Islands in the sun

The summer has faded here in Scotland, although not without a welcome September reprise of beautiful sunshine and warmth. Many of my off days these past months, and not a few lazy evenings of extended twilight, have been spent wearing out the Golf Coast Road to Longniddry, Yellowcraig and North Berwick. 

In August I made my now-annual pilgrimage across the Irish Sea to the Openskies festival, once again in the excellent company of Ickle Bef, on a ferry which charged £1.65 for a cup of tea and £2.00 for a cup of hot water. 

The weather forecast for the weekend was absolutely apocalyptic. We camped anyway, praying madly that the weather would miss us, which it did, and we came away with tents and belongings mostly dry and all intact. Even the fairy lights – a lovely set of plastic pink flamingoes generously donated by DL – survived. The deluge, it transpired, had been diverted towards Wales, where it landed with full force where my sister and her family were camping. Our diversion prayers were non-specific in a directional sense, and my conscience is clear.

Sports-wise, England won the Cricket World Cup, failed to win back the Ashes despite Ben Stokes’ monumental heroics in Leeds, and the Red Sox had a disappointingly average season.

Ireland appeared to be alarmingly ill-prepared for the Rugby World Cup, but still I approached their opening game against Scotland with hope and a degree of expectation.

Sunday 22 Sep | Ireland 27-3 Scotland

Later that day Ryan texted me from Nashville.

“What’s happening to Scotland?”

I was feeling slightly daunted at the prospect of figuring out what, indeed, was happening to Scotland in the current Brexit and IndyRef2 climate, not to mention how to condense that into a text, when a further message clarified that he was talking about the rugby. 

I reminded him of my Irishness, which is something I am happy to do for people when they are inclined to forget, and especially when Ireland are doing well and most especially when they’ve just beaten Scotland.

Six days later, Ireland faced the hosts Japan in Shizuoka. 

I woke up early. Like, 4am early. Three hours later I gave up on further sleep, and made my escape to Sainsbury’s, which I had discovered to my surprise was open at such an hour on a Saturday morning.

I returned home with bacon and croissants. The croissants were freshly-baked and still warm, and so good it sort of made me want to get up early on a Saturday morning more often. Sort of. 

Then I watched Japan puncture the hopes of an island, and I wished I’d stayed in bed.

Saturday 28 Sep | Japan 19-12 Ireland

The afternoon was sunny and breezy on the coast. A few friends joined me on a fast boat trip from N Berwick, which skimmed over the choppy waves to three islands in the Forth – the Lamb, Craigleith and the Bass Rock. The Lamb, we discovered, is now owned by Uri Geller, who is convinced that the ancient Egyptians buried treasure somewhere on it. Our guide explained that the Lamb was made of basalt, one of the hardest naturally-occurring substances known, and openly wondered how the ancient Egyptians would have buried anything in it.

Having completed a slow circuit of the Lamb, we sped through the sea spray to Craigleith and did the same, and then on to the Bass Rock, and its 150,000-strong colony of gannets. At this time of year their numbers are thinned out somewhat, but there was still enough to make a considerable din, and their guano was, well, fragrant. 

As we circled the island I discovered that it not only has a lighthouse, but also a 14th century castle. In fact, the lighthouse has been built inside the castle. This makes the Bass Rock, in my view, about as epic as it could possibly be. An island with a lighthouse AND a castle? I feel sure the Famous Five must have visited.

Curate’s Egg

It’s been quite a summer. As the curate of Punch’s 1895 cartoon said of the stale egg he had been served by the bishop, parts of it have been excellent.

During the last few weeks, there have been days which have been among the nicest I’ve ever known in Scotland. But when it hasn’t been excellent, the rain has been apocalyptic.

At the end of June I travelled down to London to watch the Red Sox play the Yankees. I was excited about this. It would be the first time Major League Baseball had played a proper game (ie not an exhibition game – one that mattered) in Europe. Two games were scheduled – on Saturday and Sunday.

