Campfire's burning...
Friday
My journey up to Kings Cross on Friday was not one of my best trips up there. Clearly being on crutches with a big rucksack means that people should not give you a seat, or even let you rest on the lean-y things at the end of the carriage. Luckily for me a very nice lady let me have her spot wedged against the inter-carriage door. Then at Kings Cross some idiot woman dragged me over so I fell into a wall (stopped me hitting the floor...). Then a man trying to help went to help me right myself and managed to heave me into the air (not sure which of us was more surprised) and then put me down. Had to go and buy some extra painkillers when I met Marie... We pobbled up the train & a nice man shoved my rucksack onto the luggage-rack for me & Marie and I proceeded to talk even on all the way up to Huntingdon, where Rosie's mummy met Jess & us & drove us to the campsite.
Tents were just pitched by the time we arrived, so we got on with things like gadget-making & general stuff-sorting. I made a perfect washstand v. quickly which surprised me rather a lot because I thought I'd forgotten how. Apparently not. Basically most of Friday evening was spent bopping & we had salad and vegeburgers for tea followed by jam tarts, which was scrummy. Having washed up & got our beds out and so on we then went to the pub. Which was lovely and warm and cosy. I love the smoking ban. Oui. Spent quite a lot of time in there (noone got drunkened, before anyone starts casting nasturtiums) and then went back to camp and went to bed. Obviously not to sleep, but that is tradition, really, and it would be wrong to go against it.
Saturday
Rosie and I were up vair early on Saturday. And made good use of this time doing various bits and pieces like mixing up the milk & eggs for eggy bread etc. Marie and I cooked breakfast which took an absolute age cos the Trangia was not playing nicely. Rah. But we managed it in the end, and after washing-up Marie and I went off to make a world flag from random craft materials while Jess and Rosie got the ratatouille ready and bunged it in the haybox. Rosie's assessors appeared while we were clearing the breakfast things & pronounced everything to be splendid & fabby-bon, incidentally...
Lunch was had in Cambridge (noodles noodles noodles + NADIA'S) and I got College-sick as we walked past Newnham on the way to Robinson... We saw a rather splendid version of Twelfth Night in the gardens there. Vair funny indeed. I think I liked the one I saw in January more, but this one was still v. frabjous. It's interesting how increasingly Olivia's behaviour towards Cesario is staged as being explicitly sexual, but there you are. And the fool pretending to be Sir Topaz was very much full-on-comic, whereas the production I saw in January made that really quite dark-dramatic-scary. Oui.
After the Shakespeare we went a loitered outside the UL while we waited for Rosie's daddy to appear and take us back to the site. It was by then about teatime so we started in on getting tea ready. It was also raining, which we know is norty, so we cooked in Kate's Kabin, using metal trays to keep the stove & the Trangia off the floor, and did not burn it down even a little bit. Cos we are good like that. After tea we amused ourselves with finshing the flag/doing some knotting/chatting and so on. There was also some exploration of the Kabin and we founded many comedy items and mocked them lots. Mock mock mock. Eventually it was time for hot chocolate & then bed. Which was when Rosie discovered that a molehill had appeared under the tent. So she slept wonky. Poor Rosie...
Sunday
While the others had breakfast & played random board + card games borrowed from the Lodge, I slept. Which was a much better plan as I felt fairly okay when I eventually got up. So huzzah. There was un peu to pobbling before we went off to make ourselves a fire. We made a very very splendid fire. And had an audience of admiring Brownies, who made some wonderful guesses at our ages, ranging from 11 to 32. Mmm... But not only did we make a splendid fire, we cooked lunch on it. We baked apples for a starter & Rosie and I devised a splendid means of managing the pasta & ratatouille. We nabbed a metal pole from stores & hung it between our two tripods, which stood either side of the fire; and Rosie banged a tent peg so the bottom end was curved making the whole thing a very long s-shape so we could hang the billy on it. So we cooked that and I made a spoon-extender using my hitherto unsuspected gadget-making skills and we also did baked bananas for pudding. Lacking chocolate, we used drinking chocolate powder & it worked very well indeed. Rosie's parents appeared in time for pudding & indeed brought more pudding with them, which is an awfully civilised way of doing things...
Striking was fairly relaxed this afternoon. There was a fair bit of pobbling. Plus obviously we had to admire the flag lots as we had made it ourselves and it looked like an actual real flag flapping at the top of the pole which was quite incredibly exciting. (Rosie had lots of fun making the toggle, incidentally...) But yes it all got sorted quite nicely & Marie's daddy helped with taking down the tents, which was jolly nice. Rosie's mummy took us to the Lodge so we could get souveniers before we went home, which caused a slightly farcical drama about boxes and badges and the most complex payment sytem in the whole world ever. Meh. But then it was hometime. So we said goodbye & then Marie and I got into their car and we had a lovely drive home in the splendid four-wheeled umbrella. Much chattering and giggling & also the joy of being dropped right at my house...
