Dealing with homesick tremors & seismic shifts...

since the last blog entry we have had some really lovely and lively guests through the camp, and my mood is undoubtedly a lot better. it shouldn’t really be surprising that the guests we are looking after can totally alter the nature of the job, but it can also totally change how i feel about the valley and the bush and being out here.

when we have guests who are enthused about the wildlife and the setting and the camp- whether they be first time safari-goers or old hands who just love Africa- it is very hard not to get sucked into their journey, excited and delighted by the same things as them, and entertained and educated anew by the tales of the bush. they are also, obviously much easier to host- enthusiastic guests make talkative guests, and it is far nicer to spend a drawn out afternoon or evening chatting animatedly over the dinner table, instead of desperately clutching at conversational straws until such a time as everyone has had enough and the polite thing to do is to draw the meal to a close.

the Canadian family who stayed with us were utterly charming, including their two gorgeous kids who were so sweet, polite, enthusiastic and naively child-like (an uncommon trait in most children i’ve come across recently) that the husband and i both remarked to each other after a particularly lovely star-lit dinner with them that ‘when we have kids we want them to be like that’ (not that its happening any time soon- don’t get excited mother! no chindeni babies on the horizon just yet!); the Indian couple who were just delightfully energetic and enthused, despite finding it rather chilly out here; the British couple from Essex travelling with their student-age children (its so refreshing to see a family that gets on so well that even after years of enforced travelling together they continue to go on family holidays after they are unnecessary!); the Anglo-French couple who were totally charming in their ‘petit’ French asides to each other (“Mon dieu! Il ya dix heure! Je suis en lit!!”); and the Canadian couple who had just raised a million dollars climbing Mount Kilimanjaro… i don’t think i need to explain why they were good people, or why they made interesting company! all of these guests have made my past week or so delightful, hosting has been a pleasure rather than a chore, and my mindset is a world away from my ‘tricky customers’ rant in my last blog.

however, i have still been beset by a slight sense of melancholy, which i just couldn’t seem to pinpoint a reason for.

i had quite convinced myself it was homesickness, which would make sense, and i have been very acutely aware of the absence of my girlfriends and my mum quite a bit recently. i’ve always been used to fairly constant female contact, and having a female support network- i’m used to being surrounded by women in the workplace, my close little clique of female friends back home, and my mum who i would speak to at least once a week, and often much more, on the phone. as fantastic as the husband is he can’t really replace the female listening ear, and as i pick apart our guest’s behaviour, analyse our co-workers relationships, and wonder about our friends back home i am often met with a questioning eyebrow and a response of, “you think too much.”.

if only he knew- i’ve spent whole evenings back in London with the girls debating the meaning of a text message or the importance of a certain twinkle in a man’s eye. i am after all a qualified, certified philosopher, and on top of that a woman- over-thinking comes with the territory.

the distance between me and my female cohorts feels massive at the moment- it is not only a physical thing, but keeping in contact is a challenge due to the very limited channels of communication out in our bushcamp.

there is no internet out here (these blogs are only getting uploaded by a helpful husband taking the laptop to the lodge with him on transfers), my British mobile charges a £1 a minute to make or receive calls or text messages, and frankly we aren’t earning enough to make that viable so its sole use at the moment is as an alarm clock (glad i’m paying £30 a month on my contract for the privilege! thanks Orange! and by the way, please stop reminding me about Orange Wednesdays, because i would dearly love to catch the latest blockbuster on a 2-4-1 ticket, but its not really an option right now is it?), and our Zambian mobile can receive international calls for no charge but the only person who has worked out a way to make the calls to us without it being extortionate is the mother-in-law, and i don’t think she is interested in hearing all of my girly chat and conjecture.

3 separate things have rammed home the distance recently.

the first was spending time with the mum and daughter from London, who were staying as guests when i was doing my ‘relief’ stint at the other camp. they were not dissimilar in age to myself and my wonderful mother, and they got on just as well as we two do. watching their easy banter made me miss dreadfully the relationship we have, and despite getting numerous exuberant hugs from ‘Tinks’, the mother, nothing quite matches a hug from your own mum.

the second was picking up a series of emails from one of my best London friends, who has become engaged since we came out here and started the season. she was essentially my chief bridesmaid when i got married- though i never really articulated anything so specific, and didn’t want to draw such distinctions between my best girly friends, she was the one who was always free to come with me on epic shopping-missions, she was the one i turned to for a second opinion before buying my wedding dress, she was the one took time off work and who sat up for hours tying ribbons on to napkins, she was the one who sneaked off for a cigarette with me the night before the big day, and she was the one who straightened my train as i walked down the aisle. she was there for me at every turn, holding my hand and giving me both practical advice and reassuring smiles.