I watched Saturday’s game on a giant screen in a sun-soaked beer garden in East London. The Yankees were in front most of the game, and despite an 8th inning rally from the Sox, New York prevailed.

Sunday, nephew Sebastian in tow, we made our way to the stadium – London Stadium, which had been converted to a baseball field for the occasion. The sun shone again. 

I disappeared to get a couple of Cokes for Sebastian and myself, and came back £9 lighter.

Our neighbours in Row 37 were Violet and Joe, and their son Eddie, all the way from Boston. Eddie had trained as a vet at Edinburgh University.

Sebastian, meanwhile, was hungry. I got him a burger, averting my eyes and handing over my debit card, wincing slightly.

We returned to the game. The Sox were winning. Sebastian was still hungry. He seemed to be treating London Stadium as a huge open-air restaurant with some baseball happening as in-meal entertainment. I fed him some of my chips.

The Yankees had a massive 7th inning, and from then on the Sox were always chasing the game.

Sebastian, meanwhile, was still hungry, so we got doughnuts. Six of them, just in case.

The Red Sox lost again, despite threatening with another 8th inning rally. The game over, I bid goodbye to my new Boston friends, and promised to say hi to Edinburgh for Eddie.

It’s been a curate’s egg of a summer for the Red Sox too. There have been flashes of last season’s excellence, but no consistency. Following the inaugural London Series their record against the Yankees reads won 1, lost 6.


It’s now late July. It’s another sodden Saturday in Edinburgh, and I’m back in the Hideout. Cricket has been rained off again (third Saturday in a row). Boris has just been made Prime Minister. The country is unsure of what lies ahead, as it always is, but probably more so now than ever.

Tuesday this week, it was swelteringly hot. SCORCHIO! As the red-tops used to scream on days like this. Perhaps they still do.

I spent the morning paddling in the shallows at the beach, before meeting a friend in town. We lunched in the sunshine on Victoria Terrace. The Terrace overlooks Victoria Street, which was reputedly the inspiration for JK Rowling’s Diagon Alley. There is meagre evidence for this beyond Victoria St’s proximity to the Elephant House – the self-proclaimed ‘home of Harry Potter’ – but the tour parties come by, one by one, complete with excitable HP superfan tour guide.

It is, however, a pretty magical street, Victoria Street.

I had the Eggs Benedict, which was excellent. I managed to spill a quantity of hollandaise sauce down the front of my t-shirt, ensuring I (and everyone I met) had a visual reminder of the excellence of my lunch for the rest of the day, which was pleasing.

In the still-warm early evening, Ickle Bef and I sat on a rock in Holyrood Park, looking out over Holyrood Palace, the National Monument and a forest of giant cranes putting together the new St James Centre. We discussed our camping plans for Openskies, so that – this year – there wouldn’t be any unnecessary duplication of the important provisions. Not that Ickle actually brought any pine nuts last year, to my memory.

On Wednesday, apart from Boris becoming PM, the other main news was that the milk Ryan and Katie kindly bought for me to use while I was in Tennessee – in early May – went past its sell-by date. These dates are always conservative, as we know, so there’s a chance it may still be usable.

Thursday night the Red Sox finally got to play the Yankees again for the first time since London, and the first time at Fenway Park this season.

They thumped them 19-3. They thumped them again last night. The summer is looking up…

The Longest Day

It’s getting on for the end of June, dear reader. The country remains in unresolved Brexit turmoil, although attention has now shifted to the Conservative Party’s leadership election, which will determine our next Prime Minister. Once this is resolved, for better or worse, Brexit will again, I imagine, consume us all. 

In Edinburgh, the summer so far has been unusually damp. Unusually damp, I say, for it has been damp even by Scottish standards. 

Accordingly, the cricket season has been patchy. Last Saturday the Holy Cross 2nd XI, of which I had been carelessly – but happily only temporarily – left in charge, played their first game in a month.

