At long last, my husband Tim and I got a chance to put up my lovely new tent to try it out due to all the nice weather we’ve been having lately.

I got it specially for the “Masquepony” Street Arts Camping Festival, (see previous posts), though I expect that it will be useful for other things too.

I shall be performing “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” on the 19th, but we are going to watch shows on the 18th and camp overnight too.

I unfortunately got rather stroppy with poor long suffering Tim as we struggled to work together as a team to erect the tent.  Being the daughter of a Scout Leader, I know all about the proper procedure for erecting and striking tents.  Tim has never been a Scout and his main camping credentials come from his stopping the family tent blowing off the top of a cliff in Whitby when he was a very small child, (by running to get help from some strange men).  Unfortunately, Tim is extremely tempted, being a man, to pretend he does know about erecting tents.

I made the mistake of deferring to him when we were camping in my brother’s tent in the Netherlands and went along with his choice of camp-site.  This was in a dip and all the water got in when it rained in the night and we relocated the tent to a raised area the next day.  After this incident I vowed that I would take charge of all matters camping and ignore Tim’s opinions on all points.

Unfortunately, this put me into an aggressive drill sergeant mode while we were attempting to erect the new tent.  I lost any vestiges of patience and all sense of humour was diverted into sarcasm and snide remarks.  It didn’t help that I had read all of the instructions thoroughly previously and Tim hadn’t.  With over enthusiastic forthrightness he would suggest doing things in ways that I knew would not work.

Eventually the tent was up and not too lopsided or wrinkly in the wrong places, (I blame Carry On Camping for all the Double Entendres that I have been striving mightily to avoid in this post).  As instructed in the “Tent Commandments” from the tent supplier, Tim went inside the tent while I watered it thoroughly with a watering can on the outside to “weather” it and check for leaks.  There weren’t any.

I promised myself I would behave nicely and be a model of patience when we were taking the tent down again the following day, and I managed a little better but would probably not have won a Happy Camper competition.  I hope that it will become easier and more enjoyable with practice.

We have also got new dedicated pages for schools and for theatres on the main Rough Magic Theatre website now.  Getting webpages formatted correctly seems to be even more frustrating than getting tents to behave themselves, but we got there in the end.  You will also notice a new page on this blog, which tells you “Where You Can See Me”.  This is going to be updated as and when new dates are confirmed and when more information about existing dates becomes available.

I have now had a meeting with Alison Jones of Pioneer Projects about “My Last Carnival” which is what they are calling the entertainment accompanying the “My Last Car” project and exhibition in High Bentham.  She likes my ideas about the Horse Automaton, so now I’ve got to try and work out how to make it for real, and what materials to use.

I hope to use reclaimed and recycled materials where possible, but this will depend on what is available.  So, something is definitely going to happen, watch this space to see exactly what!