and she has asked me to be one of her bridesmaids, which i am just thrilled about. but time was way too tight to see her when we returned for the festival, so i have still only seen her engagement ring on a photo, and only spoken to her a couple of times on the phone, and her planning is continuing apace without me there to help her at all. she sent me three emails over a period of a few days, all of which i received at the same time in camp, after we sent the laptop down to the lodge and got them downloaded. the first was an email about her planned preliminary wedding dress shopping trip, the second was an excited but tentative message saying she thought she might have found ‘the one’, and the third was a picture of her looking stunning, wearing the dress she had decided upon and bought that weekend. i suddenly felt so far removed from her that i just burst in to tears. i wish i could have been there for her as she was for me, and missing out on this beautiful bonding experience with one of my best friends was just really sad. i know that there will be plenty of time when we get back to the UK for tying ribbons on to napkins, and sneaking her fags, but nonetheless i had a painful realisation that by being out here in Zambia i am missing out on some very important moments in the life of someone i hold very dear to me.

and the third was a message i received from one of my oldest and closest girlfriends from home a few days ago. it seems she is going through a difficult time, the details of which i don’t want to go in to because it is her life and not mine, and blogging about it seems a little crude, especially before the dust has settled, but again i feel so very helpless and so very far away out here. i’ve sent her a reply, and the computer is making its little trip to the lodge tomorrow so i may well get a response back from her then, but the communication between us is so very clunky, and more than anything i just want to give her a big hug, look into her eyes and ask her to talk to me. emails are a frustratingly drawn out way of communicating, and though i may be able to offer her a few sage words of advice in type, i feel like a very lame friend not being able to be there for her more, at what is a pretty pivotal moment in her life.

so that’s it, i figured. i’m homesick. just home-sick.

and then my thought process went a little further- but what home?

we don’t really have a home do we?

though strictly speaking we have a house, it is currently full of other people, and it is in a city that we have denounced and moved out of.

is Dorset home? i guess it is, but we don’t have a base there yet, and i had a startling moment of clarity as i realised not only was i feeling the absence of my friends and family, i was also feeling the absence of any real anchor.

come November, i will have no job, no career, no home to speak of and i will be well and truly thirty. i’ve not really achieved anything of note, i’ve got nothing tangible to show for my thirty years on this earth. god, i’ve not even managed to achieve a size 10 body or properly quit smoking with any kind of enthusiasm.

disappointing.

and maybe, just maybe, that was the real reason for my angst and melancholy.

the old regular uninspired, turning thirty, panic-attack. pretty much a text-book Bridget Jones moment.

so, one evening after the guests had left for their evening drive, i tried to explain these feelings to the husband. there was mild panic in my voice, and my words were interrupted by the odd hiccough of emotion as i struggled to express myself clearly, eventually settling on the simple words “really, i don’t have anything of my own, and that is a bit pathetic for a thirty year old…”

i was half expecting him to utter “you think too much”, but instead he just tenderly hugged me, looked into my eyes, and replied “but you have me.”.

they were the sweetest words he could have said.

and we talked on into the evening, lying side by side on the bed in our little tent, not bothering to turn on the light as the darkness enveloped us. and we agreed that when we get back to the UK after this season we need to put some roots down in Dorset, get a place to call home and fast.

as fun and as crazy and as amazing as the past year has been, taking the opportunities life throws at us and running with them, it isn’t enough.

it might have been enough for the 29 year old me, but i just don’t think it is for the 30 year old who is waiting just around the corner.

but, and I must be clear on this, that is not to say that we are ruling out coming back to the bushcamps to do another season.

and its certainly not to say that we are ruling out grabbing any other unforeseen opportunities that may arise.

its just that to feel comfortable doing those things and taking those opportunities i need to feel anchored to somewhere; i need something physical to tie me down to a place that i can call home; something more than just friends and family; a place that is mine and permanent, that is not a tent, or a hotel room, or a backpack.

i guess this is a fairly seismic shift in my mentality- when i started this blog on the dawn of my twenty-ninth birthday i was desperate to get away from the mundanity of life, be reckless and carefree.

not to grow up.

now, as my thirtieth swiftly approaches i’m desperately seeking some permanence, some stability. i catch myself day-dreaming about shades of paint for a non-existent sitting room, imagining a beautiful kitchen and what paintings i could do to go on its walls, and aching to get all my precious belongings out of storage and neatly laid out in a proper place instead of piled on top of each other, higgledy-piggledy and gathering dust.

so it turns out, after all that, however hard you try, as life takes you down its long and winding road you just can’t stop yourself from growing up a bit….

…just a bit, mind…

the mouse in our house...

for anyone wondering on the fate of the mouse in our house, i know i mentioned him to a few friends in emails home when we first arrived here at our bushcamp, and i thought i should give you an update.
for anyone who knew nothing about the mouse, then let this be a more light-hearted amusing aside than my recent, soul-searching blog entries.

when we got to chindeni i spent the first week being rudely awoken at ungodly hours through the night by persistent rustlings and chinkings. they would come at all hours, 1am, 2am, 3am, you get the idea. it was difficult to pinpoint the noise in the dark, and work out whether it was coming from the outside, or inside the tent. was something desperately trying to get in, or something desperately trying to get out? either way it was most disturbing, to my sleep and to my psyche. the husband learned to ignore it, but i would frequently end up out of bed at 4am in the morning, scrabbling around on my hands and knees, frantically pointing the torch this way and that trying to work out where the noise was coming from.

and then one morning we saw him.
the perpetrator of all the commotion.
a tiny little mouse, trapped in the corner of the tent behind a set of draws, panting furiously and desperately looking round as to a way to escape the torch beam. he had obviously made out tent his home during the rainy season when the camp was shut down, and no-one had told him about the new owners moving in.
he looked quite cute. my heart melted, and i forgave him all of the mid-night wake ups.

