Gloop

Hello…  Me again…  Well we’ve had a frantic late July and August.  One of the nicest events for me was the trip up to Warwick for the big 90^th birthday party for me and 537 of my relatives.  But first I have to tell you about Her Ladyship’s attempt at camping.

You may have read about it on my facebook page, but here it is in all its gory detail.  Her Ladyship had been doing a book signing at Waterstone’s Bookshop in Carmarthen and then she was due to go to a car show the next day to try to sell and sign copies of my book.  Since the venue for the signing was only five miles from Carmarthen she decided to camp rather than drive the 40 miles home and 40 miles back the next morning.  Now this is a woman of some 66 years who hasn’t actually camped since 1958 when she was in the Guides.  On top of that she has bladder issues and needs the Loo two or three times a night.

“No problem Old Girl,” she announces one morning, waving around some sort of fold down stool with a hole in the seat.  “No worry, I can use this.  It’s a portable toilet and when I wake up in the night, I won’t have to go out the tent to find the portaloos.”

There is really no need to write more on this, as I am sure your imaginations will tell you what happened.  But I really want to…

She had also bought herself an inflatable bed in order that she was up off the ground and felt she’d be more comfortable.  Well that didn’t work for a start.  I was parked right beside her tent and didn’t see what happened, but what I heard was enough…

“God this thing’s uncomfortable.  I wonder if I pumped it up too much.”   An hour of grunts and tossings and turnings passed.

“Oh for God’s sake.  How do they sleep on these things.”  More tossings, turnings and grunts, this time lasting another hour.  Then a massive grunt as she heaved herself off the inflatable bed.  A light went on and I could see her silhouette as she manoeuvred herself onto the portable loo.  I heard the sound of running waters, and then she leant forwards to heave herself off the loo.  At that point, the loo decided that it was far better to be flat on the ground and it collapsed with Madam still on it and obviously splashed its contents all over the tent’s ground sheet.

“Oh, shit, damn, bloody, bugger, cuss.  It’s gone everywhere.”  Her silhouette attempted to stand up and immediately slipped, falling back into the pool.  This time she crawled off and attempted to mop everything up.  Half an hour later, the light went out and this time she managed to doze off to sleep, if the gentle snore was anything to go by.

Eventually the light came on again and she was grunting herself off the bed once more.  Then to my horror she lowered herself back onto the re-erected portable loo once more.  You would have thought she had learnt from previous experiences wouldn’t you?  Well she didn’t and the whole scene happened all over again.

“Well Old Girl, that’s the last time I camp…  It was a complete disaster…  You’ll never believe what happened…”  Oh yes I do!!!