New Year Camping - escape from the brick house

So after a manic Christmas day and 8 again for curry and games on boxing day I am ready to escape. Spent Tuesday getting the camping stuff sorted, more to do this time as the daughter and OH were joining us in their new Mr Men Tent.

Wednesday we drive off to Hayles Fruit Farm for 6 nights under canvas, in whatever the weather wants to throw at us. We set off early (11am is early to us) as we knew we would have to face the Hayles booking system, this would kill at least an hour.

Sun was out and unusually mild weather and we started pitching on the fresh green grass (which by end of day 2 was a quagmire). So both bell tents were pitched (I was in the 5m bell) and up went the large quechua pop up to provide a kitchen area for all of us.

Pop up all kitted out ready.

And as it was christmas, of course the bell got a christmas makeover....

Bert was also forced to embrace the christmas spirit

First 2 days were spent relatively calm, a dvd in the afternoon (Social Network), coffee and cakes, and a trip to Attwools for some tent porn.

My daughter and her OH snuggled round fire wondering what they were in for...

Intents arrived Thursday, so I was allowed to play with the lego for a few hours. Joel had started a pub, which I took over as he played happily on the DS instead

I could quite happily have played with the pub for the rest of the night...complete with killer cat

Note to Intents: Bring more windows and doors next time, we had hardly any

The next day was a trip to Broadway. A lovely posh village full of little gift shops. Perfect. Well not quite. Joel wanted chips form the fish and chip shop. Broadway doesn't have food shops, never mind a chippy. He had more chance of caviar, fois gras and oysters than a sausage in batter

Best sweet shop ever

Only food for miles

A posh tea room with an old bike

A big posh house

more posh places

Back to the site and it has started to fill up, with arrivals from gilly, nutgone, marshy, jayne, Tim, gumball (Smoky arrived Saturday)

You would think it would be a fight for the one loo and shower in the portacabin, but luckily we are a grimey lot so there was never any queue

Shelters up for NY eve. Firepits ready

Would like to say thanks to Tim for letting us put the firepits under his nice canopy. The only problem was we couldn't pile them up like flamethrowers till after 9pm when Tim went to bed

The joint of pork is bubbling away

Others cooked Gammon, Beef, Chicken, we had hot cider and Mrs Marshy deserves special credit for the best chocolate cake ever!

Mrs Marshy hopelessy in love with Mr Marshy. Give them time they only got married last year. They will soon be ripping each others heads off when they put the guy ropes on wrong

MURDER MYSTERY TIME

New Years Eve started off with a game of Murder Mystery - 8 of us took the cast parts and the rest sat and got pissed. The game was themed around a plastic surgeons death, and we were each allocated a booklet with our role in.

Cast was:-


BEAU TOX - Plastic Surgeon

Smoky. Be seriously worried if smoky does decide to take this vocation in life.

Having problems reading the booklet, never mind chopping up bits

FAY SLIFT - Plastic Surgeon

Marshy. V amusing playing the part of the female plastic surgeon. Took it v well when we all shouted at him for reading the wrong bits

RICH ZUCKER - Patient

Gumball. Priceless, as the story advanced it was revealed that Gumball had serious penis enhancement problems

Gumball reading his characters 'flaws', with sympathy from the onlookers

MAY KITBETTER - Nurse (her soothing hands work on both sexes!)

Me. Swayed anyway, but basically I played a tart

PHIL SLEEPY - Anaesthetist

Jayne. Perfect casting!! Her character was as laid back as Jayne

ANNA LISZT - Psychiatric Consultant

Gilly. The most animated character, especially as the vodka went down. Got her come uppance though, when it was revealed she was actually packing a meat and 2 veg in her pants

Gilly having one of her 'Ahhh Haaaa!' moments..

DEN CHURES - Orthodontist

Intents. Crooked from the start and revealed to be the killer

KIM PLANT - Fashion Model

Christie. At first it seemed the most glamorous of all of us. Until we found out she was packing cocaine in them humungous boobs

Once we had got through the first round we sort of knew what we were doing, and as more alcohol was downed the more dramatic it got (well it did for Gilly anyway) The summary was done and the murderer named (bit of an anticlimax really as was all based on a stupid lie in the summary)

Having played this for about 2 hours, we thought we were well on our way to the New Year. I think it was 8:30pm when we checked

Next was secret santa, the crap present bin and then the Karoake. Me, Intents and Gilly destroyed a few songs, and no one else stepped forward after that...

3 twats in hats as we were affectionately known

Very very short clips. Be thankful

A very low Gilly




So we scoffed, played and sang. Then at 12am we turned on the radio for a traditional Auld Lang Syne and a hug for the campers we had met and bonded with over the last 12 months (seems like bloody years)

Amazing how you can keep yourself amused with 2 pom poms and a barrel of vodka

Next morning Jayne and Gilly went home, leaving a smaller group. Undeterred we gathered round the firepit again, and tonight's entertainment....

QUIZ NIGHT

Annie (who never actually made it to the meet) set us up a quiz. We pulled kindle sticks to determine who was in which team and ther battle commenced. The points system was a bit strange so we made it up.

Gumball was elected Quiz master

First round was famous faces and a guess the beer logo. Not surprisingly we romped the alcohol logos.

In my team was Intents, Scep and Marshy. We liked to think of Marshy as the joker. But he came into his own on a couple of the beer logos (obviously a total lush) and the following question:-

What country is due south of Detroit?

So we threw a few guesses around and he came straight out with the answer. We didn't believe him obviously as it was the only question he had attempted. (Yes we wrote it down though and he was right...so not only gets discount at the camping shop, has a Mrs who makes the best chocolate cake ever, he also knows one random trivia question)

Anyway, we won....yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Gumball managed to scrat around and find some prizes (keyrings for everyone and a fight over who got the tin)

Homer found the whole evening absolutely rivetting. And dragged off to bed at the end with his lovely little muddy paws all over my tent

Day of packing up, I heard a horrified fellow camper (Intents again) shout 'Barley has just eaten 5 of a 6 pack of my pork pies!!!!'. My thieving hound had robbed them out of her kitchen...

Homer did the maths and went for a sneaky look to try and find the 6th pork pie....

(I am in debt, one packet of pork pies)

Next morning the sun was out all day for packing up, couldn't have asked for better weather

What I should have asked for though was somewhere safe to put my keys....Having packed up, spent 2 hours looking for them. Gave up and phoned the AA. 5 mins later found them in my dressing gown pocket.

Now if mum had got me a nice monogrammed keyring I'm sure they wouldn't have gone missing...

PS: Answer was Canada