the husband is insistent he is a rat, although I prefer to refer to him as a mouse (so many bad connotations with the word ‘rat’). he is still a regular visitor to our tent, and now we have rather got used to him…. ‘I’ve grown accustomed to his face, accustomed to his smile, accustomed to his beady eyes and whiskers…’.

he entertains us with his obedience- whenever we catch him poking his little nose in through the gap in the zips we shout at him to leave, which he promptly does- and his persistence- he continues to poke his nose through almost daily, seemingly convinced that one time we will welcome him with open arms. he has massive eyes, they are so big he looks like he is being squeezed around the middle, and it is difficult to be angry at a little creature with such big dark eyes. he has stopped chewing my new flip flops, either because he is a considerate little beasty, or he got bored with the taste of havianas, or the more I wear them the less palatable they become…. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume it was because he knew it upset me to see my new shoes ruined. so he doesn’t really cause us any trouble any more- now the mysterious rustling coming from the corners of our tent is no longer a mystery I’m quite happy for him to pop in to say hi every so often. I actually quite look forward to his visits.

but it seems the mouse has been taking liberties with other tents, where he is not so welcome. he also pays visits to our guide tents, and it seems that they are less charmed by his presence than we.

our room attendant asked the husband to order some ‘latex’ for the problem. he assumed that this was some sort of cunning way of sealing the holes in the tent, didn’t ponder too much that the mouse in our house uses the gaps in the zipped doors rather than any holes in the tent, and duly put it on our next order sheet. confused when it didn’t materialise, but according to the delivery sheet it had been sent, he went to ask the room attendant. he triumphantly waved a big bottle of ‘Rat-ex’ at the husband, a brand of rat poison, and everything suddenly slipped into place. the common habit of pronouncing ‘r’s as ‘l’s over here in Zambia had somewhat confused matters, and it seemed that the room attendant had no intention of mouse-proofing our tents, he just wanted to remove the problem with a rather more final solution.

i’m refusing to let the attendant put any ‘la-tex’ in our tent.
i don’t want his little death on my conscience.
the mouse can keep coming to visit me as often as he likes. when the sound of his scurrying gets irritating a quick bang on the canvas wall usually hurries him out on his way. as long as he doesn’t start eating my shoes again, or inviting any of his more unsavoury snaky friends over for a party, he can stay.
the husband is humouring me, but i think he is secretly quite fond of the mouse too.
the room attendant definitely thinks i’m mad.

as I type this now in our tent, the mouse is currently doing laps of the inside edge of our tent. i’ve told him that i’m writing about him.

i was always quite expecting to become a crazy old cat lady when i hit seventy… i wasn’t quite prepared to be a crazy rat lady at the age of (nearly) thirty.

a bit of light relief, and some tricky customers...

i woke up this morning in a foul mood.
i’m not entirely sure why, because i’d had an early night and a respectable lie-in (i was awake at 6.30, but not out of bed until gone 7, which in a world of alarm clocks set at 5.30 is a positive miracle).
i suppose that i should be pleased that it is such a rare occurrence for me to wake up in a strop that it feels worthy of note in this blog. i’m quite positive that back in the UK i would get out of bed on the wrong side most weekday mornings, and if i wasn’t stomping about the house as i rushed around getting ready for work, the morning London commute had almost inevitably put a stomp in my step by the time i hit the office.
most mornings here, even if i don’t exactly spring out of bed, the sights and sounds and smells of a dawning morning in the valley tend to soothe my nerves and my spirit and put me in a fairly chipper place.
but this morning was different- i snapped at our waiter for failing to notice cobwebs on the dining table, i growled at the husband for the tea station being untidy, and then stomped around angrily wiping down the residue of glass rings on the bar from the previous night’s drinks. i managed to raise a smile for the guests, of course professionalism coming first, but was glad that their Dutchness and keenness to speak in Dutch, and just to each other, limited the conversation to a few simple pleasantries and small talk.

i think, on reflection, that i am just a little tired, and all of a sudden the job is catching up on me. yes the pace of life here may be slow, but we have been ‘on’ as it were constantly since we got back from the festival; with guests, attending to every whim, making conversation and generally doing our best to be charming. that is nearly a month, and naturally charming as i may be (ha!), it is undoubtedly exhausting to have a permanent smile plastered on your face (just think about how hard you sigh with relief after posing for a photograph that takes an age to be taken, then multiply that by days and weeks!). and we can hardly claim to have been left well rested after the hurricane of activity that was the brief sojourn back to England for the festival.

