The Graveyard Mission.
On one night of heavy drinking, Chrisy and Andy recounted a spooky campfire style tale, to Dave and myself. The tale was about a spooky moonlit graveyard that possesed many a challenge. Telling the tale one by one in a scary one eyed pirate way, they managed to light an adventurous fire in our belly's, one that could only be doused by setting out into the night. Thus began the graveyard mission.
It was a dark night, the light of a full moon masked by a thin broken cloud cover. We set out high in spirit, and cider. Seen here is Andy, Chrisy and Dave. It should be noted at this point that, because of the already high levels of alcohol in our system, we neglected to check the focus setting of the camera and as such, it was set the entire time to take close up photos.
Before reaching the graveyard we passed a small truckyard surrounded by a chest high hedge, it was at this point I made my first big mistake. I misjudged a spectacular headlong dive, scraping the top of the very thorny hedge, which in turn altered my landing from an elegant roll to a headfirst crumpled mess, unfortunatly the photo did not come out. As we continued our walk I found a large thorn impaled dangerously high in my thigh.
Once we reached the graveyard and had successfully creeped through the gate and past the security light it was on to the first of the treasures, the tree. The graveyard has a tree which grows in a spiral, the fern like evergreen coverage spreading out from a few main branches. We all climbed the tree and found that by carefully spreading our weight we could lay across the green cover without being over any uncomfortable main branches.
While in this comfortable position we could stare up at the night sky through the broken clouds up to the stars, after a minute of silence Chrisy produced a couple of pre rolled items, and I decided to take the pictures you see.
In all of these pictures we are either sat up or layed flat about 15 feet up in the tree. here you see a very rare sight, me with a smoke. I don't smoke and I have to be pretty drunk to accept one, on this occasion I was.
I continued to smoke some more, while a quite frightening Dave looked on, he was after what I had, and for good reason...
Dave knew somehow that this lil rollup contained a special guest, as can be quite clearly seen, a smoke genie had emerged. The genie did not grant us any wishes for it was quite evil, fortunatly due to it's feable smoke form and a brief gust of wind from Chrisys direction, the genie quickly disapeared. Dave has a more detailed description of the genie on his site.
Once we had finished smoking and the genie was gone, everyone seemed very happy. Dave was happy yet he looked like an old woman.
Chrisy was very happy.
Andy was very happy.
And I was very happy if a little dazzled by the light, for not only did the camera flash, the moon also came into view.
It was cunningly decided at this point, that we should point at the now visible moon, with what can only be described as a moon pointing stick. At the end of the pointing stick you can see none other than the moon.
Decending from the tree is a case of carefully sliding futher out until the tree bends down and gently places you on the ground, this is me being gently placed on the ground. I touched the ground and then gracefully fell over, but just once.
After a brief session of hedge diving which involves running into and out of a 10-12 foot high privot hedge we moved onto the next challenge. This involves walking along the 5 foot high surrounding wall of the graveyard. Although the wall is quite wide it has a slanted top and a patchy moss covering, making this quite difficult, Dave fell off.
At the end of the wall is a fence, much thinner but also tree lined. This allows the challenge seeker to continue by balancing with the aid of a monkey style grip on the overhead branches. Occasionaly these 'branches' would turn out to be quite thin and brittle, breaking off just when you needed them the most, I fell many times. I would also like to note here that it is almost completly black, so your balance relies entirely on feel, due to this darkness Chrisy was able to accend one of the lining trees ahead of me, without my knowledge. He swung upside down vampire fashion just as I was passing, causing me quite a scare, it was more frightening than it was funny at the time.
as I finished my wall walk I decided to assist Dave by taking his photo. One of his hand and...
One of his face. I'm sure he apprieciated my help, yet it was then (about only ten feet from the end) that he gave up. The end of the fence brought us to some cunningly positioned old gravestones.
Incredibly designed like four seats facing each other. We decided to sit and take a well earned rest. We sat for 15 minutes discussing the journey we had taken.
Once again Chrisy broke out a brace of pre rolled delights, one of which is being enjoyed by Andy.
I slipped out a botlle vodka and coke I had smuggled along, premixed to my usual two part vodka to one part coke ratio.
I got a little more drunk, by now I was feeling quite woosy.
We set off for home, but as we reached the gate we could hear a truck start ready to leave the nearby truckyard. We decided to stay back for a bit until it had left, so i rested gently against a quite comfy section of hedge which divided the graveyard from the truckyard.
After a little while I started to wonder why everyone was slowly getting shorter, then quite rapidly shorter, not only that but I was drinking the vodka and coke ever faster. It came to my attention a little too late that it was infact me tipping backwards partially over, and partially through the hedge. Before I could do anything I was upside down on the other side, Voka and coke filling my nostrils and ears, with only the hushed laughter of the others to comfort me. It was quite a struggle to get back.
Once rescued from beyond the hedge, we walked back stopping only once to take a picture of this night horse. He never blinked even when the flash went off. I gave him a mint for his trouble.