Inspiration
I don’t consider myself to be a princess. I can rough it with the best of them, so when a couple of girlfriends proposed a night’s camping with four boys aged from five to seven, I didn’t bat an eyelid. A friend of mine owns a spectacular site in Mortehoe – http://www.warcombefarm.co.uk/ – so we duly booked in and turned up with our various tents. We’d had four weeks of glorious sunshine. It didn’t occur to me that it might rain. We were halfway through barbecuing our sausages when the heavens opened.
There was nothing for it but to retire to our respective tents and go to bed. And although it was deemed a disaster, there was something very special about being snuggled up with my smallest boy fast asleep, listening to the rain beating on the sides of the tent. Even if I didn’t sleep a wink because I had forgotten to bring a blow up mattress and the ground was rock hard and freezing. At four am I realised I had left the bin bag outside and the seagulls were having an impromptu picnic. I rushed outside in my pyjamas to retrieve it and got soaked to the skin. I finally fell asleep at about six, to be woken half an hour later by my friends packing up their tents and leaving in disgust … I wriggled back under the duvet and dozed off till half nine, to find my heroic husband had arrived with hot pains au chocolat to take the tent down for us …
Oh well … off to the Hotel du Vin in Poole tomorrow … hopefully won’t find a pea under the mattress …
Peter Bright – Small paintings