at the start of August i was sent out to be the relief manager at one of our other bushcamps for a week, and i had a few sleepless nights without the husband by my side, which has not helped on the tiredness stakes. i had a truly disastrous first night- i arrived in the all-encompassing blackness of early evening, at a camp i didn’t know at all, daunted and nervous about the week ahead. the staff welcomed me heartily, but i was flustered at the thought of being away from the husband for so many days- since the start of the big trip we have barely been apart for a few hours, and the camp radios were playing up at the time meaning i probably wouldn’t even be able to speak to him- so my emotions were running high.
in an attempt to calm myself down i tried to familiarise myself with the kitchen, and make plans for the next day. however, despite being assured that the food order had already been done, the kitchen was worryingly bare, and i swiftly discovered that we were missing several vital things, including candles, matches, milk, potatoes and onions, sugar, beer, coca-cola, and both white and red wine. thankfully there were no guests in that evening for me to deal with, and a swift succession of broken radio calls to other camps left me breathing more easily, with the promise that i could borrow rations from my neighbours for the following day.
but i then realised that in the panic to get me dropped off and the husband back to our camp before his guests returned from their drive, and given that it was already dark, i had left the handover notes about the camp, plus the ever vital ‘movement sheet’ detailing guest info and arrival times, in the car. without this to hand, or the radio functioning properly, this meant that i was working pretty much blind, and this knowledge did nothing to soothe my fractured nerves.
the staff had tried to be kind, and they had left me some dinner from their rations- a rather unappetising plastic plate of nshima, cold cabbage and a small, whole fish. as i sat down on the cold concrete step of the kitchen, and attempted to tear into the dinner with my hands (the traditional way to eat in Africa), lit only by a few guttering oil lanterns, i tried to remind myself of the myriad of reasons why i was here, and count my blessings. but all i could conjure up was a desperate feeling of aloneness, and after a few minutes i excused myself to the staff, pleading an early night, and retired to my room to cry myself to sleep with quiet, frustrated, lonely tears.

the next morning i had shaken off my melancholy, and despite having an almost sleepless night- the room was unfamiliar, the lions had been roaring all through the early hours, and i don’t tend to sleep well without the husband next to me at the best of times- i determined to stop feeling sorry for myself, pick myself up, dust myself off and get down to the business of running a bushcamp. after familiarising myself with the camp, making a menu for the day out of what scraps of food we had, and having a bit of a tidy up i felt much better, and by the time the guests arrived i was back to my bouncy bubbly usual self.
and i was thrilled to discover that the guests who arrived were properly charming, which of course helped to lift my spirits even higher. they were a mother and grown up daughter from London, friends of one of the management team at the lodge who had also come with them to stay for two nights. the four of us settled down to a long lazy lunch, and the guests obvious delight in the camp, the rooms, the food, and the lazily sauntering elephants on the horizon forced me to look at the world with fresh eyes myself, and appreciate my scenario anew. these lovely guests insisted i come with them on their evening drive, which turned up a great lion sighting and some very fun sundowners, and by the time we settled down to our roast chicken dinner back at camp i was smiling genuinely and feeling surrounded by enthusiasm, laughter and love, a world away from my fish and nshima dinner of the previous night.
with the discovery that my room was perfectly positioned for afternoon sunbathing, the donation of some recent trashy mags from the London ladies, the arrival of more lovely guests (an intrepid and fascinating couple in their seventies from Germany), and their continued insistence that i join them on drives, the days apart from the husband passed, and despite missing his reassuring presence in bed next to me at night, i seemed to cope pretty well.
because the camp was not very busy i got to make a real fuss of the lovely guests we did have, and over the course of a few days i took great delight in spoiling them with a myriad of surprises; arranging sundowner drinks in the river, where they got to take off their shoes and socks and wade out ankle deep to watch the sunset with the gently lapping river cooling their feet; a secret ‘Bush Brunch’, where we all enjoyed a good old fashioned fry-up in the middle of the bush; and even a private romantic dinner on the deck for the German couple. they were taken aback, but so appreciative- they both hugged me and exclaimed that only once, 30 years previously, had they ever had a private dinner arranged for them on safari. frankly, their joy brought a tear to my eye, and i just found myself hoping that when the husband and I have been together 53 years as they had we are still able to safari together, and luxuriate in each other’s company and the romance of an African dinner under the stars as they did that evening.

so i returned to our camp, thrilled to be back in my bush home, and in the arms of the husband, but exhausted from the emotional highs and lows of my week as a relief manager. and since i’ve been back at our camp we have seemingly had a long list of difficult guests in quick succession. that is not to say that any of them have been unpleasant- they have all been fine and sweet in their own way- but they have been demanding and hard to please, and as such have perhaps made our smiles more forced and therefore more tiring to hold.

we first had a family with a very young child, who was terribly sweet, but it of course entirely changes the dynamic, and when we had a full camp of guests anyway, and were short-staffed due to sickness and leave, trying to keep on top of constant demands for jam sandwiches, special laundry instructions, an entirely separate timetable for the day, and a supply of boiled eggs for morning drives which increased daily (4, 5 and on the final morning 6!), inevitably left us stretched. it did make me laugh- the mother would repeatedly use the turn of phrase “Ah, he’s no trouble” in reference to her little one, which trips off the tongue very easily when you are sitting at dinner with your back to your child, and someone else is preparing special meals which don’t get eaten, running back of house to get hot flannels to wake him up just as dinner is about to be served, finding blankets to wrap the darling in so he can sleep next to the dinner table when the hot flannels only succeed in bringing on a tantrum, and holding a torch and being a one-person audience for him to do a martial arts show at 10.30 at night as his second wind kicks in. she very sweetly smiled at me at tea one day, and told me earnestly how she is very strict, and has taught him that in Chinese culture it is rude to spit out food that you don’t like the taste of in front of your host. i wanted to ask her if she thought this was acceptable behaviour in any culture, but instead i bit my tongue and stifled a giggle as i watched her little son open his mouth and disgorge the contents, a thoroughly chewed mini doughnut that had obviously failed to please his tastebuds, on to a plate while she obliviously continued on telling me about how many toys he was going to get for being such a good boy, and trying all the different foods and keeping them down. i had to whisk away the plate of regurgitated doughnut before any other guests noticed it, and it made them bring up their tea too, so i didn’t get any further mothering tips. more’s the pity.

