“One machine can do the work of fifty people. NO machine can do the work of one extraordinary person”.

Hello everybody

I’m back at the keyboard for the second session of the summer. My name is Woody (of the Word fame) and I will be guiding you through the second part of the summer of 2022. I will do – and can only do – my best in this endeavour, such is the nature of the task at hand. There will be times when the time of the day will get the better of me, or maybe the internet gremlins will strike without warning, but it is as well to get my excuses in now. haha.

I have been down in Chicago and O’Hare for the weekend, so I missed out on visiting weekend here at the Friendly Confines. My apologies to all those I wanted to see, but could not, but I have been told that the weekend went well, and everyone had fun. No-one can ask for anymore than that.

So here we are at the start of the second session, a packed second session, I might add. Our numbers are, once again, up, and we love having a lot of people here. The more we have, the more we can play, the more we can compete, the more we can challenge ourselves. We like to do all those things while also having lots of fun. Fun, as we like to say, is good. Indeed, fun underpins everything we do here. Whatever we are doing, we want to have a smile on our collective face while we are doing it. And it’s difficult not to have fun when you are smiling. Or is that a chicken and egg situation? How does the song go? “when you’re smiling, when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you. When you’re laughing the sun comes shining through; but when you’re crying you bring on the rain, so stop you’re crying be happy again, when you’re smiling, when you’re smiling……”. You get the idea.

I travelled up with the buses this afternoon, and we pulled into camp ahead of schedule, despite leaving late (a bit like every flight I’ve taken over the Atlantic. Leave late, arrive early: how does that work?). We were met with a wall of noise from those who were already here. And it was was warm, too: 85 degrees!

As is tradition, we had a game of Capture the Flag (in the gully) straight after dinner as our first getting-to know-each-other event, and that went smoothly (ie no injuries or meltdowns(we take Capture the Flag very seriously)), and then it was down to the campfire for some stories, wise words, songs and jokes.

Second session is officially underway, and it seems that all is well, so safely rest.

Goodnight everybody

As ever…WOODY!