In the Wilderness

Tom has been smelling like a trout lake for the last three days, and I have been smelling like someone who hasn't had a shower.  When we got home yesterday afternoon after our stint in the wilderness, we almost had a physical fight over who was going to have the first shower, and who was going to scrub the tired and cranky kids. It had been three superb days of slighty stressful fun.

I have put on about a stone in weight, because we have been living on a diet solely of pie and chips and cider, apart from the one ostrich burger Tom bought me when I entrusted him to go and get lunch while the girls and I watched The Flying Seagulls show. He was severely reprimanded for this error of judgement.

Tom did a Chi Gung class in a yurt ('even waftier than I expected', was his verdict), he sat on a hay bale in the middle of the field and played a piano, he went on half a foraging expedition (terminated when Dolly's Hula Hoops ran out and she insisted they return to the main site), and he swam in the lake every morning.  Betty threw a pot, made a fairy crown and a felt butterfly, and learnt the art of stone balancing. Dolly spent a few short but specatular moments bashing some drums with a clown on stage. And I made sure there were enough nappies, snacks, and warm clothes at all times. I was almost tempted by the 'gong bath' but was put off by the constant gawping audience, and the giggling kids pointing at the poor person trying to get healed.

The festival had a Boutique Babysitting service, which was absolutely fantastic. Their tent was so warm and welcoming that I would have quite liked to spend a bit of time there myself. And the staff really went the extra mile. I took the kids along to have a look at their tent, and they loved it - in fact it was their favourite part of the whole festival. The lovely lady said we could leave them there til 11.30pm if we liked, at no extra charge.

So we dropped the girls off with great excitement and a tremendous sense of freedom. We could go and watch a gig, hang out at the masked ball, eat fine food, listen to a talk, drink cider, anything we liked. We ended up sitting in silence in a beer tent opposite the babysitting service, eating pie and chips and watching for any signs that our children might want us to come and get them. The pressure became unbearable after about an hour: we collected them and went off for an early night. We lay there smugly in our sleeping bags, listening to people stumbling around in the dark trying to find their tents and tripping over guy ropes throughout the night. The sun had not yet gone down when we'd gone back so we'd cleverly avoided that problem.

On the last night Betty and Dolly dressed up in their fairy/princess costumes and rocked out to Mercury Rev. Tom had promised to take Betty dancing all weekend and this was the moment. There was a fabulous atmosphere, it wasn't raining, and for a while we were all completely chilled out and happy.

It all went tits up when Betty and Dolly, in their excitement, accidentally bashed heads, so we bundled the wailing pair up and started making our way across the field towards our tent for another early night. Then the opening strings of the song 'The dark is rising' drifted across the site, and lured us straight back to the gig. Tom had wooed me with this song ten years previously, in a flat in Bayswater, and now here we were listening to it live, in the company of a couple of miniature humans who looked like us.

Wilderness, is a new three-day festival of music, food, theatre, literary debate and outdoor pursuits located among the lakes, forests and ancient parkland on Oxfordshire’s Cornbury Estate - a weekend of freedom and inspiration for all free-spirited festival lovers.   
http://www.wildernessfestival.com/