Friday Night

My favourite night of the week and, as I warn my friends, I can be a little bit dangerous. A combination of being excited, tired and champagne tends to do it. So it was a sad Friday night last year that found me on a Cub camp, trying to put up a tent in the dark with eight eight-year-old girls and no instructions.

‘Sweetie,’ I pleaded to the one member of the group with a torch strapped to her head, ‘Can you just keep you head looking this way so I can look at the picture on the front of the tent bag….right…good. Now can you see where this pole goes? Does that look like it there?’ I could hardly believe myself that I volunteer for this!

When we finally got all the tents up and all the kids in them, I quietly offered the other two leaders from our pack “a cup of coffee”. This is our code for red wine in a mug, hidden for fear of offending leaders from other packs who may look upon our behaviour as naughty rule breaking. – and they’d be right. Actually, I’ve been looking for a way out of Cubs…..

Anyway, amongst our pack, we do have a few kids with special needs – nothing major. There’s one little chicken that I have a real soft spot for, who I did think might be on the spectrum.  She pretty much told me herself after the tent debacle the night before; I asked her how she’s slept. She looked at me like I was a completely idiot: ‘In my sleeping bag, on my sleeping mat.’ I like her even more!