We were away to Musselburgh. I lost the toss. This was the first indicator that it wasn’t to be a good day. We were asked to bat on a damp wicket, and bowled out for 21, which – for those not in tune with cricketing matters – is a pretty low score for one batsman, never mind a whole team. 

Captains and managers in sport are frequently said to have “lost the dressing room.”  I took this a step further by losing the dressing room key, which went missing from the scorer’s table at some point during the first innings. Fingers were pointed and accusations levelled.

In due course the key was located, in one of my team-mates’s pockets.

Normally at this point we would all ‘take tea’, which would involve picking at whatever meagre fare the home team had produced, before commencing the second innings. However, such was the low score that Musselburgh needed to chase, we simply went back out again.

Four overs later, Musselburgh required 7 runs to win. I threw the dice, and made my first bowling change, bringing on Ollie the Offspinner. Ollie delivered his first – entirely respectable – ball, and the batsman, in an act of considerable discourtesy, deposited it over long-on for six.

It bounced on the path which ran beyond the boundary, right over the wall, into trees and dense foliage, and was lost forever. We found another ball from somewhere. The same batsman edged this one through the slips and it was all over. 

We trooped into the changing rooms. The showers were cold. We emerged again, and the tea, sadly, met our expectations fully.

A dismal performance, a lost game, a lost ball, a lost dressing room key, cold showers, and a poor tea. At least it wasn’t raining.

The following Friday we celebrated 2019’s longest day, on an East Lothian beach. We really should have been at Akva, our monthly Swedish haunt, but the weather had taken an upturn, as if acknowledging that the longest day deserved better. So we cancelled our booking, in the process denying ourselves Akva’s pagan midsummer celebration complete with flower crowns and frog dancing, whatever that is.

Suitably equipped with fish and chips, we wandered down the sandy path to the beach. The tide was in. The fish was excellent, the chips too, although sand – unfailingly able to find its way into every available orifice – found its way into my box of chips, and became a most unwelcome garnish of the grittiest possible kind.

Nicola, garlanded most appropriately with a flower crown, produced a couple of bags of Haribo from somewhere, and we watched the sun sink slowly in an almost flawless blue sky, painting a pencil-thin orange stripe towards us across the water, and the wet rippled sand.

We walked eastward to the end of the beach, on the way enacting what we thought frog-dancing might be, and parked ourselves on a massive piece of driftwood, as the sun sank even lower. Eventually, just after 10pm, it dropped behind that little hill across the water in Fife, whose name escapes me now. 

I remember someone telling me that there are parts of the village of Falkland which are in shadow for six months of the year (or thereabouts), due to their proximity to that hill.

We returned along the Golf Coast, courtesy of Sonic Boom Bef’s thrill-a-minute driving, and stopped for a McFlurry at Fort Kinnaird.

It was at this point that I noticed TK Maxx. It was looking as good as a TK Maxx ever has, I would venture to say. The distant horizon, still burning a fiery red, was reflected in its polished glass frontage. This, combined with the odd solitary tree and manicured grass of the Fort Kinnaird car park, made for a striking image. Made me think of Malibu.

“It’s just like Malibu,” I remarked to Nicola.

Nicola snorted.

I’ve never even been to Malibu. Later, I found a picture of the TK Maxx in Malibu (although of course it’s TJ Maxx there). It was surprisingly unimpressive-looking, although there were real palm trees in the picture. Fort Kinnaird for the win, I say.

We found a table by the window, with a gorgeous view across the roundabout to Screwfix, and Bef had her first ever McFlurry. It was a momentous day.

The Snow Angels of the Dolomites, part IV

Haggis Pakora Update: quite disappointing.

Day 5 in the Dolomites was spent on an away-day adventure to Cortina d’Ampezzo and the Hidden Valley. 

Unable to attempt the James Bond run in Cortina due to a race-related closure, we consoled ourselves by going down the ladies’ world cup run a few times, which, after a gentle enough start plunges dramatically downwards, towering rockfaces to the right and left.

