If Melanie was disappointed in me, I was equally disappointed to discover that instead of the proper white canvas bell tents I had envisaged, we were accommodated in nasty nylon monstrosities in a fetching shade of puce green. These were, Melanie informed me, far more practical and hi-tech than an old-fashioned tent, and I would be both warmer and more comfortable.
‘But the other ones are so beautiful!’ I sighed, as an increasingly exasperated Melanie tried to direct fifteen over-excited girls and me to put the tents up, and I gazed longingly across the field to a row of Proper Tents. ‘How could they be less comfortable than these horrors? Why, the beautiful tents are just crying out for bunting and cushions and strings of fairy lights!’
‘For Christ’s sake, Ellen!’ snapped Melanie. ‘You’re at County Camp, not a Cath Kidston convention. Where is your Baden-Powell Spirit?’
Where was my Baden-Powell Spirit indeed? It was becoming increasingly clear that I seemed to be sorely lacking Baden-Powell Spirit, which was possibly the real reason I had been so ignominiously thrown out of the Brownies all those years ago. I couldn’t help but think mutinous thoughts that if there were mysteries to be solved and criminal sorts to be thwarted, the thwarting would almost certainly fall to those lucky souls in the charmingly rustic, vintage tents.
Saturday, 6 August
I have decided I do not like camping. Camping is basically sleeping in a field. Sleeping in a field is fine when you are twenty-two and off your tits on fifteen pints of cider and some dubious illegal substances after dancing like a loon to splendid nineties rock and pop, but other than that, why would anyone want to go and sleep in a field for fun when they have a perfectly good house and bed? Moreover, why would they sleep in a field when they were stone cold sober? It is not right. There is nowhere to plug in my hair straighteners. But then again, there is nowhere to wash my hair either, so at least the grease is weighing down the frizz, so you know, swings and roundabouts. I think a beetle got in my hair last night too. I am sure I could feel something moving. Melanie wasn’t very impressed when I woke her up after I tried to get the beetle out of my hair. She asked me to go back to sleep as there are no poisonous beetles in Britain. She was unsympathetic when I whimpered that what if I was allergic to the beetle and didn’t know on account of having never had a beetle in my hair before. I think Melanie is regretting letting me come, which is fair enough, as I am very much regretting coming myself. It is not at all like Glastonbury, and nor is it anything like my Famous Five fantasies. I think we have the wrong kind of mud here.
There is no adorably smoky wood fire to cook sausages on. Instead there is a terrifying gas stove that could take my eyebrows off when I light it. It is even worse than lighting the Bunsen burners in the chemistry lab at school. I didn’t say this to Melanie, though, as between Beetlegate and her having to get up multiple times in the night to settle homesick girls/break up midnight feasts/minister to tummy aches brought on by excessive consumption of Revels at 3 a.m., she did not look like concern for my eyebrows was top of her list. Nonetheless, I am quite admiring of Melanie, even if a part of me suspects that she made me light the gas stove in the hope that I would manage to set myself on fire and she would be relieved of my ineptitude. She just gets on with it all, and even when the Guides are being really annoying, she doesn’t lose her rag with them and tell them to just fuck off, like I probably would if I was in charge. Nor does she resort to mainlining gin, which would probably be my other coping strategy if I was her. I think it must take someone really quite special to do something like this – perhaps that is where the Baden-Powell Spirit comes in.
I always thought that I would have been quite splendid in the Blitz – that I was a trooper and would have been some sort of inspirational figure, leading rousing sing-songs and fashioning ingenious things out of clothes pegs, but it is becoming apparent that I would probably have spent the Blitz being useless and flapping around while the Melanies of the 1940s built bomb shelters with their bare hands.
There are no signs of coiners or smugglers to thwart, which is probably just as well, as all the girls seem more interested in going to the toilet en masse and stuffing their faces with more contraband sweeties than they do in Solving Mysteries. There was an archery session, where Jane came over all William Tell and had to be restrained from trying to shoot a Granny Smith off Tilly Morrison’s head, and an orienteering activity during which the girls were unimpressed with maps and compasses and pointed out that Google Maps existed.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘But what if there was no Google Maps?’
‘Why would there be no Google Maps, though?’ said Amelia Benson.
‘Well, you could have no signal, or your battery could be dead,’ I pointed out, but the girls looked unconvinced.
‘Or you could have lost your phone,’ I added.
‘So, we’ve lost our phone, but we just happen to have a map and a compass?’ objected Olivia Brown. ‘It’s not very likely, is it, Ellen?’
‘Well,’ I said, starting to get irritated, ‘maybe there has been a nuclear apocalypse and Google Maps no longer exists because civilisation has been wiped out along with most of the human race, and you are one of the lone survivors and all you have to help you get to safety before you starve to death is a map and a bloody compass, and if you are unable to navigate by them then you will die by the roadside like the rest of the population of the planet!’
Mia Robinson burst into tears. ‘I don’t want to be the only one left alive!’ she sobbed. ‘What about my hamster? Can hamsters survive nuclear apocalypses?’
‘No,’ said Jane. Mia sobbed harder, and proved quite inconsolable. Melanie had to be summonsed to comfort her and assure her that there was no chance of a nuclear holocaust any time soon, and the orienteering was just a bit of fun, and her hamster would be fine, yes and her mum and dad too.
While Melanie was doing this, her own orienteering group managed to wander off and get lost somewhere in the woods and a search party had to be launched. The other Guide leaders were quite judgemental of Melanie for losing her Guides, and I fear she blames me for all this. We were summonsed to a singalong this evening and we had to sing some complicated clapping song where you also had to clap the hand of the person next to you, and I’m pretty sure that Melanie didn’t need to slap my hand nearly as hard as she did. Hopefully there will be no beetles tonight, as I think she might do more than slap me if I have to wake her up. I’m sure there were no beetles at Glastonbury – it’s probably the wrong kind of mud here that attracts them. I wonder if I am too old to go to Glastonbury again? Do they let in fortysomethings? Could I even hack the pace, or would I just die? I mean, obviously one could no longer dabble in illegal substances, because one is middle-aged and respectable, and all the cider would make me need to pee all the time because I’ve had two children and my bladder is not what it was, and I’m not sure I could cope with festival toilets anymore. Maybe I would have to go to one of the Old People’s Festivals, like Rewind or something? I wonder if they have better toilets? But they are often billed as being ‘family friendly’, and if I have escaped my own cherubs to get pissed up and behave badly for the weekend, the last thing I want is Other People’s Children roaming around. Oh God, I am a terrible person. Melanie can probably tell, and that’s why she hates me. As well as the whole traumatising one of her Guides and making her lose six others thing, obviously.
Sunday, 7 August
I am home! I am washed! Eventually. Oh, the bliss. Sort of.
This morning, after Dicing with Death with the Stove of Doom and dispensing frankly revolting eggy bread to the girls, who didn’t seem to care, we took the tents down. Melanie was relieved to find that I am not totally useless,