Bear blog

*Grunt*

Coming down from my Bungay high...getting narky with the real world...

 

Of course, the trouble with documenting a whole ten days of Bungay is that the place is so chilled time seems to stop. Days merge into days, activity can only be roughly categorised into none, or a little bit. Which makes it very hard to explain just exactly what was so good about the whole thing, and exactly what happened.

 

Philip did us proud. His new engine is now snugly in place and looking very shiny. He's not exactly purring, but there's none of that ill-tempered growl to him any more. He didn't fail to start. He didn't stall. He didn't glug petrol with quite his usual voracity. He didn't blow oil all over Farmer Paul's buttercups. He didn't leave us stranded half way down the motorway. A success.

 

We arrived mid-afternoon on Saturday to find portentous skies and Farmer Paul finishing off the last little bits of mowing. Popped our heads into the tent in an effort to pay up our registration fees only to be told to come back later once we'd settled in. Nice. Nothing was happening, of course. I think there might have been a few people having a bit of a sit, but that was about it.

 

Later on, Pete went to retrieve Lizzy from the middle of the Bungay wilderness. It turned out she was only a couple of minutes down the road, but she would never have found the site on her own, so well hidden as it is from people who aren't special enough to already be there. Then we had a nice friendly round of ping-pong and later still, with the introduction of a Barnesy, we invented volley-ping-pong. To great amusement and a little bit of childish pant-wetting. The first night was the one time I did any passing. I did about ten minutes of pretty inocuous six-club stuff with Darren, but it hammered my hand sufficiently that I never really got back in the mood for it. That, and getting bashed around playing volley club...

 

And then I'm afraid after that things start to get a bit hazy. I know there was a lot of sitting. Lizzy and I read our way through half of the literature in Suffolk. One night we went on an arctic expidition and read in our own tent by gas light. Our only provisions were chocolate digestives and a mug of hot chocolate each. To say that the arctic winds were blasting through the canvas, our provisions were rapidly dwindling, and our minds were racked with worry about whether the boys would be able to mount a successful rescue mission and cross the wastes to get to us, we managed quite nicely. In the end, the desolation of the place got too much and we had to journey onwards towards Philip, where we made ourselves nice and snuggly warm, and also managed to melt the roof with the gas light. Oops.

 

We went out on a few day trips. On Sunday we wandered into Bungay to pick up a few necessities, like a chair for Lizzy. We walked straight into the middle of a garden steet market. Lots of plants, wicker men, nice smelling food, and a jazz band. We saw a whole roast pig, and Lizzy bought herself a rather snazzy deckchair. St Peter's Brewery had a stall there. The boys decided not to buy their beer rations from the stall though, and instead went to the brewery itself only to find that the stall was doing cases five quid cheaper. Much fist shaking commenced.

 

I think it was Monday that we went to the aviation museum. I didn't have much hope of it being any good but it was huge. And free! They had a morse code machine. Lizzy and I spent about half an hour being crap at it. They had loads of planes sat around the place, and round the back there was a wildlife walk. We saw a pheasant, but we didn't shoot it.

 

Mid-week we managed to adopt Barnesy and teach him the Ting-a-ling Plop game which seemed to please him. We took him on a trek to a steam museum which charged extortionate entrance fees. So instead of going in we went to the garden centre next door and played on a chair swing thing until it started creaking, ominously. We went for a walk down what appeared to be the only road in Diss and found a chip shop to stop at. Then it started raining so we ran back and sheltered in Tesco's. We were looking for spinning balls but apparently they'd got rid of the stock to be replaced by crappy World Cup footballs. Bah. But we bought barbeque goodness, and later in the day Dave introduced us all the the wonders of Halloumi. Nyum-nyums. We also saw a nice windmill, of which there are a lot in Suffolk. It wasn't open so we just went up to it and hugged it a bit.

 

Our one and only unicycle ride was along a stretch of bendy road from Hulver Farm to St Peter's. It was about 2 miles and very pleasant. Pete has swapped over the cranks on my 24 so I'm now riding on 140s rather than 150s. The improvement it makes is incredible. I can actually steer now, and I don't get that pulling off to the right sensation. Barnesy came with us and, fair play to him, managed very well for someone who can't consistently freemount and hasn't done anything approaching distance riding before. He well and truly wussed out though. About five minutes' ride to the brewery, Mandy just so happened to pass us in her car. There was a bit of chatting with Dave, then a sudden sound of slamming doors and a squeal of rubber on asphalt as Mandy raced off into the distance with a new passenger on board. We met up with him at the brewery looking terribly shame-faced, and not a little shagged out. He bought us all a drink to make up for it though. On the way back Dave sliced my ankle on his pedal and I bailed out in a puddle and got my seat soaked. I got back on to conquer the puddle but it made me look like I'd wet myself, so Pete and Dave walked back with me to the site. A good little excursion though. We even saw a barn owl.

We took a day out at Great Yarmouth. Lizzy and I spent about an hour and a half building a sand-city. It had villages and a bridge and everything. Lizzy was Minister of Home Security. I was First Defence Officer and Commander-In-Chief. Then we had fish and chips on the sea-front and commented on how many fat people there were roundabouts. We bought ice creams on the way back to the car but Lizzy couldn't finish hers so she went walkabout and brandished it menacingly at some old ladies who were sat on a bench. They didn't want it so it went in the bin in the end.   

 

Back on site there was volley-club to be had. Barnesy was trying to play nice cause Lizzy and I were only girlies and weren't really used to this competitive stuff. I was going for the jugular. We were getting quite good by the end of the week. I have to work on my bad-ass returns staying inside the court though. They looked good, but none of them counted. Once Roger had turned up (to lots of girlish screaming) we invented the run-around variation of volley-club which I'm sure would work if we were just slightly more capable. Something else to practice, methinks.

 

The show was top-notch. Grant did a superb little one diabolo routine which made me realise how few people I get to see just doing one. It's all numbers numbers numbers with these new fangled diabolists. What's wrong with just swishing one around the place in an amusing fashion? Grant also put on the best effort at a hat routine I think I've ever seen. The addition of a cane and a good aim set the whole thing off to perfection. Colin and Anwin did their thing. It was alright, but dragged quite a bit. Anwen's bra was the thing that best held my attention. Highlight of the show was Barnesy doing my special request (touching his nose). Best bit of his whole act. He should do it all the time, and maybe branch out into other body parts. Who knows where it could lead.

I think the best thing about Bungay is how intimate and friendly it all is, and how chilled and happy everyone makes everyone else feel. I know a few people were worried that because of all the interest in it this year, there were going to be too many people around, and that was all going to change. But it didn't. I don't tend to make friends, but I've gained a Barnesy, and I've shared lots of happy vibes with a lot of very cool people. Yey us!

 

Oh and yeah, it did rain. But who cares?