Trading spaces

For the last few nights we have been playing musical beds.  As exciting as this game sounds, it actually isn't.  For some unknown reason, the Sweetpea and I decided it would be a good idea, in the last few days of summer (a summer which would actually be classified as winter in various other places on the globe), to set up the tent outside in the garden.  The we could all have fun in the tent before autumn really sets in.  So that was the plan.


Fast forward to the reality.  About two minutes after we had set up the tent and stood back to admire our handiwork, the sides of the tent started flapping ominously in the wind.  Nevertheless, we decided to brave the elements and sleep in the tent regardless, since we had gone to all the mission of setting it up in the first place.  With a few grave misgivings, we dragged enough bedding to make the night bearable (enough blankies and eiderdowns to protect a small army from the cold of a Siberian winter) into the tent and settled down to sleep.  After an increasingly breezy night in the tent, during which all five of us almost chickened out at various times, we emerged blearily into the light of day to discover that it had rained in the night and now we could not take the tent down, because it was too wet and we couldn't risk it growing mold and mildew over the winter.   Never mind, reasoned the Sweetpea optimistically, we could thus spend another night in the tent now.  Bonus! (I think not!)


The next day dawned extremely chill, and an arctic wind was blowing from the South pole.  That night, we stood at the edge of the deck surveying the tent silhouetted against the grey and chilly sky, and as one, turned tail and ran into the house.  A huge amount of dragging bedding from the tent back into the house ensued, and we were finally settled in our room again.  There were a few minutes silence.  Then:  "What's that stinky smell?" from the boys.  True, there was a terrible and suspicious stinky smell in the air.  In fact, it smelled of nothing so much as dead rat.  After searching high and low, we discovered that the smell came from the central heating vents, into which said rat must have crawled and died.  A panicked mass exodus resulted.

We dragged all the bedding down into one of the spare rooms, stopping by the tent to retrieve all of the blow-up mattresses that were still there.  An increasingly late night saw us eventually all settled on the floor of the spare room, sleeping shoulder to uncomfortable shoulder on the airbeds.  One scratchy night later, and we got up, only to see that the tent had blown down in the furious wind the night before.  


The next night saw us unwilling to enter our bedroom for fear of the dead-rat smell, and so it was back to the spare room.  No sooner than we were all settled for the night than a little voice piped up out of the darkness:  "What's that stinky smell?"


Turns out that old rat had a poorly cousin...   




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Candid Camping

There is very little summer where we live, so it is best to make hay while the sun shines, if you will forgive the pun.  The typical Kiwi summer involves camping.  And lots of it.  Even if you just go a few miles down the road (which actually works out best for us, because then we can cut and run if it all turns pear-shaped), the point is that you go and spend a lot of time in a small canvas space, eating sand and bugs alternately with your meals and peeing outdoors in the dead of night (no ways am I going to walk through the campsite in the early hours of the morning to the loo - I don't care how good I am at whistling a happy tune! There might be a rabid possum hiding out there in the bushes).  Ahh, the good life!

But what makes camping even better is taking along a number of friends, all with their own kids, who then can form a pack in combination with yours' and roam the park as a group, getting up to nonsense and mayhem and generally having the best time of their lives.  This trip, together with the Sweetpea's Kung-fu buddies, was no exception. 

The pack formed early and was on the prowl before you can say "wild beasts".  The youngest was my Little Miss Snoopy, who will be two in a few months, followed closely by double trouble and then a few older kids and culminating with the height of cool, a young man of about eleven or so, who obviously knew everything and no one else was about to persuade him otherwise.  He was the youngest member of the kung-fu team and obviously had a lot to prove.  He was dressed in the height of fashion (odd for a camping trip, when the point appears to be to get as smelly, dirty and bedraggled as possible) in bright green jeans, so tight they could have been body-painted on, a shocking pink, lime green and sort-of orange sweat shirt, and was accessorised with a bright green watch.  You have to have chutzpah to dress that cool, I thought admiringly.

The sun set over the shrieks of over-excited kiddies, and eventually we put them to bed and retired for the night, accompanied by the usual restive squawks of the bush at night, the three or four outside excursions to “look at the stars”, and the general lack of sleep that goes with any good camping trip.  However, despite the night, when we woke the next morning Paddy was bright and bushy-tailed and scooted out of the tent into the fitful sunshine as though said tail was on fire.  For a few seconds, all was quiet, then we heard the most blood-curdling shrieks coming from outside the tent.  We rushed out to see what the matter was.

There he stood, wailing his disappointment to the mountains.  “What is wrong?” we asked anxiously, running over the possibilities of insect bites/dogs/fearsome creatures in our minds.

“Rainbow boy has disappeared!” he cried dramatically, “and I will never see him again!”  

“Rainbow boy”, who had all this time been having his breakfast out of sight, came sloping around the corner, looking slight worse for wear at his new appellation – after all, he was the height of cool, surely? 

We had a lot of fast talking to do to recover that ground.

“What a cool name for a superhero!” I croaked with my best attempt at sounding admiring.  I shot The Stare at the Sweetpea to back me up.

“Yes," he mumbled, looking uncomfortable – "so cool!”

Rainbow boy (as he will now forever be known in Kung-fu circles), began to perk up a bit, and soon they were all playing as before.  I did notice, however, that he had taken off his “coat of many colours” by the time we left for home.

Thus is a nickname formed for life - I doubt that the kung-fu guys will let him live that one down in a hurry!