Also to the left (we can think of it as Stage Left) was the chairlift, full of skiers, or the Audience, as I liked to think of them, as I lost control and slid down the slope headfirst, skis kicking up snow.

Sometimes the most obvious indicator that you’re on a black slope rather than a red is the time and effort it takes you to stop the slide.

Skiing, in a more conventional sense, further down the mountain, we came across several skiers who confirmed Cortina’s glamorous reputation, sliding along under the watchful eye of their personal instructors, sporting little round sunglasses, chic ski gear, and offering a whiff of expensive perfume as we shot past.

After lunch outside in the sunshine, we made the short trip to the (fairly ancient-looking) gondola that took us up to the start of the Hidden Valley run.

At the top, yet more beautiful views, and tunnels with machine guns left over from WWI. We took the time to explore the tunnels, and then took even more time gliding down a beautiful red run which curved round and through quiet mountain terrain, past frozen waterfalls, and the pub with the Alpacas. It was a twenty minute run and we took the best part of two hours over it.

Near the end, as promised, we got to hold on to a long rope attached to a horse-drawn cart, and get towed the last kilometre or so. Twice the horses stopped to poop, which nearly caused mass carnage among the fifty or so skiers who had to stop suddenly. But in the end only one wipe-out was recorded, the Flying Pistachio temporarily becoming the Swimming Pistachio in the slush.


All of my research into the Dolomites, which consisted of reading articles, reviews, and looking at photos, led me to believe that the Dolomites were spectacularly beautiful. 

It is something of a surprise and, to be honest, a comfort to me that the internet, for all its wondrous technology, cannot really transport you to the Dolomites, or for that matter to any of the beautiful places in the world.

The photos and video looked great. But electronic rendering never does justice to the experience of standing in the shadow of a gigantic rocky outcrop, which – up close – feels like a living, breathing thing, while the sun slowly moves behind it in an impossibly-blue Alpine sky.

Somewhere near Alta Badia, I believe it was during Day 4’s monastic pilgrimage, we passed underneath such an outcrop. I stopped, not on this occasion because my legs were tired and needed a break, but because Emma had stopped. 

She had paused and was gazing in wonder at the sight above her. So I stopped, and we all stopped, and the Sella Ronda momentarily became the Selah Ronda (© Emma). 

The photo I took of this moment wouldn’t win any prizes, and would fail to inspire awe in any who saw it, except perhaps for me, because it takes me back in time to that moment of that day.


We did the Saslong again on our last ski day, for old time’s sake, and in the fairly plush-looking shop at the bottom of the slope I bought an over-priced bobble hat. The lady wrote me out a paper receipt, which felt a little incongruous, in such a glamorous establishment. I can’t remember the last time I got a handwritten paper receipt for a purchase.

It’s a very lovely hat. I have only occasionally removed it since. It has pleased me greatly that the weather has remained cold in Edinburgh recently.

At the end of the day, a day in which I finally broke the 80 km/h barrier by tucking from top to bottom of a run, and Ickle Bef put this in perspective by recording a speed of over 1900 km/h, thus earning her the new name Sonic Boom Bef… we shared a smoked mozzarella pizza, some cold beers, and more limoncellos than was really appropriate. There may have been some unseemly giggling at the bus stop afterwards.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. Apart from the sheer joy that skiing brings, it was made more special for me by getting to ski, explode kittens, and generally have fun with such a great group of people.

But there was a healing element to the trip for me too, as the last time I organised a ski trip to Italy I had to pull out at the last minute due to my father’s passing.

Then there was the last time I organised a ski trip at all, back in 2011, when my good friend DC ended up in a coma as a result of an accident on the first day.

So just making it to Italy, and then having no holiday-ending injuries happen, felt like a win. It turned out to be a resounding win. Thanks to all who came and made it such a special trip!

