Mother's Day: an in-tents celebration

So after the parents left last night we played tag and had hot dogs and cake. Lots of people had brought cake but the biggest and most chocolatey one was claimed by the deserving Leaders. The half oil-drum fire thing on which we frazzled our marshmallows yesterday destroyed quite a lot of the church garden by spewing embers in the wind so we weren't allowed to have a real camp-fire, because there was no dedicated fire-pit in a suitable location. And while there were all these stone tombs around, just saying.

Anyway so the Leaders made a pretend camp-fire out of sticks with crunched-up coloured paper inside for the flames, then made a big show of dancing around it saying it was hot. There followed many traditional camp-fire songs such as the Quartermaster's Stores: one was 'The cat dragged Nellie by the belly around the farm' and you had to sing it really quickly and we could make up our own verses and I had basically a genteel rap battle with Flynn.

At 10pm we went to bed and by midnight I was asleep. Various Leaders had to patrol up and down with shotguns all night because you could see the tents from the road and we didn't want drunken pub-goers causing mayhem. But the rest of us got some sleep.

Today we tidied up and did the church service for Mother's Day and I read out one of the responses which was 'Soften with a mother's gentleness all the hardness of human hearts. May the holy family of Nazareth bring blessing wherever people live together. Draw all races and nations to be one family in your love. Lord, in your mercy...' and then everyone else had to say 'hear our prayer'. So there was another public performance under my belt. Then the parents came and we took all the unused wood away to put in our garage for the next camp which shall have a decent place for a fire. Funnily enough, even though the oil-drum was burning for ages, we actually made a profit on wood as some other Scouting parents had brought some, so we went back with more than we delivered, and Jof had to walk home as there was no space in the car.

I spent the rest of the day on the sofa because that's when it catches up with you, and I was tired right up until bathtime. I gave Jof my special Mother's Day Simnel cake with the 11 marzipan nobs on representing the disciples.