1. I love my sunglasses. They make certain colours look wonderful -- ginger people; foxgloves and copper beeches in the early morning. Particularly copper beeches with the sun shining through them. The sunnies mean I can look straight up through the branches and see the colours, rather than being dazzled.
2. The Woodland Trust. Being a walker, I have boundless love for any group that buys land and asks people in. I walked through Hargate Forest -- it's an intriguing patch of woodland not far from the centre of Tunbridge Wells, and it includes: a carriage drive from the Eridge Estate; ancient woodland; heathland; piney areas that smell gorgeous on a hot day.
2b. My new walking map. Tunbridge Wells falls over four different Explorer maps, so you can imagine how this turns me into a strolling map library. Not any more. A late birthday present from my father is a custom Ordnance Survey map -- give them a postcode and they make you a map that centres on it. Now my territory is all one one inkjet printed map with my name on the front.
3. Drinking games. We played 'A ship sailed in with a shitload of...' You have to say what the ship sailed in with -- magazines, say, or trees, and then the turn passes round the circle, and everyone has to say a magazine (or a tree) without pausing or repeating. Players who mess up must drink, and then load up another ship. It was funny that the part that caused the most trouble was 'A ship sailed in...' We had 'A ship sailed into the bay loaded with' and 'A ship came to harbour with...' I don't know if it was unwillingness to say a rude word with ladies present, or just the drink speaking.
3b. Sophy describing how on an accidentally long walk through Ashdown Forest ('We had to ring my aunt and ask her to pick us up from Tunbridge Wells') she and her uncles and cousins discovered an abandoned Tudor farm.