The January Blues

And, just like that, it was January. Christmas is all but forgotten, schools go back in two days’ time, routines are gradually rebooting.

I’ve spent New Year’s Eve in a variety of ways over the years.

I’ve been at other peoples’ house parties, I’ve hosted my own parties, been shut out of a Banbridge nightclub and had to bribe the doorman to get in. Been on Edinburgh’s Princes St, kissed a strange girl and then nearly crushed in the exit rush, the year before they made it a ticketed event.

I’ve watched Scottish fireworks from Calton Hill, Australian fireworks over Sydney Harbour, been behind a keyboard trying and failing to play ceilidh tunes as folk whirled in the new millennium, been in church watchnight services, in prayer meetings, sat with friends doing a jigsaw, watched Jools’ Hootenanny.

Over the years and across the experiences I’ve learned that my favourite way to bring in the new year is less to do with the activity, and even the environment, and more about the company. Just simply being in the company of friends is how I like to close out the old, and bring in the new, no matter what we’re doing. 

The older the friends, the better, I reckon, but it takes time to grow an old friend, as the fridge magnet says, and one’s friend-circle is an ever-evolving thing. So time with new friends is an investment worth making. This year’s new friend could be next year’s old friend. A year can be a long time in a friendship.

Maybe there’s a comforting reassurance, as something familiar ends, and something new begins, that we’re not alone, there are others on this journey with us.

And so the NYE festivities, 2018 edition, began with dinner out with friends.

My flatmate joined us for dinner. I put it to him that a worthy Flat Goal for 2019 would be to defrost the freezer, seeing as it’s currently quite hard to close the door without an application of one’s size 11s. He concurred. Much fruitful conversation was had with the gang on the best technique for defrosting our freezer. Hairdryers, hot knives and towels were recommended.

My flatmate and I are a little lacking in the hairdryer department, on account of not being overly endowed in the hair department. But hot knives sounded fun.

Most of the party retired in a southwesterly direction back along the canal to Ickle Bef’s flat for a heady late-night combination of quizzes, many rounds of Ligretto, and a smidgeon of Jack Daniels.

It was here that one of the party dropped the bombshell that Jools’ Hootenanny is not, in fact, filmed live, but pre-recorded early in December. She was, by her own admission, deep in Prosecco at this point, and thus I’m not sure her testimony can be considered valid. I remain in denial to this day.

At 23:59 it was suggested we put on the TV for the bells, which – it turned out – was cutting it a little fine. The TV had been disconnected from its box earlier in the evening for quiz purposes, and the New Year arrived, technically bang on schedule but slightly earlier than we were prepared for, with Ickle Bef wrestling manfully with HDMI cables underneath the TV.

Many, many of the NYE parties I’ve attended, and especially the ones I’ve organised, have neglected to remember that midnight – the climax of the evening – actually the whole point of the evening – was fast approaching, until it was fractionally too late even for the 10 second countdown, and someone hastily shouted HAPPY NEW YEAR! And then it doesn’t really matter that one missed the actual moment, because the round of glasses-chinking, hugging and well-wishing can be just as effectively enacted at one or two minutes past the hour.

And anyway, as Bono says, nothing changes on New Year’s Day.

I woke up New Year’s Day morning. Checked my phone. My flatmate had texted.

09:05

Happy New Year! Freezer Done!

There goes my solitary goal for 2019.

Bono’s right, and wrong. It may only be the calendar date that changes, but still, it somehow affords a fresh start, a reset of thinking and priorities. The days are getting longer, albeit not noticeably so just yet. 

No blues over here, just January.

Here’s to fresh adventures in 2019!

Competitive camping and raw worship

I put it to Ickle Bef that I couldn’t quite recall if I had packed my tent.

– “That’s ok,” she reassured me. “You can sleep in the lee of mine.”

What a generous offer. IB’s tent was so tiny as to afford lee to perhaps my lower shins.

