Five Go Glamping (5 page)

I’ll admit, this wasn’t the change I had hoped for. Not only did she dismiss me moving to another centre, she wanted me to actually apply for Doris’s job. Even though I had started to fill in the form already, this now left me unsettled because it meant I would be
choosing
to do Doris’s job.

Doris looked relieved to see me back so quickly. Ayesha got up, put a comforting hand on my shoulder for a moment before picking up the mugs. She grabbed the mug she was using, Doris’s three cat mug and my beautiful new Cath Kidston mug and started towards the kitchen muttering something about emergency biscuits in case of shock. She was stopped in her tracks by The Wicked West of The West Midlands.

‘Sit down please, Ayesha. What time is it?’

‘Twenty past nine’ she said.

‘And what time is tea break?’ The whole office had eyes on Ayesha.

‘I don’t know.’ Ayesha shrugged. ‘Is it whenever you fancy a cup of tea?’

‘No, Ayesha.’ Juliet glared at her ‘Tea breaks are at half past ten, and three p.m.’ She turned to face the rest of the office. ‘And that goes for everyone.’

She took the mugs from Ayesha’s hand and marched off to the kitchen with them. So I couldn’t even look at my beautiful new mug. What a cow.

The kitchen was completely rammed at ten-thirty. Ayesha came with me. Everyone was very gentle with Phil in IT and we let him use the urn first. He seemed okay at first but his hands must have been shaking as his R2D2 mug banged against the urn. Poor Phil.

I found Doris’s mug. I wouldn’t be able to get away with making her a Coftea today, not with all these people around. I looked again, but I couldn’t find my new mug, and I didn’t want to use my old cat one, so I had to use a funny metal tin mug thing. I pretended it was a camping mug and that I was on a fake-cation, but really it was more like a mug you would have if you were in prison and wanted to protest about something or other by rattling it on your cell door.

*

After work, I filled Steph and Sinead in on my disastrous couple of days and Sinead’s response to whether I should apply for Doris’s job was that I should ‘Follow my heart, that’s the only way to make sure you were happy.’

I admired Sinead’s optimism, but ‘following my heart’ was such a vague thing to do that it struck me as one of those things people say when they don’t have a bloody clue what else to do. It was like an excuse to be irresponsible.

I’d also quizzed Steph on what I should do and she’d said ‘Wait and see what happens.’ Brilliant.

I hadn’t bored them with the details about Connor, because I reckoned they were sick of hearing about him and I was sick of thinking about him. I still hadn’t called him back despite even more missed calls and apologetic texts. So I was going with the See What Happens approach on that one.

‘Anyway,’ said Sinead. ‘You’ll feel loads better after seeing Chelsea Aurora Moonbeam, everyone does.’

I wasn’t so sure.

‘You do know where this place is, don’t you?’ Steph asked Sinead.

‘I do! It’s round this next corner.’ insisted Sinead.

Every corner in Digbeth did look a bit the same, but I did wonder if she was lost.

‘You said that five minutes ago’ whined Steph. ‘I can’t believe I’ve agreed to this. If there is one whiff of patchouli, I’m not staying. Christ, my feet are killing me. We’ve been walking for miles.’ She leant against a wall to adjust the straps on her shoes.

‘Maybe Chelsea Aurora Moonbeam can heal your blisters, Steph’ I offered as Steph steadied herself using my shoulder.

‘Actually, Chelsea says any problems to do with the feet are to do with your ability to move forward in life.’ said Sinead, walking ahead purposefully.

‘Hmm, yeah or maybe it’s something to do with wearing six inch heels to work.’ I suggested. My feet were killing me too. I hated to admit it, but they were a teeny bit puffy. Christ, was I getting cankles? It was probably dehydration from not being able to get a drink whenever I wanted. And maybe the heat? And wearing my coat a lot in the middle of a heatwave.

‘We’re going out afterwards though, aren’t we?’ asked Steph.

‘Yes, we are definitely going out afterwards.’ I said. Every other Monday we went to the pub quiz with Kirk.

‘We’re here,’ called Sinead from a few yards ahead.

A small purple sign above a door on the former warehouse told us we were at The Himalayan Healing Centre.

Stepping through the doors, Steph and I looked at each other and gave approving nods, we were suitably impressed. It was stylish inside, white décor with a few nice touches. Nothing like some of the places Sinead had taken us to before, which were all crystals and musty curtains and sitting on cushions and incense burning everywhere.

