Self catering

We have followed the children’s example.

Today the whole family has disappeared into the wilderness.

Oliver is camping in Cornwall, Lucy is camping at Glastonbury, and Mark and I are doing elderly person camping in the camper van on our field at the farm.

We have heard from both of them.

Lucy rang this evening, when she had staggered back into her tent after her first day at work.

She is doing twelve hour shifts. That is a jolly long time to be standing in a hot field, trying to look menacing. She had an induction hour from seven this morning, after which she was set to work being a security guard. She is not security guarding anything dangerous or thrilling. She is responsible for one of the camping areas. I do not imagine that this is likely to be the site of many violent fights, especially between the hours of eight in the morning until eight at night.

She said, unsurprisingly, that it was dull. It sounded dull, but there are worse things than dull, and I would not be entirely sorry if it stayed dull for the whole weekend.

She was exhausted after yesterday’s travelling adventures, and when we spoke to her, which was at about half past eight, she was getting ready for bed.

I don’t think we are going to need to worry about drinking and drug-crazed debauchery. Given the current state of affairs it sounds quite feasible that she is the only person who is going to find Glastonbury Festival quiet and boring with plenty of early nights.

In fact Oliver sounds to be having a rather more adventurous time. We had a chirpy video telephone call this evening from him, and Prime Minister To Be, and Son Of Oligarch. They are not dead, rather to our surprise given their newly-attempted domestic activities.

The self-catering project is continuing, and tonight there was a cooking competition. I do not know who won. Indeed, given the reported quality of the entries, I am surprised that anybody won. It sounded uncomfortably as if the criteria for victory might be that somebody managed to eat some and retain it inside them for any  length of time.

It turns out that the aspirational chefs had not been informed that three or four minutes was not sufficient cooking time for chicken wrapped in bacon, and Son Of Oligarch had a melted chocolate disaster. He did not realise that you are not supposed to boil chocolate, and it stuck to the pan with a thoroughness that rather surprised him. He chipped it off and fed it to a passing pigeon, which promptly spat it out.

The sausages were raw, and indeed still cold, on the inside, the barbecue became an exciting lighter-fuel inferno, and they are being pursued by dozens of ravening seagulls. The seagulls appear to have all the bowel problems that you might expect in consequence of the diet described above, which is not adding to the quality of the outdoor cooking.

The teachers were judging the cooking competition, but wisely decided that they would do so on grounds of appearance and presentation rather than take the risk of actually sampling any of it. I do not know what the teachers are eating. Something from the local pub, probably.

I am sorry to say that Mark and I were not even that creative when it came to dinner time.

We emptied the fridge and rushed over to the farm when we got up, where we spent the day tootling around in the sunshine.

Mark cut logs. One of the oak trees had dropped a large branch, which he has sawn up and stacked.

I repainted the roof of the camper.

Not the real actual roof. I mean the depicted roof on the urban side of the van. This was originally painted in red and yellow, and it has faded terribly.

Mark built me a platform to stand on, and I spent a happy afternoon wafting paintbrushes about and trying to encourage my shoulders to go brown.

This last was entirely unsuccessful. I forgot that I was in the sun, and became absorbed in colouring pretend roof tiles. Before I knew it, three hours had passed, and things had gone very wrong.

Instead of achieving the desired hue of peanut-brown, my shoulders, and indeed the back of my neck and my arms, have become a very undesirable hue of peony pink.

I hope very  much that it fades before the summer ball. It would be a nice colour to paint a bedroom ceiling, but it is not ace on a person, especially not one who is still a greyish-white colour everywhere else.

I put some sunscreen on, but it was about two hours too late.

We stopped working then, and had a cheery glass of wine with Mark’s mother, who popped over to see us. We had some white rum and orange juice as well, after which I was too drunk to cook anything at all.

We staggered into the camper van and warmed up a rather dried-up pizza in the microwave. This had been in the fridge for about a week, having been purchased from Pizza Hut and then forgotten, by Lucy, and a piece of Holy Communion cake given to us by the mother of the children in the alley, one of whom has taken his first steps into the arms of the church this week.

I do not much approve of Holy Communion, but the cake was excellent, especially with mango yoghurt.

We have been out-cooked.