Five Go Glamping (10 page)

I gathered all the available lead I had and hurled it over to him. He caught it and pulled Brian Harvey towards the bank. Brian scampered up across the mud towards the man who tied the lead around the tree.

Next he put one foot on a large rock embedded in the muddy bank and stretched both his hands to me, but I couldn’t quite reach.

‘Lean forward,’ he said. I wanted to but I was worried I would end up falling flat on my face.

‘Trust me, I won’t let you fall,’ he said, telling me exactly what I needed to hear.

I reached out my hands further and tentatively leaned forward a little when he swooped down and grabbed my hand and in one swift movement pulled me free from the mud. Once I was stood on the rock, he put his hands around my waist and lifted me effortlessly up onto the bank. He kept his hands around me for a moment to steady me and studied my face, checking I was okay. I was a little shaken up but I was okay and all the better for seeing him.

He untied Brian Harvey and passed the lead to me.

‘You’ll be fine now. Not sure about your shoes, though,’ he said and laughed.

‘Thank you,’ I said. All the relief I felt had been making me feel a bit teary so when I looked down to see my ankles and shoes were caked in mud, it was a welcome relief to laugh.

‘I’m sorry you had to go to all this trouble,’ I said. ‘I’m so embarrassed.’

‘Yeah, well the countryside takes a bit of getting used to. Takes a bit of time for you townies to adjust.’ He winked at me to let me know he was half teasing. ‘But if you’re okay, I’ll be off.’

‘Yes, absolutely, thank you again, it was so kind of you,’ I said, wishing he would stay a little longer.

‘See you then,’ he said and he left, breaking into a run in a few steps and then he was gone.

‘Well, Brian Harvey, that was all very interesting, wasn’t it?’

Brian woofed. ‘Best not to mention this to the others, eh?’ I added. I didn’t want Kirk thinking I was an inadequate dog minder. I picked up the dog, who had no idea how much he had panicked me, and we wandered back up the hill.

Before we came here, I was convinced this would be my last holiday ever before I became not only a mad cat lady but a bag lady as well. I had no job, possibly no boyfriend when he found out I had no job. I had no concrete plans for the future any more. Getting stuck in a pile of mud hadn’t exactly been the best start but something about it had been adventurous, exciting, exhilarating even. It was something I certainly hadn’t planned for but maybe not planning for things meant I was more open to adventure. Being saved by a kind handsome stranger had certainly added to the thrill, so while I may not be having the holiday of a lifetime, I was a little more open to the possibility of having a good time.

*

The sun was setting and the sky was turning a purplish red. The others were sitting outside the yurt around the fire pit.

‘Found yourself yet?’ I said to them. Brian Harvey ran over to Kirk who eyed me suspiciously when he saw Brian Harvey was a little bit soggy.

‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘What happened to your feet?’

‘Stepped in a puddle,’ I said.

‘Shall we see if we can get out of here, maybe find our way to the festival? We could still spend the evening there.’ said Steph. ‘Or at least try and find a pub or something? Come on, it’s most definitely beer garden weather.’ I liked the idea of heading back to the pub and seeing more of the man who had rescued me from the riverbank. I was on holiday after all and I was only looking. I’m sure the others would appreciate the view as well.

‘I like the sound of that,’ said Kirk, sulking. ‘I could drown my sorrows and think about what a terrible time I am having.’

‘It’s not that bad, Kirk,’ said Sinead. ‘But I don’t mind if you want to go to the pub. As long as we’re back for the moonlight meditation.’

‘Right, that’s decided then.’ said Steph, ‘Sinead’s turning native. She’s got that Stockholm syndrome. It is time to go to the pub.’

We left the campsite the same way we entered, passing the outdoorsy types and some more women in mirrored skirts. It was like they were cloning themselves.

We weren’t sure of the way exactly. All of us were holding our phones up to see if we could get a signal to see if we could open an app that would show us where we were. ‘I’m sure the pub wasn’t this far back,’ said Steph.

‘Me too,’ I said. It didn’t seem as far as this in the car. We carried on walking down the winding roads, Kirk looking nervous and worrying about imaginary bats. Clutching Brian ever closer to him.

