Bentwater Roads: All Hail The Dungeon Master!

I arrived at our boat in London at 6:30am - it was very disorientating as Trina had turned the boat around to face the other way while I'd been away.

I sneaked very quietly around the boat setting up a little obstacle course for her to overcome for her presents. Then two hours later I slid into bed to give her a hug, sing happy birthday and wake her up.

I had set up an adventure (dungeons and dragons style: Trina recently found out that I had played it as a child and was giving me a lot of playful grief about it, she even finally said she'd be keen to try it) where she was an elven princess on her quest to kill a dragon, she started in the forest of Bed'oom, killed 6 mud monsters crossing the swamps of Ki'Chin (popping brown ballons as she did), unwrapping her gifts as she exited the swamp she had new bath towels and a promised hip bath for the boat (I still haven't found one the right size) all this was to clean the mud of and restore her health, she also had two down three shots of magic potion (orange and gin shots).

Next was crossing the plains of Wheel Haus where two brothers on horse back attacked her - she had to fashion her own arrows from sticks and feathers I'd collected from Christchurch park and whittle a point on them with my hunting knife.

She vanquished the two brothers and popped their balloons with her arrow. To recover health she had to pick, roast and eat wild pink toadstools (marshmallows). Then she had to see if she could tame the brother's horse by whispering 10 pick up lines in it's ear in 30 seconds, the horse scampered away... lol

A test of strength was needed to see if she was strong enough to weild one of the brother's swords so Trina aptly did 28 press ups and picked up the imaginary sword, my hunting knife to take on her way to kill the dragon.

Next was the grasslands of Rugg, where Trina snored loudly as she unwrapped her presents (part of the game not boredom). It was the DVD of Baz Luhrman's La Boheme and a bottle of Prosecco. As she slept elves were singing to her to enchant her and heighten her chances of success against the Dragon.

The grasslands were vast so she needed a way to get to Mt Stove to destroy the dragon. Green balloons represented bullfrogs which she had to inflate from with the magic flying air from the geysers of the grasslands ( a big bottle of helium) breathing in and floating up in the air - then to come back down to earth she had to sing ‘happy birthday day to me' (which of course because of the helium sounded like the chipmunks).

Now at the foot of Mt Stove - she had to whistle three bird calls, then from the nearby forest of Book Sh'Elf  her next present arrived - a day worth of falconry lessons with falcons, buzzards, owls and eagles (Trina loves birds and was visibly ecstatic about this present). In the adventure her whistling brought two falcons to her aid and when she lit the fire inside Mt Stove it brought out the Dragon for the battle to commence.

In excellent style she slayed the dragon and found it's nest. It had one egg which she had to break, cook and eat off the stove. Then with the kingdom safe again she travelled to the wizards on top of the snow capped Mountains of Sofah where she unwrapped sky lanterns - to send the message back to the evles that the Kingdom was safe (really just to have fun lighting and sending off at Whitstable beach later that day).

I quickly hid myself back in the bedroom and well - I serenaded her as a cuddly animal - enough said and gave her, her last present... - a trip to Barcelona to stay with our friends for three days.

We were late for meeting Trina's friends at Victoria station so in a mad rush we headed out the door, I broke the door and the glass inside it, whoops, so, so, sorry.

Then we all headed to Whitstable - Trina opening her gifts from her friends as we trained our way to the beach and all of us drinks lots of fruit punch. Once at the beach we rented a beach hut, had fish ‘n' chips, enjoyed the sun, flew a kite, played bulrush till we were all sweaty and then inflated the blow up dinghy and jumped in for a swim. 

We had birthday cake, headed to a pub for a pint, had some Thai on the beach outside the hut once everyone else had headed back to London. Lit the sky lanterns and retired to the beach hut where the rest of the evening's details I will keep to myself.