another post, but let’s just say I didn’t have a great start to the week, and I was becoming worryingly good at making coffee after so much practice. With this in mind, I was out for revenge on the track, so after jumping into my overalls, gloves, hair net (er?) and helmet, I was delighted to see that I would be competing against my newly found nemesis.

Fifteen karts would be racing around the 800 metre track at the same time and they could reach about 60 km/ph on the straight. When you’re so low down, that seems dangerously fast, so it was sure to be a high octane race. I clearly wasn’t too hot on the practice laps, getting passed numerous occasions and landing my team well back in the grid to begin the race. (12th out of 15 I think). Fittingly, Dave’s team was in last. So, with motors at the ready, we revved off.

To say my driving remained questionable even after the practice lap would have been more than accurate. Almost every time I turned a corner when I was under pressure or chasing someone down, I’d spin out. After the first I was way down the field and out of reach of claiming the lead.

Fortunately, it seemed like a lot of other people also had a penchant for spinning out, so even though my driving was simply awful, I struggled back into a more respectable position. However, after skidding around the opening corner of the track four times in a row with a screeching brake, one of the marshals

had enough (and that after numerous occasions of being told to calm down) and I was sent to a sin bin for a thorough telling off. After about thirty seconds of lectures about my poor driving (I sold my car in February, so I insist I’m out of practice) I was back out on track.

Seeing as everyone was wearing a helmet, it wasn’t easy to see exactly who you were up against if you were chasing someone. However, I did notice Dave’s shoes at one point, and began to get on his tail. We must have gone around about four laps of high octane pace, trying to edge each other out, before I decided to risk it all on a seriously steep bend at max speed. Unfortunately, this ended in tears, with me spinning out and watching my adversary shoot off into the distance, while doing my best to prevent other racers passing me by generally getting in their way.

Well, after all the action, we even got a BBQ thrown into the mix, which was pretty amazing. Then we headed home. Living in Brixton, this took a while (sleep by 1am is about three hours passed bed time). So I took advantage of flexi hours in the morning and came in at ten. I’ll explain the tea making rules soon!

*Artist’s Impression