Friday

As usual I had to catch a train at 6:15, and at 6:00 I was still packing. A final scrabble for stuff and I was off to Waterloo. A standard bus journey down: surreal conversations (gophers? Natalie?), and lots of radio station searching for tracks to sing along to and then argue about the artist and title (Don’t go by Yazoo I think)

Once there we set out on a search for a pub for our type of people- fill in your own punch line here- and succeeded by getting Andi to interrogate a group of locals. We soon found the pub we had been directed to and it had the added bonus of a video wall showing a music channel, not only was there the chance for some of us to embarrass ourselves with our knowledge of early nineties music but you could sent text messages to the station on the off chance that they would show them. I don’t know if any of our messages appeared but we did start rather near to the point we left.

Saturday

As has become tradition for this site we started the day with a lovely stroll from where we parked all the way to where we were working carrying the tools, it’s probably character building but I still think it’s a long way. The area we were working on had previously had contractors in to build a cycle path and they had left a load of trees lying in the canal bed along with some that may have been blown down previously.

Within minutes of Bob getting on site we had a fire going and the addition of nice dry wood turned it into a large fire followed quickly by a raging inferno.

I managed to continue my tradition of injuring myself on this site by slashing open my fingers on a large bramble bush; luckily Dr. Moose was on call to administer plasters and threats.

The first fire spawned several others but also managed to continue in its attempts to be seen from space, all the trees around it were starting to smoulder and it was toasty anywhere within about twenty feet.

Lunch was declared so we trekked back to the locks for the usual chat and photos. Moose outlined some of his plans for the National and the idea of a large map board for planning attacks and ambushes was met with approval.

After lunch it was decided that we really had to cut down some of the large vertical branches from the fallen trees that were starting to burn, something about us cutting them down being more controlled, well that was the theory. The combination of very tall leaning branches and only being able to saw for a few seconds before becoming too hot mad for slow going at the start along with some interesting balancing acts provided entertainment for the rest of us. Soon the area was ringing to the sound of people shouting Timber; occasionally early enough to be of some warning, and even more fuel went on the fire.

Many bonus points were given to Claire over the course of the day in recognition of her blondeness, far outdoing the pervious holder of the title, Natalie.

Back to hall to clean up and relax before food and pub, Natalie shocks us even more with the suggestion that she wouldn’t be going out unless she finished her homework first; this is probably grounds for her becoming brunette.

Tea courtesy of Maria and a crumble that was something to do with Andi, enough crumble that there would be plenty for snacking later. We headed back to the pub from the previous night, more up to date music on the video wall, not necessarily to everyone’s taste but those who could remember when music had proper word were quite content to watch the scantily clad dancers who populate most modern videos.

Sunday

Sunday morning’s brought stunning weather, sunny and crisp, perfect for more destruction and work continued in the same sort of way as normal up until an earlier than usual lunch to enable some people to leave at a better time for them.

After eating some kind of unspoken agreement seemed to lead to previously unseen levels of work as we all descended on one area and turned it into tiny burning pieces. In an effort to reduce wear and tear on tools Ed resorted to pushing entire trees over with his bare hands while those around him also managed to give the clichéd 110%.

In order to get back to London at a reasonable time we packed up earlier and went back to the hall for the usual ritual of packing and tidying.

We all sorted ourselves into our various forms of transport and set off for our respective homes secure in the knowledge that we had done a good weekends work.

All the usual cheering and thanks to Moose for being in charge very successfully without resorting to homicide, and to Maria for feeding us all. Also thanks to Bob’s blowtorch as firelighting would be so dull without it.