‘I know it’s not the festival, but it will make a nice change, nice country pub,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I’m knackered anyway after today, be nice to have a nice quiet night, anyway,’ said Steph. ‘Early night, and down to the festival tomorrow. Maybe they’ll do food.’

I could picture it already; they probably did lovely pub food and we could all have a nice glass of wine and then we’d all say we were going to either have a starter or a pudding but then we’d have both – and posh coffees afterwards too. Then back to bed in the luxury yurt for a great night’s kip.

‘Here it is,’ shouted Steph.

‘Is it even open?’ said Kirk. ‘It looks even creepier at night.’

I have to say it did look a little creepy at night, all dark stone and small windows and the front door was flapping.

‘Shall we go in, then?’ said Sinead looking nervous.

‘After you,’ said Kirk.

I pushed the door open, which as sure as to be expected actually creaked, and we walked in to a small bar, covered in dark wooden panels. There weren’t any other customers in there but it looked cosy and I quite fancied spending the rest of the evening in here rather than back with the weirdos at the campsite.

We stood in there a while when a door at the side of the room opened and the man stuck his head out of the door.

‘Hi again,’ he said to me, ‘keeping yourself out of trouble?’

The others looked at each other, wondering why he was addressing me, and I hoped they would think he was referring to the car trouble earlier. It gave me a little thrill to see him again. This holiday crush was giving me a whole load of thrilling sensations I hadn’t felt for a while, but he didn’t seem as cheery as he had been earlier.

‘I’m not open yet. And we don’t sell fizzy wine, so you’re better off going down the road.’

‘Oh that’s fine, what time do you open?’ I said.

‘Not for an hour,’

‘Okay then,’ I said and turned to the others.

Steph, Sinead and Kirk nudged each other.

‘Come on let’s get out of here, he’s kind of rude.’

I nodded. I was disappointed but for some reason or another it did seem as though he wasn’t keen on serving us. It was such a change from how he had been earlier. On the way back to the campsite, the others discussed how sharp he had been but I sensed there was something else wrong with him. He was like one of the customers at work, all snappy and projecting whatever they were upset about at other people, but I could tell when I looked at him that he wasn’t being rude or angry. He was sad, and even though I had spent less than a total of twenty minutes in his company, for some reason the fact he was sad made me feel sad too.

We made our way back to the campsite where luckily we had already escaped the moonlight meditation.

One of the moonfaced women came across and loomed over us with a cauldron of what looked like a massive bowl of vomit and asked if we wanted to try some mung bean casserole, which of course we didn’t. We sat outside our yurt by the fire pit, drinking the Crabbie’s ginger beers.

All we had left to eat was a few lonely looking cocktail sausages leftover from my breakfast and three scotch eggs and we had soon scoffed those and were still hungry, so we then took them up on their mung bean offer. It tasted as bad as it looked so we had to wash it down with more Crabbie’s, by which time we were well on our way to being incredibly drunk. After we had polished off the rest of our drinks, the two weirdos invited us to their tent as they had some home-made parsnip wine – which sounded like quite a good idea at the time. Then we had a conversation about how people can make wine out of parsnips and carrots and all manner of weird fruit and vegetables, but that no one ever makes wine out of meat. Steph and I agreed that on our return from this holiday, we would start up a new enterprise, making meat wine and meat beer. This would be my new career path. The festival was working. I was already finding myself and getting myself back on a track.

‘Yessshh,’ slurred Steph and nodded more than enthusiastically, sat on the floor of the weirdos’ yurt. ‘Because it always says on the wine whether you should have it with chicken or fish or whatever. So why can’t you have the meat
actually
in the wine.’

It all seemed perfectly sensible to me at the time and it was clear I would never have to worry about looking for a job again, as our new business would be such a success.

What didn’t seem very sensible was when Sinead and Crazy Trousers announced they were going for a walk. Because, yes, he seemed okay, but with trousers like that, he obviously had a definite potential for lunacy and psychotic tendencies. If he couldn’t choose himself a pair of decent trousers, however could he be expected to make good moral choices or have a sense of right and wrong.

