Friday 12th February
A year ago was the last time we did a scavenger hunt. We were at the hut and Skip told us that we had to go out into the woods and find twenty-six objects from nature, one for each letter of the alphabet. It all got a bit smelly. Most people, for P, came back with a plant of some description but not Charlie, oh no. He appeared with Mr Brown's peacock which Skip had to return but not before it had jumped up on the white board and done a huge poo. Sonny trumped this though for S. He came back with a sheep that then baaed all through the building also pooing everywhere. It got quite messy but little did we know that this year was going to take messy to a new level.
Skip told us all on Zoom this evening that we had to take it in turns to call out something in the home from A to Z that we all then had to go and find and be the first one to bring to our screens. Ed got A and said, "Annual," which was easy enough for most of us, especially me cos I had Guinness World Records 2021 book next to me and that counted so I won without even getting up. Mel got B and she said, "Book." Everyone scrambled off again whilst I waved my Guinness book in the air again and I got another point although Skip said I couldn't now use the same item more than once which was a bit unfair but I didn't say anything. It didn't really matter though cos we didn't get beyond C. Sonny got C and he said, "Something that's cooking." Well, you can only imagine what happened next. Twenty-six mummies and a few daddies, who were happily preparing an evening meal in their kitchens, were suddenly confronted by one of their offspring appearing at their side, without comment or request, and grabbing at the nearest pot, pan or casserole that they could lay their hands on. It was chaos! Mel pulled a beef Wellington straught out of the oven with no oven gloves, broke the glass roasting dish and burnt all her fingers, Em grabbed the Bolognese sauce, turned, ran, tripped and threw the whole lot over her cat, Archie made it to his dad's laptop but tipped the saucepan full of boiling water all over it and promptly disappeared from the screen and Charlie, whose mummy had just taken delivery of an Indian take-away and was keeping it warm, watched in horror as Charlie yanked opened the oven door and pulled the oven rack clean out and deposited four portions of chicken madras, two mushroom rice, a sag aloo, six onion bahjees, one keema nan and a load of popadooms all over the kitchen floor. Before he react his two German shepherds had scoffed the lot whilst all we could hear was his mummy screaming, "WHAT THE **** YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" Skipped immediately terminated the scavenger hunt and I won with two points so it wasn't all bad and I don't think we'll be doing that particular exercise again anytime soon. *** If you enjoyed this diary entry you can find 366 more in "The Very Secret Diary of Horace Horrise", featuring the UK's favourite ever-so-slightly dysfunctional family!