Granny's 80th and Field Game

In order to get more support for the keeling field game match i've teamed up with granny and so now the game is also a celebration of granny's 80th birthday. Initially granny had no intention of celebrating her 80th but I persuaded her otherwise while at the same giving the field game match a bit of a boost. I envisage a family gathering of immense proportions; whole pitches wrecked under the foot of the keeling army; whole restaurants booked out along the highstreet as far as windsor bridge. So please! help make my dream a reality! grandpa promised me he would dig out his boots and play in goal if enough people got involved.

I have applied for a match but we don't know whether its going to be the 14th February, 28th February or the 7th March, which are all Saturdays around granny's birthday. If field game isnt quite your cup of tea you can still come and support and wish gran a happy birthday.

And also... could someone, probably George, wack this message on the KeelingBrothers website so that the Keelings, who's emails I don't have, can take notice and get involved.

At the moment we have.... simon, paul, jim, tom, harry and myself. And now that trev has found a new lease of life and is running up mountains I think he'll be dying to play too. And apparently george and david have only played the field game a couple of times between them. How exciting for you! I bet you can't wait to see what its all about! But even then we're still two short, so please spread the word amongst the keeling clan. if we cant get enough keelings it will be easy to employ a few mercenries.

I hope you are all having a great summer,

Lots of love, Archie.

David on Mt Olympus

Gosh, its all been expeditions recently. The Arctic, now Mount Olympus and Kilimanjaro coming soon, I believe.

David gave me his short report on his ascent of Mt Olympus this Summer 2008 and some scary photos to go with it.

We reached the top. After a gruelling first day's ascent over nine hours, up and down repeatedly and finishing with a straight three hours up we arrived at the refuge to rest the night before the final push. Starting early, three more hours got us to a point five hundred metres south and a hundred below the summit which is just short of three thousand metres above sea level. Our journey so far had been a walk, but here we were looking over a high ledge which made me giddy. There was no visible way forward except for a sign leading into a narrow gully down which one could see a few metres. After recovering my breath I lowered myself into the gully and carefully made my way forward over rocks. Soon I could see two hundred metres ahead. It didn't look impossible and I tried out the first fifty or so. Not too bad, nothing like walking, quite daunting but not climbing. But because my companion John, who was exhausted, was in no shape to do this, I wasn't going to have to do it as solo efforts were strictly frowned upon.

Simon in Svalbard

This is Simon's diary of an Arctic exploration he made in May 2005. It was first posted on 21/7/08 and I added most of the pictures 2 days later. Three at the beginning seem to have gone missing, 14 others have survived. I have also split the story, so, to read the whole thing, you have to click on Continue reading "Simon in Svalbard" down below. I tried to find Svalbard on Google maps, I think it's somewhere around here, but I'm not sure. Simon, you should draw a map of your route on Google!

George, Editor in chief

Sat 30 April 2005

Arrived in Svalbard (= Spitzbergen) via Oslo and Tromso.  Tromso is pretty northerly in Norway and the flight took us over the Arctic Ocean (?) from where we were able to see not very much as the whole of the archipelago of Svalbard seemed to be covered in cloud.  Lower down, and as we came into land the fjords became clearly visible and an extraordinary network pattern of broken ice on the sea, where the pack ice was melting and breaking up.  No polar bears in evidence!

The story continues: Click here. There are also higher resolution images here.

The five great games of patience

Jim asked me (Grandpa) to make a record of the rules of the five great games of patience, together with tips to help the player to have the best chance of defeating the cards. He seemed to think that this was a pretty urgent matter. No doubt the reason for the urgency was the statistical possibility that the Great Reaper might prevent me carrying out this task.

The games are called Auntie Allis, Seven and Six, Uncle Remus, Senior Wrangler, Kings and The Triple Crown (which is a sort of bonus). You can read what I wrote by clicking here.

Zip wire crash

Obviously it wasn't a good week for Imo. Simon has recently mended the zip wire in the woods and we went up to play on it. We had a lot of successful runs but then got a bit careless and Imo fell off at the landing end and fell onto the big log on her back. No serious injuries were sustained and Imo was very brave. We also filmed Arthur, Edward and me, George. Click to see the videos.

Golf buggy in pool

Tom, Siobahn and family were visiting Imo's godfather Tim Kary in Hampshire. Tim kindly gave Imo (age 9) driving lessons in his golf buggy. Flora (age 6 and 11 months) was riding as passenger. Imo hadn't quite got a grip of the difference between forward and reverse. Under Tim's watchful instruction she reversed the buggy into the swimming pool.

Imo said afterwards "I thought I was going to drown", she was in shock for the rest of the day. Flora was quite annoyed because she had only just got dressed and her clothes were all wet again. She said she will never drive a golf buggy near a swimming pool.

The buggy was recovered the next day with the help of a friendly farmer.

freezers and kitchen tables

Hi Guys

My ramshackle warehouse-home is in need of a kitchen table and a decent sized freezer.

anyone got one. happy to come and collect.

ruth xx