White uniformed staff took our names and we paid our £9.95. They said they had run out of five pence pieces so it was actually ten pounds, but still, I wasn’t going to worry about a mere five pence. There was hardly a mirrored skirt in sight. In fact everyone seemed quite ordinary. There was wine and orange juice in champagne glasses on trays on the table. It was more like a spa or one of Steph’s fashion events than Sinead’s hippy gatherings.

Sinead went off to speak to some bloke with weird trousers.

‘Total waste,’ sighed Steph as she watched Sinead flirt with him.

‘He could be so very hot, but those trousers. Eek!’ ‘I said.

‘I know. It shouldn’t be allowed. So, what we are we doing this bank holiday weekend then?’ she asked. ‘The very exciting White Swan beer garden or shall we go into town for shopping and tapas? Or cinema and cocktails?’

‘I was actually thinking of going to the caravan with Mum and Dad. Connor will be working. And I’ve already booked the leave off.’

‘You’re going to Weston? For August bank holiday? Are you crazy? Are you taking your four cats along with you and some knitting?’

‘I love Weston. Anyway, it’s too late to plan anything now. We’d have to research it and organise it.’ I shrugged. ‘And you started knitting, remember? When you read that Gwyneth Paltrow did it? Anyway, Wayne and Colleen have got a caravan now, caravans are cool.’

‘Yes, but I didn’t do knitting for
fun,
did I? It was an accessory, it’s different. So are you really going? Don’t you want to do something fun instead? Bloody Weston!’ she tutted and rolled her eyes.

I did want to do something fun, I just wanted to plan for it.

Sinead skipped back over to be greeted by an excited Steph who grabbed both Sinead’s arms so tight, it startled her.

‘Hey Sinead. Let’s all go away this weekend. It will be brilliant.’

‘Well, it’s funny you should say that, because I was talking to this guy over there–’

‘You should never trust a man with crazy trousers,’ said Steph, eyeing him up and down.

‘Agreed,’ I nodded, after taking another look.

‘And he said he has four spare weekend tickets for this, and we can have them!’ Sinead beamed and passed a leaflet to Steph.

Steph turned her nose up ‘Camping? That’s even worse than going to a caravan. What is wrong with you two?’ She forced the pamphlet back at Sinead.

I took the leaflet and unrumpled it, smoothing out the creases.

‘Give me a look.’ I said, sensing Sinead’s feelings were hurt. I read out the headline.

‘The Castle Festival. Interesting. Not all mirrors-on-your-skirts business is it?’ I wouldn’t ordinarily be interested, but the free part definitely caught my attention and it would be nice to go away.

‘Why is it free? Is he in a cult? Is that why he has those trousers? Because it’s what they have to wear in his cult?’ Steph questioned.

‘No! It’s not a cult.’ said Sinead. He’s promoting it and he has spare tickets. He said if we took part in a few activities we get to stay in this yurt for free at the Find Yourself Festival field and we get free passes to the Castle Music Festival. And the sheep festival is on.

‘
Sheep
festival? Back to knitting again are we?’ Steph said.

‘Gwyneth Paltrow goes camping.’ I offered. I was really warming to the free holiday idea. Much better than a fake-cation in the caravan.

‘Anyway, it’s not camping, it’s glamping. We’ll have our own beds in a luxury yurt,’ Sinead offered, trying desperately to sell the idea to Steph, who just rolled her eyes.

A willowy woman appeared. ‘Please ladies, make your way to the Theatre Room.’

‘Come on, I‘m not sitting near the front.’ Steph yanked my arm almost out of my socket and we made our way to the not quite accurately titled ‘theatre’. There were three tiers with black plastic chairs. At least there were chairs, and we didn’t have to sit cross-legged on cushions.

‘We’re not going to have to hug anyone are we? Or talk to imaginary angels?’ I asked. ‘I’m not doing that again.
That
was a total bloody waste of seven-fifty.’

‘Shush,’ said Sinead.

‘What is that bloody racket?’ Steph shuddered at the sounds coming out of the speakers as we took our seats.

‘It’s chakra music,’ said Sinead tentatively, knowing it wouldn’t go down well with Steph.

‘It’s bloody creepy is what it is. Chakras, my arse.’ muttered Steph.

A woman in a smart white suit and perfectly coiffed blonde hair gracefully walked down the steps on the stage.

‘Namaste!’ she said brightly.

Most people in the room responded as brightly.

‘Oh fuck, here we go.’ muttered Steph.

‘Will you shut your face?’ whispered Sinead angrily.