Having not over-communicated with each other in the run-up to this camping odyssey, the duplication of camping items did indeed turn out to be significant. Ickle, of course, had to turn it into a competition.

– “Did you bring saucepans?” I wondered.
– “Yep.”
– “Kettle?”
– “Of course.”
– “Washing up liquid?”
– “Absolutely.”

She took a narrow lead by destroying me in the “out-of-date food” micro-category. Given the questionable nutritional quality of out-of-date food, and its danger to our health on a trip already fraught with danger, being in the wild outdoors, only a narrow lead could be awarded.

– “Hand gel?”
– “Yeah.”
– “Cereal??”
– “Mmm hmm.”
– “BLANKET?”
– “Yup!”

– “Chopping board?” she enquired.

Dang. I was now slipping behind to the tune of one chopping board and a few past-their-sell-by-date items. Time to play my trump card.

– “Black pepper?”

Her face fell. Triumphantly, I applied the coup de grâce.

– “PINE NUTS?!?”

Her shoulders slumped. I dialled for my smuggest expression.

Then she produced the fairy lights.

FAIRY LIGHTS.

Game, set, and match.

I set about that evening’s pasta dinner with one of the sporks I had on loan from Wiseman. In a misplaced attempt at being grown-up, I initially attempted using the -ork but quickly realised that the sp- was much more efficient.

We returned to our tents after the evening session. They were easy to find, being the only ones in the whole field with fairy lights entwined around the guy ropes.

It was a cloudless, starry night. I might have paused to appreciate the grandeur and majesty of creation, but it was baltic. The mercury plummeted to 7C that night. That’s only 2 degrees warmer than a fridge.

Saturday morning I queued for the use of one of the four showers available to the several hundred campers. It was, I discovered, one of those showers with binary water temperature settings. I spent a few minutes, shivering, with hand held under the freezing water, until it warmed up slightly. Stepping properly into the flow of water, I realised it hadn’t actually warmed up – my hand had gone numb and couldn’t feel the cold any more. The rest of my body could, however.

I jumped back out. A few seconds later, it did warm up. I jumped back into the stream and started lathering up. At which point the temperature shot straight through Comfortably Warm like an express train through a rural station, and onwards to Scalding Hot. Fast enough to be one of those French trains. I jumped out again. Fiddled with the dial. No effect whatsoever.

Eventually the temperature train, maintaining its enigmatic French unpredictability, came back the other way, entirely of its own volition and at a time that suited it, and not me, and in the few seconds it took to rocket through Comfortably Warm I managed to rinse off most of the lather.

Ickle Bef and I breakfasted in the sunshine that day.

The following morning, we breakfasted in a steady drizzle. Sitting with one’s back to the drizzle direction, with one’s rain jacket hood up, one can get quite effectively drenched before one realises one is wet at all.

As the drizzle intensified, we packed up our arsenal of camping stoves and retreated damply to the coffee shop, with its array of sizeable traybakes. Anyone who’s been to Northern Ireland, or been hosted by a Northern Irish hostess*, will surely be aware of the Province’s not-unwarranted reputation as producer of the world’s best traybakes.

(*I apologise for any perceived sexism there, but let’s be fair, the astonishing quality and volume of Northern Ireland’s traybake output can not be attributed to N Irish men.)

This cafe was determined to not only maintain, but enhance, Northern Ireland’s reputation. I passed by the giant muffins, and the titanic caramel squares, and enquired as to the ethnicity of the enormous scones. Two types, I was told. Strawberry, and Mars Bar.

I leaned in, and cupped my ear.

– “What did you say?”
– “Mars Bar.”

Boom.

We spent a great deal of time at the weekend, Ickle Bef and I, along with several hundred others, worshipping our hearts out in a big tent.

I spoke on childlikeness a few weeks back at my church, and this weekend I learned a bit more about it. Or at least, I learned something about the practice of it. Practical learning is the best learning, I reckon. This mostly looked like me dancing like a complete loon in worship. This is not something I’ve historically embraced, having preferred to value my dignity.

