My amazing sister-in-law, Wilcey, is packing her bags ready to go to Costa Rica where she’s going to walk miles through treacherous conditions whilst raising money for MacMillan (her donation page is here). It sounds pretty serious stuff with poisonous snakes, bugs the size of buses, steep hills, hot weather and not a Marriott Hotel in sight. Quite a lot of camping and rough living involved, I suspect.
I too am packing my bags and off to camp, but I don’t think mine is going to be anything like as scary as Wilcey’s, nor for such a good cause, for I am off to Camp NaNoWriMo, which is a follow on from the novel writing month of last November. I’m going to be tucked up in a writers’ cabin, with nineteen others, and we’ll all be working on our stuff. I’m revising and editing to try and get my very rough first draft into some sort of shape, others are writing from scratch, and one of our gang is going to write lyrics, so there should be plenty to chat about – and sing along to – around the camp-fire.
With modern technology being so clever an’ all, the camp is virtual. This has many advantages – not having to share a bathroom, not having to sleep on the floor, not having to eat sausages that are burnt on the outside whilst raw in the middle, not having to dig a latrine, not having drizzly rain trickling down my neck while trying to create fire from two sticks, not having to wash up for 20 people using just one bowl of water, and not having to drink Camp chicory based ersatz coffee. Wilcey, on the other hand, will probably experience all this and more. So @Wilcey – wishing you all the very best of British for your trip, I hope you have a fabulous time and raise lots of money. I shall think of you, whilst hoping that our lyricist can do better than Ging Gang Goolie …. something, I fear, you may be forced to sing around your campfire. Lots of love xxx
Quote from Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh by Allan Sherman