hot on the heels of the young family, was another, this time with teenage children. though the children were sweet, if a little precocious, and the mother was a fusspot but good natured and grateful, the father just seemed to have a permanent scowl on his face. he refused to really communicate with either myself or the husband, attempts at conversation were batted away with one word answers, and the only real times we were addressed was when he wanted to criticise the camp and find fault. we tried our best to appease- when he said the solar lanterns were useless we gave him one of our own head-torches; when he said there was grit in the water we provided him with bottled water; and when he wanted to eat at a different time to usual we changed the schedule of the day for them. nonetheless, the tension was palpable, and we spent the first 24 hours on tenterhooks, feeling the hostility resonating from him, and unsure what we could do to make things better. on their second night the family were the only guests we had, so we organised them a camp fire on the beach and a private dinner together. they seemed to really enjoy eating un-hosted, and once we had given them some distance his mood seemed to lighten, and he even found it within himself to compliment the food. on his departure he left a massive tip and he even shook our hands, and gruffly thanked us for all we had done, but it was only as the car pulled away that i realised i had been holding my breath for 3 days, waiting for the next complaint or criticism to tumble from his lips.

and so the guests continued, and within a couple of weeks it felt like we had dealt with almost everything our guests could throw at us- some sweet and smiling, but so quiet that getting conversation out of them was like getting blood from a stone; others keen to forget that they were in the middle of the bush and make orders at breakfast like they were in a 5* hotel (“one omelette with tomato and onion, one omelette with cheese and tomato, one bacon and sausages, one bacon and scrambled egg and a pile of pancakes please”…”oh, so… the cereal, toast and porridge we have already provided wasn’t quite what you had in mind?”); some drinking like guppies, so much so that we couldn’t get the wine chilled quickly enough before it was all drunk; some needing space to enjoy their holiday, without being fussed over, and visibly bristling when we did so; others absorbing all of our attention, and requiring continual conversation and special treatment at every turn. exhausting, not exceptional perhaps, but exhausting. and in addition to the usual trials and tribulations of running a bushcamp- staff sick with malaria, mini rebellions over who was going to do the washing up (given the staff shortage), running out of ice, cleaning up a seemingly constant daily barrage of baboon shit on the deck- i find myself weary, and malcontented.

of course, i don’t want to be seen to be complaining. as I said at the start of this entry, it is a rare occurrence for me to be in a bad mood out here, and back in London, in my old life, i would frequently be miserable, moping and melancholy. i would far rather be out here, dealing with the odd tricky guest, than back there, in the daily 9 to 5 grind, battling with the pollution and congestion, co-existing with threatening youths, un-communicative commuters and demanding bosses, under the same grey skies and tramping the same rain sodden pavements.
i recognise that the guests who come out here have paid a lot of money, and are entitled to be as demanding as they like- that is my job, to try and make them happy. but i also take it very personally if they just refuse to be pleased. i have said in a previous blog that i feel like there can’t be many jobs that are so pleasing, and have such instant gratification as this- watching guests beaming from ear to ear and having a holiday of a lifetime is truly heart-warming, the ultimate in job satisfaction, and their joy is contagious. but in the same way, if a guest doesn’t seem happy, i deeply take it to heart, i feel like i have failed them in some way, and i don’t like to fail. so, all is not always perfect in paradise.

just sometimes, sometimes, i wish these tricky customers would open their eyes to the beauty that is all around them in our little piece of Eden, instead of looking for the serpents. maybe then, we could all just be happy to be here.

A musical interlude

so, in amongst all of the tranquillity, wildife and natural beauty of my time in the Valley this year there has been a brief planned interlude of something entirely different. the antithesis perhaps of all that Chindeni is, but something that is equally close to my heart, and that i am equally passionate about. i’ve mentioned it many times before in this blog, but in case you haven’t caught on yet, the husband and i are involved in running a music festival in the UK; it takes place in the third weekend of July, and has been running for five years now. what started out almost as a ‘lets just see if we can do it’ type experiment, has now become a bustling and thriving business venture, and a massive part of our lives.

