Adapt, improvise, overcome and don't be an idiot next time!

So I suppose i'm supposed to be at the pinnacle of my career... assessing my peers for the highest UK mountaineering award and all that so how it that I'm following the MIC candidate and his 2 students up the apron of the Mess of Pottage all tooled, harnessed and helmeted up when it goes through my head that there is something wrong. Something's missing.... and then I look at my feet. Crampons. Crampons not on my boots in fact they are in the Lodge drying room. Oh dear... its going to be quite hard to solo Hidden Chimney today without them.
Thanks to my colleagues for the extra rope... and for making it possible for me to leg it up to windy col (steps cut, forearms of popeye), dig out an abseil anchor independent of the top anchor of the route (ice chipped- more forearm action), abseil down passing that awkward knot joining the 2 short ropes together and rejoin my candidate early on his route. Seamless it was but I was working quite hard, especially when reascending my 2 ropes past that awkwardly sighted knot.
No excuse but I know why it happened. I changed the order in which I packed my rucksack today (I knew I'd be wearing the belay jacket that normally lives in the bottom of my sack so I moved it up. This was sufficient to disrupt the usual system and leave me with my crampons on the shelf in the drying room! Less autopilot and more though required in the mornings obviously.
Or, i'm just a pillock.
This evening was spent with a little informative staff training from Roger from Lyon Equipment. We were looking at simple visual teaching strategies to get the forces in climbing across to students.

.Oh and as a final aside the big block people have been belaying off of on the left above the crux of Hidden Chimney (in the final funnel, obvious polished crack, about the size of a wide screen TV. Its loose as hell.