The other thing that didn’t seem very sensible to me was after I watched Sinead and Crazy Trousers leave, I turned back around to see Steph kissing – actually full on snogging – Weird Beard! How had the evening descended into this?

‘Right then. It’s time we all went back to the yurt isn’t it?’ I said, but Steph carried on snogging him and waved her hand at me dismissively.

Brian Harvey was at the door whimpering at me and I wanted to get out of there too. I also wanted to shield Brian Harvey’s eyes from the atrocity I had witnessed.

‘Come on Brian,’ I said as I untied him. I’d take him back to our yurt.

But when I got back to our yurt, Sinead was in there getting off with Crazy Trousers. I couldn’t find Kirk anywhere and that’s how I ended up spending a night in the tent with Brian Harvey.

Chapter Nine

Sometimes in films, you might get a scene where a person is waking up because they’re being nibbled and caressed by the romantic target of their affections. Then you see it’s a weird half-dream – they wake up alone, on their sofa, to find it is not the target of their affections who is nibbling their ear or kissing their neck, but instead it is their dog licking their face furiously, dribbling dog food scented goo all over them.

Well, this is kind of what happened to me.

But, instead of dreaming I was with the love of my life and then waking up with a dog licking my face, my subconscious decided I would dream first about a dog licking my face and then wake up to find a dog licking my face.

I was also dehydrated from one too many alcoholic ginger beers and some questionable parsnip wine and in an allegedly three-man pink polka dot monstrosity of a tent. I was fairly sure it wasn’t a three-man tent at all.

As well as there not being enough room in the tent for three people, my head was also struggling to find space for the people who kept popping into in my mind. Even though my attraction to the man at the pub was probably little more than a harmless passing holiday attraction, I knew it wasn’t right that I could have my head turned so easily by a complete stranger. I knew nothing about this man, not even his name, and yet being with him felt easy and effortless and everything with Connor felt like such hard work.

I worried the only reason I was staying with Connor was because he fitted in with my plan and I didn’t know if that was reason enough any more. Though at that precise moment I would have given anything to have woken up six months in the future in a luxury apartment with Connor than in this tiny little tent.

I removed Brian Harvey from my face and placed him on the floor. He was now whimpering at the zip, trying to get out, and I tried to sit up but my head met with the canvas of the tent before I was anywhere close to sitting up. The water gathering on the underside of the canvas trickled onto my head and down my neck. I usually avoided any situations where my hair would meet with water, but it was clear that no amount of Frizz Ease could remedy a night in a damp tent. I may as well have spent the night inside a carrier bag, inside a sauna.

Brain was barking, so I reached forward, pulled open the zip and launched myself forward to struggle out of the door. It was rather handy that I slept in my clothes, as I didn’t know where the rest of my clothes were. I don’t exactly remember us unpacking, so I assumed our stuff must still be in Steph’s car. Outside I watched Brian Harvey do the longest ever wee up the side of the mirrored skirt women’s yurt and I tied him up outside our yurt, pulled back the canvas door and crept inside. I could see Sinead was in there asleep and I knew Crazy Trousers was there too because his weird trousers were hanging over the end of the metal bedstead. Gross. Steph’s car keys were on the table to the side so I grabbed them and tiptoed out again quietly.

There was no sign of any movement from Weird Beard’s tent. I collected my bag from Steph’s car, took the others’ bags out, put them inside the door of the yurt and made my way to the shower block. The mirrored skirt ladies were outside now, getting ready to boil up more mung beans no doubt, when Kirk emerged from inside.

‘Thanks again for having me,’ he said.

‘Bright blessings dear, did you sleep well?’ they asked.

‘Not really,’ said Kirk ‘I’m rather emotionally troubled. Truth be told, I could do with another hour or so. But I don’t want to intrude. Although I am still feeling a bit delicate.’

‘Oh you poor thing. Your chakras are all out of balance,’ they said, then they gushed and cooed over him, one of them waved some kind of incense in front of him and then they ushered him back inside.

That cheeky git, he must have left the yurt and gone to the moon faces, leaving me to look after his dog all night.

‘Would you like to join us for breakfast, my dear, or perhaps I should say lunch?’ Moonface number one called over to me, waving.