It’s in the bag: packing for a bronze Duke of Edinburgh expedition

I bought the 65 litre rucksack (“black please, not pink or anything” said my teenage son) and stared at the kit list in horror. Once the sleeping bag, bivvy bag, roll-mat, waterproof trousers, spare jumper, spare gloves, multiple pairs of socks and underpants had all gone into the bag, there wasn’t much room left for the other vital stuff such as food and the very random stuff such as a scratchy pan scrub and tea-towel. 

I found a dry sack for vital things such as matches, plasters and spare torch batteries, but what food to pack? For someone who can empty the bread-bin in a day and make a serious dent in the contents of the fridge, my son was curiously uninterested in what he planned to eat. “Just noodles and biscuits” he suggested. 

Well, that was no good, so we embarked on a tasting session: boil-in-the-bag dinners were tracked down on the internet and tested in our kitchen (for the record, the Wayfarer chicken curry was not too bad) and lists of snacks were drawn up. At the last minute, I threw in two packets of Super Noodles just in case. 

The night before the expedition, my son started to pack his rucksack. An exchange by Messenger with his team-mates ensued. “Is a10kg rucksack normal?” asked one of the girls, sounding worried. My son weighed his – it was 12 kilos and still being packed. Then there was an emergency pitta bread purchase: apparently one of the team was bringing paté. This was proving to be a very middle-class D of E expedition. 

With no agreement on who was going to carry the tent, off he went the next morning, looking for all the world as if he would be gone for a fortnight, so much stuff was crammed into his bag.

Three days later, we are both much the wiser. What did we learn?

Well, the super noodles got eaten and at least one of the boil-in-the-bag meals is back in the cupboard (five minutes is too long to wait, apparently).

Pop tarts do not travel well – they turn to crumbs quite easily. All those Himalayan mountaineers who swear by them as a boost when climbing forgot to mention that they were probably frozen solid in their packaging.

Little cheeses in their red waxy shells go down a treat.

Teenagers do not use bivvy bags to cover their sleeping bags in a leaky tent, although they will later wish they had.

Finally, it was pointless packing lots of spare clothes: only the socks got changed. Mothers of teenage boys take note...

Status update: my profile is locked

According to research by recruitment company Oilandgaspeople.com, employers now routinely vet social media profiles to find, or reject, potential candidates. The pretty comprehensive survey of 7,000 firms found that over 80 per cent have looked up candidates’ social media output and 64 per cent had rejected applicants as a result of what they found.

This is backed up by research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development which shows that two in five employers look at candidates’ social media activity and most won’t bother to tell you, either.

I suppose there are two ways of looking at this development. I’m sure some of you are confident that your Facebook, Twitter, Vine and Flickr accounts will boost your employment prospects. I know of several Facebook pages which are practically works of art: their owners are funny, creative types who do not hide their light under a bushel, so to speak. 

But if you are like me, this may not be the case at all: a quick look at my Facebook account reveals a discussion about the benefits of chocolate covered coffee beans to try and stay awake, followed by an exchange about how terrifying it is to fly to Glasgow in a turbo-prop plane, complete with my friends’ helpfully graphic descriptions of how sick they were when they did something similar.  Hmmm. This may not be the impression I’d hope to give to potential recruiters if I was on the job hunt.

The CEO of Oilandgaspeople.com says that “Social media is now a powerful recruitment tool for getting the right person in position faster and cheaper than traditional forms of advertising.” I suggest that if you are applying for a job, you might want to tidy up your social media accounts for a while. Just saying...