Dignity, for me, has been a shroud I’ve used to mask the life within. Dignity is a wonderful thing, but mostly maintaining my dignity has come at the expense of rawly expressing my worship. And the desire to maintain my dignity has been instigated and fuelled by the fear of what others would think.

We learn, as Christians living in our society, to live our lives without risk. We have learned to live in such a way as to mitigate against personal risk, financial risk, emotional risk, relational risk.

We have done this out of fear, I suspect. Fear of looking foolish, fear of the unknown, fear of not having enough, fear of getting hurt. Fear of God not providing for us, not coming through for us.

The antidote to fear is love. Perfect love casts out fear. If God is truly a God of love, and he really is our Father, then we have nothing (literally nothing) to fear.

This weekend, the love-fear scales tipped a little more towards love. My love for Jesus has gradually begun to outweigh my fear of what others might think.

It’s a journey, this Christian life. Sometimes it feels like treading water, like little progress is being made. Other times, it feels like strides have been taken. This is one of those times.

You’re my author, my maker // My ransom, my Saviour // My refuge, my hiding place

You’re my helper, my healer // My blessed redeemer // My answer, my saving grace

You’re my hope, in the shadows // My strength, in the battle // My anchor, for all my days

And You stand, by my side // And You stood, in my place // Jesus, no other name // No, only Jesus, no other name

– Sean Curran

Camping and Emergency Loo Roll

A week or two ago we welcomed an old friend back to Edinburgh – the traditional Scottish Summer.

The greatest, hottest, driest summer since records began, or at least since 1976, is on the wane, it seems. No more unprecedented experiences like selecting the second button on the electric shower, to make the water cool enough to step into. On a number of recent occasions, my thirty minute drive into work has necessitated the use of the holy trinity of sunglasses, windscreen wipers and headlights. Sometimes all at the same time.

With spectacular timing, our old friend has reemerged just in time for me to go camping for the first time in over twenty years. Admittedly a mere nine years ago I did go camping with my Sister and her burgeoning family, but that doesn’t count, since all the camping infrastructure (and a great deal of stately-home-infrastructure to boot) was laid on.

On this occasion I have had to give a great deal more thought to the supply and provisions.

Wiseman, after hearing of my camping intentions, and slowly lowering his eyebrow, kindly loaned me his tent, and camping stove, and various other arcane implements, the usefulness of which, I imagine, will become apparent at around 2am.

After one tutorial on the camping stove, and none on the actual tent-building, I reckon I am ready.

I wandered through Tesco, looking for camping-style easy-to-cook meal solutions, pretending to myself that this was vastly different to what I normally look for in Tesco.

In a flash of inspiration, I picked up some loo roll, for emergencies. Shea Butter ‘flavour’. Four rolls. You can’t be too careful with these things. And some paper towels. And a dustpan and brush. Must return the tent in good nick to Wiseman, or I’ll never hear the end of it.

My companion on this particular trip, to the Openskies worship festival in N Ireland, is Ickle Bef. We conferred about what we were bringing for the first time at 10pm last night. This was possibly leaving it a little late. Ickle confided she was bringing two camping stoves. I feel this is overcooking it slightly.

Loading the car at 6:15am this morning, I noticed that Ickle had her own dustpan and brush. I suspect the duplication, some of which is important for decency’s sake, like having our own tents for example, won’t stop there. I do hope she has her own Shea Butter loo roll, though, because I might need all four of mine. Depending on how the cooking goes, on our multiplicity of stoves, I guess.

Now, on the ferry, halfway across the Irish Sea, the sun is shining, and I wonder what could possibly go wrong. Ickle Bef is out on deck, wisely banking some solo time.

Openskies’ website states that campers have access to showers, charging points, and the presence of the Lord. You can’t ask for more than that, really.

Camping? I feel recklessly optimistic. Bring it on.

Did I remember to pack the tent?