My New Year’s resolution of getting a decent night’s sleep every night fell at the first hurdle when Treacle woke me with her whimpering in the small hours; she was having a bad dream. I wonder what had upset her. She soon settled, but I didn’t.
If anyone tries to tell you that animals don’t dream they are welcome to borrow my little “pain in the glass” for a night.
Forgetting to break out the new razor blade for the first of the month (woops!) I had a shave, then over brekkie I had my usual peer into the internet. “Name Tests” were still spamming me on Facebook so they got blocked. Other than that, Facebook was dull this morning. Loads of people had wished the world a happy new year, and loads of people had liked this, But there wasn’t much else going on. So I helped “er indoors TM” with a minor tidy up then got ready for the day.
Karl, Tracey and Charlotte arrived and we walked round to Newtown and Frog’s Island. Being New Year’s Day we usually have a geo-meet-up for a walk and a pub session for all the county’s hunters of Tupperware. This year I’d volunteered to organise something, but last Tuesday (with only four days to go) the pub cancelled on me. So what could I do? The place I had booked had a rather good outdoor marquee with plenty of ventilation. No other pub had anything to compare. So with no alternative but to cancel I decided to go ahead with the non-pub part of what I had in mind and hope for the best. About thirty of us met up in Frog’s Island to chat and to play Wherigo.
The Wherigos weren’t entirely without incident; some people had the app crash on them, and some struggled with the fiendishly difficult one. But I think it fair to say that once people figured out how to play the game we all had a laugh, and I think a good time was had by all. I particularly liked watching multiple groups of people playing my “Snakes and Ladders” Wherigo in which it didn’t take long for everyone who started together to find themselves scattered all over the field. And watching people try to figure out which of a pint of ale, a random geocacher and a tiger could be left together was fun. And it was good to spend time with old friends; many of whom I’ve not seen in person for nearly two years. And I got to meet new friends too.
Six years ago when I ran the New Years day event we had a very wet and cold day out, At the time I said about the day “I knew the terrain was muddy; but I didn't know it was going to be *that* muddy. It had certainly got a lot worse in the two weeks since I last walked the route” so I’d deliberately chosen somewhere for today with (mostly) tarmac paths. But the bits on the grass weren’t at all muddy, and the weather held out for us (it was the warmest New Year’s Day on record).
After three hours the glorious sunshine began to give way to clouds, and by then people were beginning to drift away so it was time for us to go too. It turned out that three people arrived just after we’d all gone home…
We came home and Karl and I saw off a bottle of “Obadiah” a ten per cent Imperial Stout from the Old Dairy Brewery. It was rather good, but at ten per cent you don’t mess about with it. Some pizza, a bit of “Snow Top”… hardly surprising “er indoors TM” fell asleep.
I took a few photos of the day, and as she snored I posted them on-line. But it wasn’t long before I too was fast asleep.
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