By: Blonde Two
When you choose to spend your weekends hanging around in draughty mess tents that are carpeted with ankle deep mud (I have very low ankles!), the only way to stop madness setting in is to find interesting ways of entertaining yourselves. We Blondes are very, very good at this. So good, in fact, that Little-Miss-Blonde was heard to say, “You two are mad, all you do is make noises at each other and then laugh.”
One of our games for Ten Tors this year was called, “Inventing” (I think we invented it!) There was plenty of necessity around with blowy down tents and flappy windows but we think that Blondes are the real mother of invention. Let me give you a couple of examples;
The “truck-lorry-bus” – The “truck-lorry-bus” is very clever, it can be whatever you need it to be at the time (the army have something a bit like it). It can transport people, pull you out of the mud and even empty your Portaloos. Very useful you say but the very best thing about a “truck-lorry-bus” is that when it reverses, it plays the theme tune from “Chariots of Fire” – either that or I was so tired that I was reliving that early morning Ten Tors alarm call over and over again.
The “desk-table-worktop” – This invention is necessary when your tent is so covered in mud that you have to put all of the equipment that you have rescued from the weather onto your tables in order to avoid it sinking forever into an Okehampton field. The one table that you have left becomes the “desk-table-worktop”. Being Blonde, we soon had a slick system for table conversion and didn’t once end up eating dinner with our elbows in the washing up water.
The “desk-top-bin” – This sits on your “desk-table-worktop” and looks quite a lot like a cardboard box. It is much easier to put rubbish into than the thin, dangly, black bin bag that is hanging at face height from the tent pole. Scraping baked beans off plates at height can be very dangerous!
I am fairly sure that Blonde One and Little-Miss-Blonde will remind me of some other inventions when I see them. I am even more sure that most of you will think us completely mad after reading this post. I am even doubting my own sanity.
I am compelled to bring to your attention my old friend James Thurber again and his little story, The Unicorn in the Garden, (The Thurber Carnival – it was published in Penguin way back).
Summary:
Husband gets up in morning, leaves wife in bed.
He sees a unicorn in the garden, goes back to tell wife.
She says he is stupid. He goes back to check and returns to wife to re-confirm.
Wife says he is mad, says she is going to call the loony-bin to have him taken away.
Loony-bin men arrive. She says “that’s him, he says he’s seen a unicorn in the garden”
They assume she is mad and cart her off.
Please may I have a Unicorn?
No because we have invented something much, much better. It is called the UniBlonde!
A world of madness just waiting out there for us all to find!
Not at all mad. Necessity is the mother of invention but who the heck was the father? He must be the mad one! (The grandmother isn’t mad either!) Love, Mum x
You sure about that?!?
No, no! It’s not the Blondes who are mad! It’s all those rather finickey people who pounce on the smallest sq mm of mud with a dustpan and brush, mow the grass until within an atom of its life, gasp with horror at the slightest whiff of sweat, and dust every corner of the house before breakfast who are mad! Blondedom rules with complete sanity!
My goodness you are right. Why people try to avoid a kitchen carpet covered in worms is beyond me!