A cold night, so that I only slept after some effort. Nonetheless, I was up early, at about the same time as the sun, + my activity woke Val+ prompted her to move out of bed before too long too. First I fetched some water from the pipe in an inflatable water carrier we’d inherited with the car (it was bloody heavy) + improvised a sort of sink out of an old piece of open trough that was up on a stand. Then breakfast, + then we started to collect fuel for our fires to come. An easy task – the field has clumps of pine trees, throwing down hundreds of cones. Also the bottom twigs of many of these trees were dead, + could be snapped off for easy kindling, plus there was much wood just lying around, either broken-down + rotten fencing, or old stump pieces, etc. When you add to these facts the condition that the whole lot had been dried by the sun until it was crisp + brittle, we had lots of perfect fuel. We accordingly spent some time collecting a whole lot of it, so we wouldn’t have to worry for some time.
We lay in the sun for a while – yes, hot again – had lunch, took a quick trip to the local shopping centre for no very good reason at all, then returned home + spent some time building an extension to our tent. We took our sheet of plastic, + spread it out so that it extended straight back from the tent, continuing the same shape. We used the rear tent pole for one of its poles, made another from a log, which we hammered into the ground, then fixed grommets – we’d bought a pack earlier to fix the ruck + finally had a use – around the corners + pegged it all down. We were pleased with it – it looked water-tight + made a good home for our food, bags, etc. We then built a fire + cooked the remainder of the hot dogs – this time with some onions. We were eating early because we were going out this evening – to a drive-in movie. It was quite a way away, we had a bit of trouble finding it, we were still early, the first customers. Expensive too, since the sound was over the radio + we didn’t want to switch on the ignition to use ours, we had to hire one. It was a double horror bill – the first “Maniac” appalling – one long badly-acted cliché. By comparison the second – “Silent Scream” – better.
Shame that our first ever experience of a drive-in movie was so disappointing. I don’t recall there ever having been such things in England when we were young, though outdoor screenings have recently become quite the thing… though we’ve never been. Neither Val nor I have ever been much of a fan of horror films, but we didn’t have a lot of choice.
Not sure you needed quite such a blow-by-blow account of our building work, but obviously it was important to us at the time. Me at the time.
Pamela J Blair
Your tent extension description reminds me of the “Van Life” videos that so many people are putting up now (many of which I watch), where people describe down to the tiniest detail how they’ve outfitted an old or new van with all the niceties of home. They’re so proud of their creations!