Happy New Year!

We hope it's not too late to wish all our readers a Happy New Year - sorry we missed wishing you a Happy Christmas!

We enjoyed some of the best ever New Year celebrations last night. It was simply great that we had the Suffolk and Midlands Branch bears staying with us, and it is undoubtedly the case that a house full of bears is a happy house.

The evening started off in the best possible way with a wonderful Thai meal prepared by our very own Chef Oakley.  While Oakley was busy preparing the meal, those of us who aren't much help in the kitchen sorted through some fireworks, ready for later.

By the time we'd finished dining, it had, unfortunately, started to rain. We were a little dismayed as fireworks and rain don't mix. However, we still had pudding to go, and Oakley had really excelled himself, conjuring up a take on a Heston special, a reconstructed Black Forest gateau, with the posh name of a 'buche'.

Polly's nephew, Helmut, who is motorcycle crazy, tested the strength of the chocolate casing by riding along the top (we think he was trying to reconstruct the opening rooftop bike sequence in Skyfall). The chocolate was of excellent quality and very smooth, so stood up to the riding test (we had insisted on a drive through a disinfectant bath first).

Pudding was so delicious we lingered over it, long enough for it to have stopped raining by the time plates were scraped clean. We all trooped outside to see our big box of fireworks go off. Police girl Polly, being a very responsible type, acted as chief pyromaniac for us, and took charge of lighting.

It was a splendid selection and gave us a feast of colours, bangs, whistles, splutters and fizzes - all very  exciting stuff. We were sad when they were over, but not for long, as back inside the Bear Cave we settled down to a few games of Boggle and Jenga - all fiercely competitive, with Branch honour at stake.

After toasting the New Year, we headed back outside for a midnight launch of some sky lanterns, kindly supplied by the Suffolk Branch ...

We'd seen them before, but this was the first time we'd lit and launched one. We all took a turn at sending one off into the dark sky and making a wish. We thought it was quite magical and a special moment.

The New Year had started very well for us, we hope it has for you too.

Love from all in Norfolk, Suffolk and Midlands Branches xxx

Something New from B.U.

We would like to start this first post of 2011 wishing all our readers a very Happy New Year.  

Over the Christmas period, we had our usual Christmas meet up with both the Midlands and Suffolk Branches, and a fun time was had by all, with much Wherry and Sundew beer being consumed, along with a feast of food, supplied by Oakley our resident chef bear.

Once the feasting and catching up had taken place, as is our custom, we held the Bears Unlimited Annual General Meeting. Polar from the Midlands Branch suggested we should make more use of our Sister Blog  Bears Unlimited Biographies.  This was set up by me (Jimmy) a couple of years ago to test new features for this blog, such as our Cluster Map.  It was also set up to give our readers more of an in depth knowledge of the members of the various branches.   While Polar had been on his extended stay with the Norfolk Branch,  (reported on in October "Forgotten???") he had taken the chance to tell us all about himself.

 

Polar had enjoyed the experience so much he thought all of us should write our biographies.  This idea was enthusiastically supported by everyone, so we decided to make a new years resolution that we would post one new biography every month. We will start this month, with another member of the Midlands Branch, so keep you eyes pealed to see just who!

We then decided that we should put into action a project that has been on the back burner for a while.  As we travel across the country we often come across Trig Points set up by the Ordnance Survey, and we like to have our photograph taken sitting on top of them.  Why not then, set up a new blog with photos of us, or indeed any other Bear or soft furry, sitting on the Trig Point with a few details of where we are.  Bris, who as our readers know has a thing about churches, suggested that we should extend the scope of the blog to Ordnance Survey bench marks, as he had seen many carved on churches. 

We all thought this was a great idea, so I, along with our other top teckie Fred from the Suffolk Branch, set about making the plan a reality by creating our new blog. 

  

Our new blog is called Bears on Trig Points and can be found at http://www.bearsontrigpoints.blogspot.com/ 

Since this second of our New Years's resolutions was made, travelling bears George and Yorkie, accompanied by Rocco, have already bagged their first pair of Trig Points in Derbyshire. They will be posting on these two trig points shortly, along with another which is virtually in the Norfolk Branch's own back yard.   We then plan to trawl through the BU photo archive to add as many bear adorned trig points photos as we can find.

We hope lots of our readers will join in with this project and persuade their minders to snap them on top of their local trig points and then send the photo into us with a note of who you are and where you are. We want to get as much of the country covered as we can, as a tribute to these fine features of the British way of life.

Please see the new blog for details of how to join in.

Love Jimmy, Fred and all at BU xxx

Happy New Year

We'd like to wish all our readers a very happy New Year and much happiness, health and fulfilled dreams in 2009.

We are now back home, having enjoyed a lovely couple of days with the Suffolk Branch, who offer great hospitality (as in fact do all the branches). We had great fun spending New Year's Eve trying to master W.I.I. sports, which us Norfolk Branch members had never tried before and had a few problems getting our paws around.

We nearly missed midnight as we were so engrossed in our W.I.I. golf tournament. It was lovely to be playing golf in a warm house, with a glass of fine wine at paw's length - although this might have explained why many of us, normally sporty bears, were over par!


This morning we blew away the cobwebs with a fine New Years Day walk in the lovely Suffolk countryside around Newbourne. It was quite cold but we walked fast and we felt much better for our outing. We are pleased to report that on this occasion Isaiah's head stayed firmly attached. For the benefit of new readers, Isaiah did - literally - lose his head on a post Christmas walk a couple of years ago. We did report the event at the time, and the success of his surgery, which was of such quality, that he has fortunately had no troubles since.

We'll be back to pick up the next instalment of our Nepal trip soon, but first we have our much awaited AGM.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx