Jackie's Farewell

Took a trip to Dorking today to celebrate the life of Jackie, our late Explorers Camp Leader. Frankly, I feel her best memorial is the continuing success of the camp itself, but it was a beautiful service with many people trying to capture Jackie's essence and dedication in words, and it was greatly interesting to hear more of her life and influence outside of the Woodlarks sphere we know.

Besides the service, the day itself was not without event... a massive signal failure at Wimbledon (our interchange with the tube) left us worrying about making it at all. The poor man in the control booth had no information about any train llcations and the boards were malfunctioning too - so he waited for a train to turn up and an announcer would run out of the box, scuttle up to the driver to ask where they were going, and run back to announce it. Poor sods - it must have been a nightmare morning!

This evening was a lovely time with the Coningsby Queers. I cooked pasta for the three of us, garnished with a third each of our first proper tomato, then Nick took us through a new board game. It was really lovely to hang out and chat without the fraughtness and stress thst certain things have put in the way for quite some time now. It was nice to just have a nice time and feel like we might be rekindling our friendship. Here's hoping for more of the same!