By: Blonde Two

At around 22:00 hours on Saturday night whilst camping on a very wet Dartmoor, the Two Blondes had a rather major sense of humour failure.  Suddenly, the whole game seemed ridiculous.  We were stuck on our own in the middle of nowhere, in a cold, dripping wet tent with damp clothing and a lot of our ‘keeping warm’ kit lent out to even wetter youngsters.

It is just as well we had camped a bit away from the young ones because I am sure that the air around our tent must have been blue.  There was ranting and raving, there was swearing and cussing and an atmosphere close to hysteria.  I wish I could draw because I have this picture in my head of a small black tent with steam and very rude Blonde words rising from it in equal measure.  We are usually very polite and controlled ladies but this cathartic swearing session does often happen either at this last training weekend or at Ten Tors Camp itself.

We must have eventually stopped swearing and fallen asleep because the next thing I remember was us waking up, looking sheepishly at each other and apologising to the general surroundings for our collective behaviour.

It was at this point that Blonde One issued a challenge.  We were not allowed to use a particular word beginning with ‘F’ at all for the whole day.  No matter what occurred, no matter how tired we got, the ‘F’ word was forbidden.  Please don’t think of us badly here, we don’t usually swear but I have found that it can be difficult to stop once you have started.

The challenge started very well and, to help things along, we wrote a list of other words beginning with ‘F’ to use as substitutes (fandango is my current favourite).  However, I am ashamed to admit that by lunchtime, I had five tally marks drawn on my hand whereas Blonde One had none.  I am not going to admit to my final score but Blonde One kept her mouth clean all day.  I am fairly convinced that she cheated and made me swear by telepathy, you know what she is like with challenges!