Necessary things

By: Blonde One

Blonde Two will tell you that I don’t go to many places without my pencil case. It’s been on every DofE expedition with me, it’s been camping on Dartmoor during Ten Tors training and it comes on most Blonde One family holidays too. A shocking thing happened recently … I left my pencil case behind for our OS trip to London! It was a tough decision but the weight of my rucksack made the decision slightly easier.

Leaving it behind got me thinking why I take it everywhere: what is in it that’s so important?

Here’s the answer …

The 13 pens could be issued to the 2 Ten Tors teams and one reserved, for writing emergency route cards. The 3 and 2 half pencils could be for the staff to check route cards. Each pen and pencil has its own story and history so I would have to carefully match them to the user. Who would get the ‘Silly Moo’ pen for instance?!
The 2 memory sticks could have all of the silliness that the Two Blondes create saved on them just in case we have memory failure (quite possible).
The dice could be used for all sorts of decision making: roll even to get out of bed, roll odd to stay put. Roll to decide how many Jelly Babies to eat. Roll to decide the order of who gets to use the conveniently placed bush when you need a wee.
All sorts of paper clips, coloured and stripey, could mark the right place on the map. They could be unfolded and used as a map pointy stick instead of a blade of grass. In an emergency hair situation they could be used as a hairclip.
The page markers would be very useful to remind us of why we do it when it’s bucketing down and blowing a hooly. We could stick them to the map as a reminder for next time. They would also be handy for adding useful map information that we discover along the way: you know the kind of thing – this bog is impassable, this is a good place to camp, this is roughly where I lost my glove, etc, etc.
The keys (I don’t know what they open) might be useful for prizing out stones from boots.
The pearl bead is definitely a gift for the pixies so that we don’t get ‘pixie led’ (lost) or sent into a bog.
Broken laces would not be a problem if the treasury tags were used to replace them.
The Isle of Man pin might be a useful conversation starter if I casually dropped it at the feet of some interesting looking people.