Warning: Due to a severe state of fatigue (explained below), certain factualy and/or chronological elements of this account may be inaccurate, mistaken or, in a hopefully nonexistent case, simply made up.
This is the first Old Blues day which, despite having heard a lot about the event, I have taken an active interest in. Having heard "the tales" of several old Blues, and having met several more on the forum, I decided that this was going to change.
OB day started considerably earlier for me, and I suspect, for several others (particularly for Messrs. Brickel, Skinner, Holdsworth Jnr. and Meeks Jnr), with the Scout Centenary Campfire. It was this bonanza of singing, sketches and madness that caused the previously mentioned fatigue, as one thing led to another, and before I knew it I was on Sharpenhurst at midnight, standing on the Reservoir and reminiscing about "the day". We went down again, and before we knew it, there were about six or seven of us left awake, and it was two in the morning! But we were having so much fun discussing religion, politics and CH stories that we simply chatted on and on, pausing only to feed the fire, until Matt looked up and said, "You do realise it's getting light? If we're going to catch the sunrise, you're going to have to run."
And so we quickly hurried up Sharpenhurst, only to see on the horizon not the sun rising, but a Brit's best friend - clouds. Great. Of course, there was no point staying up there so we went down again, and shortly afterwards Matt and Tom went to bed, it now being twenty-five to five, with Mary and Pippa having expired just before we went up. The last four of us, being Alex, Catherine, Freddie and I, sat around and at about 5, we raided the mess tent and cooked burgers and sausages on the embers. Eventually people started waking up, only to discover that they had not heard animals in the night, but scouts instead.
Having returned to school, I went back to house and almost fell asleep, but eventually I managed to pull myself up and decided, right, now I've gotten changed and all, I'm off to chat to OBs.
I arrived at Dining Hall during the retreat rehearsal, and quickly met up with my Scouty Buddies. Heading into the courtroom, I was very interested to find all the paraphenelia on the stands. A man with a camera came up to me, and suddenly, I discovered Julian! We had a very interesting discussion about the mission of the forum, which made me realise how much more than an online Reminiscence it was. Bridging the gap between Blues and Old Blues is very important, and I am glad that the forum exists for this! I then managed to meet J.R. (who, contrary to his avatar, looks nothing like Dr. Maddren!) and a torrent of others (I forget who I met where, but IIRC, I saw Ruth, Angela, and a lot of other people!) - excuse me if I met you but forgot...
I showed a number of people around Peele A, and was very interested to hear them saying about what the place we had been standing in used to be when they were here.
The evensong was terrific - so much for my assumption that it would be similar to compline! Despite nodding off a couple of times the music was terrific and the Foundation hymn sounded amazing!!!!!!!!!!!
All in all, OB day was for me a very enlightening experience. It taught me many things - as well as the importance of sleep, I learnt that CH is never confined to the background when so many people flock to it and that Blues are Blues whenever they were here - some things never change!
This lovely day could only have been better if I had been properly awake to enjoy it more, without being told to "go to bed" a dozen times! Thanks to everyone who made it so good.
