#One Week - Summer '14 - Outdoors.

One lone portaloo. Bright blue among nature's greenest. The only amenity in a field of rough, overgrown grass and dense nettles; tall thickets that sprang with the sudden jolt of whooshing geysers. And the loo was barely a beacon of hygiene; an anti-tardis of function, an-almost-merger of sink and lavatory, and a roll with the thinnest stretch of muddied paper. I began to cry. I want to go home. I don't like this. T'was also a certain time of the month. Not the ideal context for a night in rural Buckinghamshire. We need to do this, Younger Dad urged, this is the tent test for two weeks time. Oh God.

In the adjacent field was a cricket pitch with a small white pavilion on the farthest side, and tucked behind the ageing shack was an ever-so-slightly-more-refined toilet. The paper was damp. A tap didn't work. The mirror was cracked and broken. And curiously, a neon pink loom band lay unused and forgotten under the browning sink on the broken tiles of the floor. I closed my eyes, brushed my teeth, determinedly focused on the sweet, sweet aroma of falling dew beyond the gaps in the flaking door. I am fine. I can do this. It'll be fun!  

The fire wood was too damp. All smoke, no flame. So Younger Dad gave up fanning the tentative sparks, and the bag of marshmallows remained unopened. She was too excited to sleep. She clutched my hand at every strange nocturnal sound. A bat's high-pitched cry. Wind rasping through the branches. A fire works display beyond the hills in Henley. Boom. Boom. Boom. But as it went, I slept so soundly and when I took those first fresh breaths the following morning I decided that camping wasn't so bad after all.

...and fourteen days later we arrived at the festival. I wrapped bunting around the tent, hung solar lanterns above the entrance; a canny reference point for our temporary home. Around us there were bell tents and tee pees and palatial domes and flags and fairy lights and children tearing around in face paint, chasing the tails of escaping balloons and the path of tipsy butterflies. And in the family field where we'd pitched, to my delight, a yoga tent, and, and... flushing toilets and hot comforting showers (even though the queue was longer than a blue whale). The air smelt good and clean and delicious, of bubbles popping and BBQ's sizzling.

Over those three days of music, literature and laughter something reawakened. Was it the sunshine on my brow or the way it warmed the nape of my neck - the touch of a small downy feather - as an author read from her novel? Was it the tug of war of bass, my auditory canals spoilt for choice - which stage was it going to be? Daryl Hall singing I can't go for that... (the saxophone solo that felt like rippling silk, and tasted of butter-soaked crumpets and melted chocolate)? Trying to decipher the words of Kate Tempest, so in awe of her boundless spirit and passion? Was it watching my girl fly down the helta-skelter, her face lighting up at The Cat in The Hat, the way she created a fairy wand from stickers, twisting and moulding it until she found the correct shape? Or how the wind whipped up before the storm? The lightning colouring the sky in flashes of burnt orange and the deepest purple, the rain beating heavy rhythms on the nylon canvas and bouncing off the grass? Or was it the simple observation that at a festival the English stop being so very English; no one minds the changeable weather or claggy mud - we stop frowning, and finally start smiling....

.... it was all of the above, all rolled into one sweet wrapper of experience. I laughed over my hysteria with the lone portaloo, realising how easy it all was, and how enjoyable; why had I flustered so much? I'd caught a sense of wonder and adventure I'd not experienced since before Little had arrived, when I'd cycled everywhere and spun records at parties in the mountainous foothills of southern France. Life. This was what it was all about. Spontaneity. Creativity. Freedom. The big, big outdoors.... the stuff of childhood I want her to remember, to always be enchanted by....

This is the first day of my One Week series. Due to the amount of work involved, I've decided not to run this series as a linky anymore, but please feel free to join in if you want to...