‘You shut your face.’ Steph said crossing her arms.

A moonfaced mirrored skirt lady on the row in front turned round and smiled kindly at us which I knew from experience of going to Sinead’s new age affairs meant ‘I want all of you to shut your faces but I’m too busy pretending to be uber-positive and have all my chakras in order so I can’t tell you to shut up’.

I imagined that one day, the mirrored skirt lady would probably flip, all that smiling and positivity couldn’t be good for you. You could tell she wasn’t really calm inside. If she was, she wouldn’t have turned round to basically tell us to shut up. It was, I was fairly sure, all an act. One day she’d be queuing up for her henna in The Body Shop and someone would push in, and that would be it. She’d go totally bat crap crazy and go on a rampage, smashing the white musk bottles to the floor screaming like a banshee. The angels wouldn’t be able to help her then.

A sharp nudge from Sinead brought me back to reality. ‘Will you listen?’

Smiley mirror lady turned again and shushed us this time. I hadn’t technically said anything, but as I suspected mirrored skirt lady was a secret psychopath, I thought I’d be quiet.

Anyway, I was listening. Sort of. There was something about not fearing your inner goddess, blah blah blah, something about fearing change, something about embracing change, not fearing change and it was all quite frankly a load of nonsense. It was all so wishy washy, and I couldn’t see how you could embrace change if you didn’t have a clue what you wanted to change in the first place. You needed some kind of plan for doing that. Sinead’s ‘follow your heart’ philosophy was all very well if you knew what your heart wanted to do in the first place. I shuffled uncomfortably in my seat and slumped down and folded my arms. I was momentarily distracted by weird trousers bloke’s backside. Not in a ‘checking out his backside’ kind of way, simply wondering about the trousers and where he’d bought them. I bet Doris had better curtains than that. I tutted.

Sinead gave me another dig. Chelsea Aurora Moonbeam instructed us to close our eyes. I looked at Steph to see if she had closed her eyes. They were half closed. I closed my eyes.

‘Take three deep breaths. Visualise who you want to be. Maybe it’s someone you know. Someone people love to be around. What does she look like? This could be the woman you want to be, the woman you want to become.’

I wasn’t very good at this stuff and I didn’t really want to play but I did see a blurry figure coming into view. It was bloody Doris. Oh God, it’s Doris. Why am I thinking of Doris?

‘How does she walk? How does she move? Is that how you move? How you would like to move?’ Ms Moonbeam was almost singing the words.

Get out of my head Doris. Think of someone else. Anyone else. Oh good lord. Doris again? Really? ‘Can you imagine what it is like to be her? What does it feel like?’

Oh God. It would feel vile, and I wouldn’t be able to operate a computer, and I’d drink Coftea and I’d enjoy it. I desperately tried to think of someone else.

‘Now imagine you are stepping into her body, you are becoming her. This is your inner goddess and you’re reconnecting with her. Doesn’t that feel good? You can be like her. Embrace her.’ I looked around at Steph, her eyes fully closed now. I tried to keep my eyes open so I could escape my Doris vision but Chelsea Aurora Moonbeam’s voice was so soothing and hypnotic. As much as I tried to resist, there I was stepping into Doris, sealing my fate as a mad cat lady.

‘Breathe it in.’ said Chelsea, making lots of oohing and ahhing noises. ‘Doesn’t it feel wonderful?’

No, it didn’t feel wonderful. It felt like crap.

Chapter Five

‘I can’t believe she signed my book. So inspiring. Wasn’t it wonderful?’ Sinead was ecstatic in the cab on the way to The Swan as she hugged a copy of ‘
You Can Do It
’ by Chelsea Aurora Moonbeam.

‘It was okay actually. I quite enjoyed it.’ said Steph and she sounded like she meant it; she definitely seemed a lot calmer than normal. I didn’t say anything and just looked out the window. I couldn’t believe Steph had liked it. All of it was rubbish. After the stupid visualisation part, Chelsea Aurora Moonbeam went on and on about how you had to seize your destiny, but how could you do that if you didn’t know what your destiny was in the first place?

My phone rang. It was Kirk.

‘Where the bloody hell are you all?’ he shouted, always the drama queen. ‘I’m having to do the picture round on my own, there’s twenty bloody questions this week. I’m a nervous wreck!’

‘Calm down Kirk,’ I said soothingly. ‘We’ll be there in a second. Isn’t Gav with you?’

‘He’s not coming. But there’s someone else here I want you to meet. His name is Brian and he’s gorgeous.’