A telephone postcard, & fake sticky poo

Everything about the check in was going to plan until, that is, the gentleman looked up and into the kitchen, and asked me if there was a strange purple light in there (or was it just his eyes). Rachel had obviously overhead this question because she replied through the door, "Oh, that's just my aura." The gentleman seemed happy with this explanation, and assured Rachel that purple was a good aura to have. He then went on to ask me at what time breakfast was served, "7.30.........am". He was glad that I had clarified the am/pm distinction, as he thought it might be possible that we existed in some sort of different time dimension here (and served all our meals at once). By this point we were both rather struggling with words (such was the ridiculousness of what had initially been quite a normal check in), but I somehow managed to get all the relevant information across before going to add another item to a packed lunch bag. 

The slightly bizarre theme to the evening had been set not long after coming into work. There was a message on the answerphone for all of us - a telephone postcard from Fiona. It was a bit of a cheat really, because there's no way in the world she could have squeezed all those words onto an actual postcard. I had to ask Rachel at one point, "is she really still talking?" Apparently so. It was of course though utterly lovely. Perhaps somewhat less lovely (but utterly amusing) was Rachel's revelation about what she had been doing the previous night. "I started reading these reviews of fake sticky poo on Amazon, and just couldn't stop. Some of them are hilarious - I can't believe I haven't discovered this before. You'll have to take a look later, Ki-Ki!" 

Later however, I had my attention drawn by other things - Mick gluing a piece of bark to an old, ripped pillowcase. I'm not sure what prompted him to ask me, "K, do you like wolves?" I did wonder briefly if he'd acquired one for the hostel grounds. I told him that I wasn't particularly fond of them, certainly wouldn't want to meet one in the wild. "Well at least they can't swim/live underwater!" Mick informed me. I conceded that this was indeed a bonus, but as wolves can swim normally (and humans can't spend any length of time underwater) I didn't really see how that could benefit me in a confrontation. He then explained that if I was sitting beside a Loch eating my lunch, a wolf wouldn't be able to sneak up and steal a sandwich entirely unnoticed ("you would see it coming from the woods, or its head above the water."). I had to admit that I hadn't thought of that particular scenario, but that was probably because there are no wolves in Britain.