now that things have finally quietened down at queensberry bay after the easter frenzy caspar decided we should hold a group debriefing.
jenny thought this was a great idea and suggested we start with george.
caspar explained that to debrief someone means to go over what they have learned from an experience.
jenny agreed there wasn't much point in starting with george then.
caspar got us all together by the hedge in the big field. he introduced the meeting by saying that in general things had gone well and asking if we had any comments of our own.
i said i felt here could have been more gingernuts.
caspar is very wise. he said there had in fact been the same number of gingernuts but there's more of us now and perhaps our public didn't realise that when they bought their supplies. rupert suggested putting name badges on the fence so our public would see at a glance what a huge group we are.
caspar pointed out that the bossy woman had done just that but that brenda had eaten them.
we all looked at brenda. she said she hadn't eaten them - she had borrowed them. she had a picture of tim under her arm. we all looked at tim. tim looked very concerned.
rupert started whistling the theme tune from blind date.
jill suggested that we could perhaps make more of an effort to go to the fence and show our public what a huge group we are.
everyone agreed this was a great idea. jill is so clever.
there followed a really long discussion about the order of procession. since i'm not really interested in the monarchy and rupert had brought along some cardboard he'd found in the bins i kept out of it but did hear someone say charlie should be in front madge. i must borrow nicole's latest heat magazine - has andrew married a madge?? if that's the case then of course charlie should be in front. has the world gone mad??
anyway rupert had finished whistling and done loads of impressions promising a lorra lorra laarfs when we came onto "spifics". now this is the bit i like. this is where caspar gives us all a report on our results. even rupert stopped to listen.
caspar said jenny's trick of pawing the ground with her foot when anyone came near had worked well on the whole and had got her a good number of gingernuts but she had maybe over done it. the kind guy with the beard was going to have to fill in several of the gaps she had created in the fence - before the igloos decided to go for a paddle.
caspar said also, as the aim was to look sweet and innocent (ha ha) then she perhaps shouldn't follow through with a game of knock down sheep skittles. apparently our public get really concerned at sheep flying over the fence for no obvious reason.
james said he also gets really concerned by this since it's usually him flying over the fence.
jenny said he should move quicker then.
james pointed out that it's hard to move when you've been anchored to the spot by a bungee cord. he also said that, if the public were concerned at sheep flying over the fence once, imagine how they must feel when those same sheep come snapping back again at the end of a bungee cord.
caspar agreed james had a point and suggested that jenny might like to revisit this at a later stage. he did suggest some sessions with our resident skycologist - tim - but jenny said if anyone needed to see a skycologist it was james - he was the one wih the fear of flying after all.
caspar moved onto brenda. apart from the name tag incident he felt the igloos had done well and had certainly attracted some attention. he felt that their habit of picking up food and spitting it out whilst making a vomiting sound was perhaps a little off putting - but nonetheless all the guinea pigs had now been accounted for and benson the big black rabbit would apparently be back to normal in no time.
he moved onto acrea 1 and 2. acrea 3 isn't here yet. the twins - as we call them - had been absolute stars but had not exploited this opportunity. caspar said madge in particular had put a damper on things by spitting at everything and everybody who came near.
madge said it wasn't fault. she said we should try saying "this is my smashing newborn son" in portuguese and with new teeth. we did and she had a point. rupert was absolutely covered.
and finally caspar looked at trigger. "i know it's spring" caspar said "and i know you're just a youngster with a lot to learn - but if you could possibly refrain from playing leapfrog over everything that stands still for just a second, we'd all be very grateful - including seamus and his ladies."
that's him told.