My nth day at Stalag Baddowski; I am attempting to dig my way to Eastwood House. Beginning with a hole underneath one of the Wernicks, I plan to extend a tunnel beneath the staff car park using only GEC-Research Canteen cutlery. From there I shall burrow underneath Great Baddow itself until the tunnel meets up with the Army and Navy subway. Once the tunnel is finished, members of the Baddow Escape Committee will enter the tunnel, one at a time, in a desperate bid to reach civilization.

The GEC-Research spoon breaks. One member of the Escape Committee injured after trying to fax himself to Elettra House. Another planned to scan himself into a digitised image that could be transmitted over the data network to emerge in the Information Systems area at Eastwood House. Attempts were aborted when he found bits of him could be lost in transmission or corrupted by the time he reached the other end. Not wishing to spend our lives circulating in the data network ‘on hold,’ we returned to more mundane methods and secreted ourselves in Royal Mail sacks addressed to Eastwood House and other destinations ‘outside’.

Unfortunately we missed the last post collection. One of our number tried to stow away in the boot of a car shuttling between the three sites (Baddow, Elettra House and Eastwood House), but was discovered when the car alarm went off. Another is sellotaping pieces of photocopier paper and old ballpoint pens together to make a hang-glider. Given sufficient breeze, or another helping of the Canteen’s curry, he hopes to hang-glide from the roof of B Building, Baddow to Eastwood House.

Tragic accident! One of the Baddow Exiles injured in fall from B Building roof. Authorities mystified by the large quantity of torn paper and broken ballpoint pens in vicinity of accident. There are so few of us left now and we hold out little hope of escaping from Stalag Baddowski and rejoining our comrades at Eastwood House.

Today one of our number almost made it to Eastwood House. In reward for a week’s good behaviour, he was taken there by a minder who needed to deliver several boxes of documentation. While there, our comrade managed to escape from his minder on the pretext of visiting the lavatory. He was retrieved several hours later by a member of Security who found him wandering around the building in a confused state. He had apparently become lost and had been reported to Security by an Eastwoodian whom he had approached for directions. Authorities accepted his assertions of becoming confused by the labyrinthine interior of Eastwood while trying to return to his minder. All is not lost, he has obtained a map of the building which he has smuggled back into Baddowski. We shall study it and be better prepared next time.

Return to Dragonqueen's Humor & Story Site

Inspired by the diary left behind by former inmates at Stalag Baddowski, we, the exiles from Basildon, are now planning our own escape from Stalag Baddowski to K2. We have formed the Escape Committee and Synergy Escape Team. Several sub-committees have been set up: the Escape Steering Group, the Escape Engineering Process Group, the Escape Process Improvement First Line Management Team and the Escape Engineering Quality Assurance sub-committee.

Feasibility studies are being conducted and the bids have been invited. The Ladder over-the-Fence bid is currently favourite and has a shorter timescale than the Tunnel-under-the car-park option. The Escape Safety Committee was astonished that the Tunnel team did not intend to carry out a hazard analysis into the use of a spoon nor an environmental impact assessment.

The Escape Engineering Process Group have created a system requirement specification. It is a short, simple document which states:

System requirement: to escape from Stalag Baddowski to Basildon K2

The addition of standard paragraphs from the template have expanded this simple statement of intent to a 162 page epic covering all aspects of the escape, from configuration management of digging spoons through to quality assurance of people as they climb ladders.

The Tunnel team and Ladder Team have both submitted their Design Specifications to the Escape Steering Group. Meanwhile, one of our number (discontented with the protracted timescale of the escape negotiations) has attempted to wing it, without the aid of any procedures or codes of practice. He was caught sellotaping empty crisp packets together to make a hot air balloon. He was hoping to use all the hot air generated from meetings to inflate the balloon, allowing him to sail up, up and away, over the perimeter fence and into the neutral ground of Pontlands Park. His balloon was found in a deflated state on top of the Library building. There is no sign of our colleague, but the canteen does seem to have plenty of pork pies today.

The Tunnel Design and Ladder Designs have both been submitted. The Ladder Design appears simplest, but the Escape Sub-Process Committee (a splinter group from the Steering Group) said that the simplest solutions are not always the best. Instead they have opted to pursue the Tunnel method, but have demanded it be completed in only half the time initially proposed. This will mean that fewer forks will be used to support the sides of the tunnel.

As a result of this, the Chairman of the Escape Safety Sub-Committee Steering Group has resigned and has joined the pro-Ladder faction. However, the Ladder Bid Group have reduced their own costs by cutting the number of rungs and increasing the distance between rungs. People with short legs have formed a pressure group, claiming discrimination. The ex-Chairman was discovered by security as he attempted to bog-snorkel his way to safety through the ditch at the side of W. Han. Rd. he has been placed in isolation in a corner office with an actual door to encourage him to defect to the Pro-Baddow faction.

Meanwhile, the tunnel design has been improved though the Escape Safety Advisory Committee made several objections to the decreased number of support forks. Since this Committee is now only Advisory (the Escape Steering group chose to remove the Safety Advisors' powers of veto), objections were ignored. The Environmental Impact Group has recommended that dirt removed from the tunnel be made into a landscaped area with children's play-park and ornamental lake with wildfowl and golden trout.

Implementation of the tunnel began today. The forks are defective. The number of forks stolen from the canteen cannot hold up the walls of the tunnel. A Cutlery Theft Group has been formed and the definition of 'fork' has been widened to include 'knife' and 'spoon'. Unfortunately, the Ladder Project are competing with us for cutlery, leading to a resources bottleneck. A Test Plan has been formulated to test each fork as a unit (standalone), a module (in combination with other cutlery) and a system (holding up the tunnel ceiling). Unit and module tests have gone well, but the forks consistently fail system testing. QA refuse to issue a Certificate of Conformity for the first 9 inches of the tunnel. The documentation has been revised to state that this is an "Engineering Build" or, more accurately, an "Engineering Dig" and requires verification by an independent witness, not by QA.

The body of the Tunnel Project Manager was discovered close to the mouth of the tunnel. He had been knifed, forked and spooned to death. We suspect the Ladder Project are responsible since a section of tunnel has collapsed due to the unauthorised removal of cutlery supports. This unsanctioned change is a config control nightmare. An independent Config Investigation team has been formed and will investigate whether Ladder Project's recent acquisition of three-rungs' worth cutlery is linked to the disappearance of Tunnel Project assets.

Today, a bus arrived to take us to K2. K2 is a new, light and airy, three-storey work-camp located in Basildon. In other words, we the survivors have been paroled!

DRAGONQUEEN'S LAIR

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