in 2006 at Reading Festival, the husband, myself, and a few close friends were sitting around a camp fire, feeling disappointed that the weekend had not lived up to our expectations. it had proved ridiculously expensive, not just to buy the ticket, but to buy food and alcohol in the arena (we would obviously try to smuggle some in under the monosyllabic and taciturn scrutiny of the security guards, but there are only so many pockets on my baggy ‘festival’ combat jacket, and a coke bottle filled with vodka and a couple of cans of red bull only lasts so long…). the size of the festival had grown massively, even in the few years that I had been attending, and the site was rammed to an uncomfortable degree. the campsite seemed to turn into a swampy cess pit within hours, tents squeezed together in a field of mud, guy ropes forming treacherous criss cross trip wires for the unwary (and perhaps slightly drunk) reveller returning home in the dark, kids who were too wasted or lazy or desperate to make their way to the massive queue outside the toilets would just relieve themselves in the stream at the edge of the campsite, and there was a general feeling of hostility and pent up aggression between fellow campers, which meant the entire weekend you would be slightly on edge, waiting for someone to break your tent, steal from it, or even set fire to it. the main arena itself was not much better- you would be herded in like cattle through the police barrier pens, past the unsmiling burly, sometimes threatening security, whereupon you were unleashed onto what looked like a no-mans land dotted with rubbish, prostrate bodies and unappealing looking burger vans charging through the nose for a sub-standard luke warm ‘meat’ bap. these food traders would also have a continual queue, not as big as the never-ending snaking lines for the toilets or the bar, but given the quality of the products they were churning out, and the price they were charging, an impressive queue nonetheless.

once into the no-man’s land, you would be free to fight your own battles to get to see the music- most of the stages in tents were full to capacity by relatively early in the day, so to get in to see an artist you would often have to stake a place from several acts before, or try to weave your way through the heaving, sweating masses using sharp elbows, prodding fingers, and sometimes even sloshing your drink down someone’s back just to get them to jump with shock and then take the opportunity whilst they were off their guard to push past them. but I was most often loathe to do that, because I’d had to queue for 45 minutes and pay £6 for the privilege of my luke warm, flat Carling lager, so to throw it away (even as a tactical ploy) was galling. the main stage was open, so you could always get down there to see who was playing, but the swarming hordes were packed so thickly that often your best view was to stare up blankly at one of the big screens rather than to attempt to watch the little dots jumping around on stage over the thousands of swaying, thrashing heads. and we found the sound quality was often changeable- if the wind was blowing in the right direction you could hear the music adequately, but woe betide it changed.

so quite often you could find yourself in the rain, staring aimlessly at a screen of pixellated figures, straining to hear lyrics or melody, standing ankle deep in thick mud, surrounded by a sea of surly, gawky teenagers, a fog of polystyrene smoke burning at your eyes, feeling the dodgy burger of two hours before repeating on you, sipping your flat warm lager to try and settle your stomach, and wondering what, exactly you had paid £175 for.

and so, this maverick group of boys I had come to the festival with, started making a plan over our midnight campfire, to come up with a better festival. one that would be more reasonably priced, that would be a more manageable size, one that could be enjoyed by teenagers and twenty-somethings, and thirty-somethings, and everything-somethings alike. one that would sell quality alcohol, at a sensible price, and where it wouldn’t take forever to get served. one that would provide good, varied, tasty food, from small, local suppliers who care about their product and their customers, and care if they enjoy their meal. one where the emphasis would be on respecting the other festival goers, maybe even making friends with them, and having a nice time whilst listening to quality music in an idyllic setting. less of a war zone, and more of an old fashioned music festival. and from this, drunken day-dream (or 2am-dream to be more precise) The Real Festival Company was born, and 2000 Trees Festival came into existence.

it has been a massive labour of love, and a long journey, and the festival has grown over the years from a paltry 1000 guests in 2007 to 4,500 ticket holders this year. neither of us could for a second imagine not being there for our fifth birthday in 2011, so it was part of the contract that we negotiated when we accepted the management positions at Chindeni, that we would both be able to take a big chunk of our leave early on in the season in one go, and fly back to be in Cheltenham for 2000 Trees V5.

so, I found myself landing into a grey morning, in a deserted heathrow, battered bruised and sleep deprived after my 48 hour journey out of the bush, and whisked headlong into the madness that is a festival site 2 days before the gates open. it was fantastic to see so many familiar faces, and to catch up with the farmer and family and old friends from previous years, and within minutes of arriving at the farm I was hefting hay bales and doing my best to throw myself into the work. it was an effort to switch off from ‘bushcamp mode’ initially, but within a few hours the trials of running Chindeni were replaced in my mind with the concerns and business of putting a festival together, co-ordinating our massive list of stewards, and planning for the days ahead. and on that first evening I found myself sipping a gin and tonic, not out of a glass looking onto the peaceful silence of our lagoon, but out of a plastic beaker by a massive oil drum barbeque, surrounded by more people than I would see in a week at the camp, listening to the contented hubbub of many voices, and soaking up the energy of many bodies preparing for the onslaught of the festival.

