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Wallyball

Yesterday evening was another fun one in the up-and-coming village of Chinnor! Paul's back off to Texas in a week so we commemorated this with some amusing activities, many involving water balloons.

A version of volleyball, played 2 vs 2 across a makeshift net (chairs and a plank of wood). Each team has a tea-towel, and both players have to keep hold of it the whole time. The first team then launches a water balloon across the net, attempting to land it on the opposing team's side of the net and therefore score a point. The other team obviously would love to catch the balloon in their tea-towel - thus avoiding the shame of conceding a point, and getting soaked! We did find that the best tactic was to launch the balloon sideways across the net at high speed... Paul's sister bravely absorbed the full force (and contents) of that water balloon. The game continued after we'd all picked ourselves up off the floor and regained breath from a good few minutes of solid laughing!!!

Other games included catch with water balloons, and also a form of baseball using a plank of wood to smack the balloon - generally soaking yourself and whoever was backstop. Good clean fun :)

The evening rounded off with a good old fire-in-a-dustbin in the garden. Amazing how much stuff you can condense into a pile of ash in a bin! Fuel included: an old fence, planks of wood, tree/hedge cuttings, ARGOS catalogue, plastic bottles, jeans, and Pooh Bear.

On a related point - while searching for pictures of water balloons i found this thing, called a "Single Person Launcher Kit" - Sounds like a bit of a cruel thing to do really...

Where did YOU sleep last night?

So I was sitting in the garden last night and it was great, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to try out the tent I bought last week! Taking on board Mum's warnings of being attacked by foxes who "might think the tent is a bin liner and rip it apart..." I bravely set out to the end of the garden (which is about 5 metres away) and put up the tent!

It was actually brilliant to lie out in the peace and quiet, looking up at the stars and having time to think. Dad was taken in to hospital yesterday with chest pains, and kept in overnight for tests. Hopefully its nothing serious, but its a bit frustrating sitting about waiting to hear if everything's ok. I spent some time praying and read Psalm 91 last night while I was out in the tent, and funnily enough, verse 9 and 10 goes like this:

"If you make the Most High your dwelling - even the Lord, who is my refuge - then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent."

NAILED!!! Take that foxes!

And it was right, I'm pretty sure no disaster came near my tent. If it did, then it was good enough not to wake me up anyway :)

This week I 'ave mostly been...

Playing minesweeper with Paul! And watching films: Crash, We Were Soldiers, Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and Instinct. And working in the extreme English heat in hot marquees serving food to "elderly" people... and eating lots of leftovers! The exercise front is going well, still keeping to my 2 cycle rides a week resolution - last week I even cycled 10 miles to Rickmansworth, spent the day stripping (paint) at my grandparents, and cycled home again :) At least we don't live up a stupidly steep hill... oh that's right, we do. And somehow I STILL weigh 12 1/2 stone... must be almost solid muscle by now...???

Currently listening to: Ronan Keating - 10 Years of Hits...

The Chinnorian Bees of Death

Today, went cycling in Chinnor with Paul and Jake. It was hard work, as they've both been doing some kind of exercise over the past year, so I was playing catchup most of the way! It was good fun tho, until we got a bit lost and then tried to cut across some fields...

We rounded a corner, and Paul and Jake were in front. I heard them shouting AAAAAAAAAHHHH, but didn't really make the connection with the fact that we were suddenly cycling right past a line of about 6 bee hives! Just as I realised (too late) what the cloud in front of me was, and why the guys were shouting in pain, I shut my mouth tight and ploughed straight through a swarm of bees!

To be fair, we came off pretty well considering how many hundreds of bees there were! Paul got stung in the head, Jake on the arm and leg, and I got one right on my butt!

In hindsight, maybe we did seem a bit threatening to the bees, as we effectively came flying through their front garden shouting AAAAAAAAHHHHHH, so fair play that they attacked us i suppose!

Here's a tip: NEVER DO THAT!!! And if you see your friends cycling through a swarm of bees, shouting in pain... DON'T FOLLOW THEM!

Over-confident chicken loses in violent brawl with small girl

Approach #4: Clock Radio

On my quest to find the right device to wake me up in the morning, i'm trying a clock radio at the moment (only £3.49 from ARGOS!). The problem with my initial alarm clock with snooze is that i kept snoozing again and again... until i finally thought "now i'm awake" and turned it off, only to fall completely asleep for another half hour!

Next was the mobile phone alarm. The absence of a snooze feature meant i could set all 3 alarms on it but HAD to get up on the 3rd one. This worked ok except on those days when i was so tired that i either lost count as to whether the alarm going off was the GET UP NOW one, or simply turned it straight off and went back to sleep.

Thirdly, i bought an old-stylie clockwork alarm clock. Advantage being that it had a flipping loud bell for an alarm that would make anybody leap out of bed and either run out the front door shouting FIRE, or grab the nearest makeshift weapon (pillows are less effective than bedside lamps) to defend yourself from seemingly imminent danger. Although, after realising i was neither on fire or under attack, i had a tendency to leap back into bed, whereupon the lack of a snooze feature was again my downfall!

So... here i am at a clock radio. The genius of it all being that the radio comes on, and it stays on! There's no snoozing, or switching off alarms, or even leaping out of bed scared out of my face. Brilliant. The only thing is, radio 4 comes on and i become completely engrossed in what they're talking about and therefore forget to get up, or (more frequently) my mind goes numb and spend the next hour drifting in and out of consciousness, having bizarre dreams which ironically feature similar themes to the radio programme!

Well, the summer holidays must be the best time to experiment as there is considerably less urgency to get up! Hopefully i'll find the best solution by the time uni starts again in October!