It's not every job that sees me up at 6.30 a.m. digging worms up from my garden. I was setting off early for an '11.30' job at Willaston in Cheshire, namely the World Worm Charming Championships.

Arriving early, I discovered that there would be nobody turning up before 1 pm and that the half hour contest started at 2 o'clock.
Oops! The latest the office wanted photos by was 2 pm. So I shot a few pics, including the old chap in my photo-the Chief Worm Charmer and organiser Mike Forster. Next was the Elvis impersonator and clarinet player Stan. I drove off and wired from the wifi point I had sussed out earlier. Sods law then cut in. The photos took AGES to wire as unbeknown to me my Mac had developed a bit of a fault and wasn't working properly.

I arrived back at the event 3 minutes before the half hour contest finished. Not an ideal situation, but even superman has a job to be in two places at once. Unfortunately for me the World Record was broken and the office wondered where all the photos were of worm charmers with their bounty during the contest and the winner waving their 500 plus worms in a pot triumphantly in the air after the two hour long official count.

Perhaps a case of great expectations and the early bird not always getting the worm.