the husband and i take the roles of Event Manager, and Assistant Event Manager during the festival weekend. grand titles indeed, but in layman’s terms we are the people at the control point of the site, organising and deploying all the hundreds of stewards, co-ordinating security, a contact for St Johns and a general public face for any queries or concerns for the festival goers. i won’t go into minute detail describing each day, merely because to be entirely honest the days tend to blur into one. we are up at 6.30 (a lie-in compared to the camps) and at Event Control by 7am, debriefing and relieving the night security and ready to shepherd any unsuspecting early arrivals into the queue to get their wristbands. we have herds of stewards to get out onto their shifts every four hours, but this year we were greatly aided by the appointment of team leaders within each shift, who all valiantly took up the mantle and proved to be real troopers and an invaluable aid. we also have a small team of willing young guys who have returned to the festival year after year, and who we trust to be our seconds and to leave in charge of Event Control (they know who they are if they are reading this!), and again this year they were a tremendous help. nonetheless, the increased capacity this year still made massive demands on our time, and (as ever) we spent a large proportion of the weekend running round, ear pieces in and radios blaring, dealing with everything from panicked girlfriends who had lost their men-folk, lost property enquiries, getting the odd laughing gas dealer removed from site, placating traders whose power had gone down and generally staying sober and calm whilst all around us lost (or to be more accurate ‘got off’) their heads on the potent and infamous ‘Badger’s Bottom’ local cider.

unfortunately, this year brought a new problem to Event Control, which in previous years has not been a big issue. as we have grown in size we have attracted more attention from an undesirable clientele- the type who don’t want to pay for tickets, and whose main aim is to break onto the site and cause trouble. we had anticipated this problem, and put in place extra security this year, and extra fencing at the weak points of the site, and to some extent it was quite entertaining watching these little figures with bags and tents sprinting across the outer fields to the gaps in the hedge, only to find themselves face to face with a mass of herras fencing, and having to sprint to another spot, only to find their expected entry points barred again. at one point I was standing in the backstage camping area, chatting to a couple of lovely Scottish music managers, and we had a good laugh at the expense of a group of about 4 miscreants who were running from bush to bush desperately trying to hide from security and the husband, who were coming at them from all angles. the sheep in the field were doing an excellent job as stand-in guard dogs, bleating furiously and indignantly to give away their location at every turn. but despite all of our best efforts to ‘dick-head-proof’ the site, there were still a few who managed to break through and steal things from tents, and make a nuisance of themselves. it is so disappointing, when all we want to do from the festival is create a great weekend for all of the people who invest in us and buy tickets, and a few little bastards get in and ruin it for others. in an attempt to cheer ourselves we did the maths, and realised that if we had 10 or 15 ‘dick-heads’ (it seems an appropriate name for them, so i will use it forthwith), to the other 4,500 people, that is still only a tiny proportion, and the vast majority of festival goers remained totally unaffected and unaware of their presence. nonetheless, any percentage is too high in our opinion, and we are using our spare time at Chindeni to come up with cunning methods to foil their plans next year. i took inspiration from something i heard over here in Africa- at some lodges where they want to discourage monkey-thieves from hanging around they catch one and daub it with white paint. the rest of the monkey troop are so outraged and terrified of this ‘ghost monkey’ that they shun it, and run away from it- it follows them and they run faster and further, and generally the whole troop never come back. i thought we could get some paint ball guns and shoot anyone trying to break in- at least then they would be easily identifiable, and unable to merge into the masses and the rest of the festival goers could part like the Red Sea to expose them, and point and laugh as we escort them off site. the husband had a more straight forward plan- he suggested putting a ring of hungry guard dogs in the fields around the festival site…it may just work, and would probably be more of a deterent than the sheep.

being situated, as we are, at the epicentre of event control, the unfortunate thing is that we spend most of our time dealing with the problems and the few malcontents rather than out in the midst of the happy people who are having an awesome weekend. when trying to fix all of the little problems it can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, however, we did have a few lovely lovely people who made our day by taking the effort to stick their heads in and tell us how much fun they were having, and to congratulate us on another year, and thank us for bringing them a bigger and better festival for V5. we even received a card from a couple, with a long heartfelt message inside about how they had stumbled across the festival in the first year, come along thinking ‘What the hell!’ and had such a fantastic time that they had come back every year since, and essentially we were the best thing since sliced bread for putting on such a great event for them to enjoy. they even gave us 5^th birthday badges, which warmed the cockles of my little heart.

and when we weren’t sprinting from place to place solving problems and removing the afore-mentioned ‘dick-heads’, or racing round site on the quad, we did get a few brief windows of opportunity to enjoy the festival. we got to share a cider or two, mostly after the music had ended for the day, with friends who come to the festival year after year, some of our loyal stewards, and of course the other festival organisers, which makes all the hard work worthwhile. also this year, both my parents and the in-laws came down to the event with family friends, and we got to spend a little time catching up with them, even though we would often have to break conversation mid-sentence and clutch at our ear pieces to listen to radio messages. i think to be honest, my mother quite enjoyed it- she is a big fan of ‘Spooks’ and ‘24’, so in a slightly misconstrued way it was quite a thrill for our conversations to be interrupted by these ‘Very Important’ radio communications. i wouldn’t want to disappoint her by revealing that most of the time they were more likely to be messages about a kid who had squirted sun-cream in their eye at the St John’s tent, or a rapidly filling porta-loo than matters of national security and international importance!