So yes, camp was splendid and I am very happy indeed. If rather tired. But oh, how it was worth it. *does small dance of glee*
My journey up to Kings Cross on Friday was not one of my best trips up there. Clearly being on crutches with a big rucksack means that people should not give you a seat, or even let you rest on the lean-y things at the end of the carriage. Luckily for me a very nice lady let me have her spot wedged against the inter-carriage door. Then at Kings Cross some idiot woman dragged me over so I fell into a wall (stopped me hitting the floor...). Then a man trying to help went to help me right myself and managed to heave me into the air (not sure which of us was more surprised) and then put me down. Had to go and buy some extra painkillers when I met Marie... We pobbled up the train & a nice man shoved my rucksack onto the luggage-rack for me & Marie and I proceeded to talk even on all the way up to Huntingdon, where Rosie's mummy met Jess & us & drove us to the campsite.
Tents were just pitched by the time we arrived, so we got on with things like gadget-making & general stuff-sorting. I made a perfect washstand v. quickly which surprised me rather a lot because I thought I'd forgotten how. Apparently not. Basically most of Friday evening was spent bopping & we had salad and vegeburgers for tea followed by jam tarts, which was scrummy. Having washed up & got our beds out and so on we then went to the pub. Which was lovely and warm and cosy. I love the smoking ban. Oui. Spent quite a lot of time in there (noone got drunkened, before anyone starts casting nasturtiums) and then went back to camp and went to bed. Obviously not to sleep, but that is tradition, really, and it would be wrong to go against it.
Saturday
Rosie and I were up vair early on Saturday. And made good use of this time doing various bits and pieces like mixing up the milk & eggs for eggy bread etc. Marie and I cooked breakfast which took an absolute age cos the Trangia was not playing nicely. Rah. But we managed it in the end, and after washing-up Marie and I went off to make a world flag from random craft materials while Jess and Rosie got the ratatouille ready and bunged it in the haybox. Rosie's assessors appeared while we were clearing the breakfast things & pronounced everything to be splendid & fabby-bon, incidentally...
Lunch was had in Cambridge (noodles noodles noodles + NADIA'S) and I got College-sick as we walked past Newnham on the way to Robinson... We saw a rather splendid version of Twelfth Night in the gardens there. Vair funny indeed. I think I liked the one I saw in January more, but this one was still v. frabjous. It's interesting how increasingly Olivia's behaviour towards Cesario is staged as being explicitly sexual, but there you are. And the fool pretending to be Sir Topaz was very much full-on-comic, whereas the production I saw in January made that really quite dark-dramatic-scary. Oui.
After the Shakespeare we went a loitered outside the UL while we waited for Rosie's daddy to appear and take us back to the site. It was by then about teatime so we started in on getting tea ready. It was also raining, which we know is norty, so we cooked in Kate's Kabin, using metal trays to keep the stove & the Trangia off the floor, and did not burn it down even a little bit. Cos we are good like that. After tea we amused ourselves with finshing the flag/doing some knotting/chatting and so on. There was also some exploration of the Kabin and we founded many comedy items and mocked them lots. Mock mock mock. Eventually it was time for hot chocolate & then bed. Which was when Rosie discovered that a molehill had appeared under the tent. So she slept wonky. Poor Rosie...
Sunday
While the others had breakfast & played random board + card games borrowed from the Lodge, I slept. Which was a much better plan as I felt fairly okay when I eventually got up. So huzzah. There was un peu to pobbling before we went off to make ourselves a fire. We made a very very splendid fire. And had an audience of admiring Brownies, who made some wonderful guesses at our ages, ranging from 11 to 32. Mmm... But not only did we make a splendid fire, we cooked lunch on it. We baked apples for a starter & Rosie and I devised a splendid means of managing the pasta & ratatouille. We nabbed a metal pole from stores & hung it between our two tripods, which stood either side of the fire; and Rosie banged a tent peg so the bottom end was curved making the whole thing a very long s-shape so we could hang the billy on it. So we cooked that and I made a spoon-extender using my hitherto unsuspected gadget-making skills and we also did baked bananas for pudding. Lacking chocolate, we used drinking chocolate powder & it worked very well indeed. Rosie's parents appeared in time for pudding & indeed brought more pudding with them, which is an awfully civilised way of doing things...
Striking was fairly relaxed this afternoon. There was a fair bit of pobbling. Plus obviously we had to admire the flag lots as we had made it ourselves and it looked like an actual real flag flapping at the top of the pole which was quite incredibly exciting. (Rosie had lots of fun making the toggle, incidentally...) But yes it all got sorted quite nicely & Marie's daddy helped with taking down the tents, which was jolly nice. Rosie's mummy took us to the Lodge so we could get souveniers before we went home, which caused a slightly farcical drama about boxes and badges and the most complex payment sytem in the whole world ever. Meh. But then it was hometime. So we said goodbye & then Marie and I got into their car and we had a lovely drive home in the splendid four-wheeled umbrella. Much chattering and giggling & also the joy of being dropped right at my house...
So yes, camp was splendid and I am very happy indeed. If rather tired. But oh, how it was worth it. *does small dance of glee*