Friday Evening

After meeting up with Jayne, Ursh and Sandra in Jayne and Ursh's room, I learned what had happened with the phones. The Inn at Woburn has no mobile phone reception. It's a complete dead zone. Messages that I sent hours ago were gradually creeping through one by one. In fact, one message that I sent from MK station saying that I was waiting in the coffee shop only came through at about 6:30 - two hours late! lol. Just as well I had got that taxi or I would still have been sitting there. Jayne gave me loads of stick about all the text's that I had sent her! lol

Jayne ordered some coffee from Room Service and we sat to have a good natter. It's really strange meeting people who you've known online for several years for the first time. They are never how you imagine them to be.

I've known Jayne from the groups for a few years and I've spoken to her on the phone a few times about ordering stuff from her online shop - but she was not quite what I was expecting in the flesh, I'd seen pictures of her online, but she was a blonde in those pictures. Apparently she's been a red head for over a year now, so those photos are now well out of date. I didn't imagine that she was shorter than me either, she's such a petite lady. When we "met" she remarked that she was pleased that I didn't tower over her too much .

Urszula was probably the biggest shock though, I've known Urszula for about 2 and a half years on the groups and she's also a member of the Cattitudes RR - in fact she passed Nicole's fabric to me when we met! On the groups, Urszula comes across as being quite quiet and reserved, I didn't expect her to form the second half of the Jayne Hall/Urszula Pitt double act comedy routine! ;-)

Sandra was also very nice, she comes across as being quite empowered in emails, but after meeting her in the flesh, I think that she's quite quiet - like me - when she's surrounded by groups of strange people.

Debbie was dropped off by her husband at the hotel earlier in the evening. I've read some of her postings on the groups, and remember her talking about her daughter's illness, but I've not really had any private correspondence with her, so I didn't know her very well, so I didn't really have any preconceptions about her.

I'm amazed at how much I have in common with these women. That's the beauty of the internet - it pulls together groups of people with similar interest who would otherwise never have met.

Jayne did the fateful thing then and got her stitching out - so everybody retreated to their rooms to get their to stitching too, bring out all their latest projects, have them admired and then chat, stitch and watch Comic Relief.

We had a table booked at the hotel's restauant for 8 - so we went down there and ordered our evening meals. I chose Venison steak. The food took a long time to come - over half an hour -but it gave us a chance to have a real good chin-wag. Although it took such a long time - the food was really worth the wait - it really tasted good - I didn't even think of putting ketchup or horseradish on my venison steak! And for people who know me well - you know how much I love my condiments ;-)