and the biggest kick for me was, of course, watching some of the amazing music artists that we had booked, many of them returning acts, up on our main stage, thrilling an audience of thousands and driving them into a frenzy. I managed to catch some, or all of the sets of a few favourites of mine- Imperial Leisure, The Anomolies, The King Blues, Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip, Jim Lockey and the Solemn Sun- and watching these acts snatch control of our crowd, and take them on an awesome journey for a few minutes, whether the sun was high in the sky or long ago dropped behind the picturesque Cotswold hills, that is at the heart of what the weekend is all about. and despite being part of the organisational team, i am still just as much a fan of the bands as most of the people in the crowd, and getting to watch them up close from the side of the stage, taking the odd photo (or several hundred in the case of Scroobius Pip- such an enigmatic performer that i may just have a little crush on him and his beard), and then turning to glimpse a sea of smiling bouncing faces stretching out to the horizon, and realise that everyone there is enjoying them every bit as much as i am…. well, that is pretty cool, a pretty amazing high.

one of my favourite things is to be at the side of the stage, totally engrossed in the music, and to suddenly realise that one of the other organisers is also there- catching their eye and the little smile that passes between us is just magical. it’s a smile that says “we did this, we made this, and its fucking awesome!”, and frankly, that’s all it needs to say.

and once the weekend is over, the people and tents slowly disappear, the rubbish starts getting picked up and the stages, bars and artwork start getting packed down, and along with it the dreams of 2000 Trees, to be relegated to a barn for the next 12 months. that is when the real exhaustion kicks in, and the sense of triumph fades as the hours pass in the rain (it is always raining when we break down the site, for some inexplicable reason!) whilst we are unclipping fencing, taking apart flags and packing away boxes of pint glasses.

most years there is a plan to go away for a day or two straight after breakdown together with the rest of the organisers to rest, recover and celebrate the success of the weekend. obviously, our hectic schedule made this unviable for us this year, but the husband and i promised ourselves one night away from canvas before we returned to the bush. we had booked into a swanky hotel in Cheltenham for a spot of decadence once the pack up was complete, the night before our return flight. unfortunately, as often happens with best laid plans, the schedule went somewhat awry, and the breakdown was taking longer than expected. i needed to head into town to buy some things for the return journey to Zambia- blankets and books to take back for our staff at the camp, and an extra bag to accommodate medicine and supplies that we had been sent to bring back for the lodge, and this meant that the final morning of break down i wasn’t there to help. and though the husband spent a large portion of the final day there he had to leave site an hour or so before the last things got packed away.

we both felt like we were letting the other organisers down not being there till the last moment, and in several anguished phone calls we came close to cancelling the hotel altogether, but we would have lost a substantial amount of money on the booking if we had, and the pampering we had planned was the last opportunity for time alone together for months. because the husband was needed for all of set up week prior to the event he flew out before me, and took 3 months leave in one hit. it was agreed that i stayed back for an extra few days to keep the camp running, and so i only accumulated 2 months leave, but nonetheless we both knew that upon our return to the Valley we would find ourselves working through 7 days a week without a break, me until September and the husband until October. we really, really needed one night off together to mentally prepare for the long journey back to Zambia, and the long months ahead of us.

but tensions run high after the stress and tumult of a festival weekend, and though we tried to explain to the other organisers how guilty we felt about leaving them to finish off the breakdown they couldn’t hide their disappointment that we weren’t there till the very end, pulling our fair share of the weight. i’m sure now a few weeks have passed emotions will have calmed, and they will have realised that to begrudge us our one night off in 3 months for the sake of an extra hour or two of work is a little bit harsh, and I hope they will have recognised that despite the fact that we left them at the very end we made every effort and shouldered big sacrifices, both financial and otherwise, to fly over and be there for the vast bulk of the work. we wouldn’t for a minute have booked the hotel package if we had expected the break down to be ongoing at the site, and with hindsight we would probably have rather been with them, celebrating together as a triumphant whole rather than as an exhausted couple in a luxurious but anonymous hotel. but hindsight is pretty useless to us now, and i just hope that we are forgiven for deserting the site at the last moments, and that our reasons are understood.

it is also possible of course that everyone was just over-tired, and the simmering resentment that i thought i perceived was just a product of my over-active guilt ridden imagination- i do have a tendency towards over-analysis and insecurity at the best of times, and the days spent breaking down the festival site are rarely the best of times!

either way, as we pulled out of the coach station on a grey, humid and hazy Wednesday afternoon, the shared excitement and triumph of pulling off a 4,500 person event had already long faded, and as we headed to Heathrow for the return leg of our journey i was amazed to find myself feeling even more jaded and bruised than when I’d flown in 8 days earlier. a few choice duty free purchases in Terminal 5 raised my spirits somewhat; a chai latte at the Café Nero, and a Prêt-a-Manger sandwich- both little luxuries that i miss from my days working in Camden; a new set of headphones in the sale at HMV, given that i had stuck my old pair in the plane seat and snapped them on the flight over; a new Benefit blusher, which is about the only scrap of make up i regularly throw on when I’m working in camp, but it makes me feel instantly better at 5.30 in the morning and ready to face guests and the world; and an impulsive purchase of a beautiful chunky ring at Links of London that i have been secretly coveting for a year (it was a gift from the husband, as a thank you for good assistant skills in Event Control). but by the time i flopped down into my plane seat with a very long journey ahead of me, and only a crap selection of films (i’d seen everything that appealed on the outward leg) and airline food to pass the time i was well and truly exhausted.

as we left Trees, and headed for the bush there was only one thing for it- “hostess! gin and tonic please!”.