Going underground

What a fandabbidozy evening that was! I had been looking forward to it for as long as the idea had been mooted, and was afraid that it might not live up to my expectations. But despite not being able to lose half a stone and have a facelift in the few days’ lead-up to the event (though I did have my hair attended to by a sober professional rather than the drunken amateur who has been responsible for it for the past 15 years) I felt confident enough to actually meet real people rather than cyber-folk.

Anyhow, the Mort family were first to arrive at the meeting-point, followed by Ned and me, then Simon. We glared at the occupants of all the cars that came down the road trying to see if they looked like people that we had never seen before. And they did – just not the right people, and I think we scared them away. Eventually Stu and Sarah and the others arrived, despite one carload getting lost on the way out of their road – an impressive feat considering it’s a cul-de-sac.

Simon had previously muttered something about not having any waterproof footwear, and when Mort’s mom’s suggestion that he wear flip-flops and accept having wet feet fell on stony ground I offered him the Boy’s old walking boots. These had fitted Boy for approximately 15 minutes during one of his adolescent growth-spurts, and were in almost mint condition. They now fitted nobody in the family, and were unlikely to in the future, unless Ned plans on having all his toes removed or my feet get trodden on by an elephant, so Simon promised to wear his most malleable feet and assured me they were fine. If he fibbed that’s his own lookout.

Ned and I proudly wore our ‘I Thing with SimonG’ teeshirts which were exposed to public view in the pub (oops, how did that happen?) at halftime. The beer was nice (Abbot) and it wasn’t too smoky, so that was pleasant. We’d spotted what we were searching for earlier on in the evening (though Mort and Simon didn’t know because they’d scampered on ahead) and located it on our return journey. The water in the canal was a little on the murky side – the only fish to be seen was the small one gently bumping its upturned belly against the remains of Simon’s Christmas tree, and Mort’s Mom didn’t think Mrs Mort would like it taken back for the nature table.

There was an exciting adventure scramble when we got back to the open air, with some of us requiring more of a shove to get started than others. MM impressed us all with her grace and elegance (though Ned misheard and was looking for her ‘grey elephant’).

What nice people everyone turned out to be - and almost all of them looked almost exactly how I'd imagined. Top fun!