Open Writing

I was stuck in a logging camp with a woman with two left feet, whilst a large dog and something on wheels of a size generally reserved for paddle steamers were bearing down on us at a rate of knots.

The scooter was rapidly sinking into the mud. This sort of thing generally happens to folk after too much cheese, but for us it was pretty much par for the course on a damp Friday.

It was a pretty serious dog, with teeth and an attitude, and it didn’t like the look of us at all. The feeling was mutual. I didn’t like the look of the dog much either.

There seemed to be rather a lot of large men in checked shirts and hard hats about, but clearly singing the lumberjack song was not going to be helpful. They none of them looked as if they wore high heels, even on a day off.

All the same, we were pleased that they were approaching almost as fast as the slathering hound.

The scooter went on having that sinking feeling. The dog ended up being pretty friendly, and the lumberjack in specs was most helpful. He said that we were trespassing, but if we were actually trying to get somewhere on the other side of the woods, he’d make an exception for the lady on the waterlogged contraption.

When we said that we were more lost and just pottering about rather than actually going anywhere, he pointed us back in the general direction of the woodland walk (we’d gone wrong at the bit where they’d actually cut all the trees down and dug up the path).

So we set off hunting bluebells, and the guys with the chainsaws trudged off purposefully into the wildlife reserve.

The track he’d pointed us down led us to a wide beech avenue, with the odd ray of sun coming through the canopy, a very satisfactory carpet of bluebells, and birds singing like anything.

A bit further on, a break in the trees gave us a view of a wide stretch of green wooded country that could have been anywhere on Middle Earth. Of the chainsaws and juggernauts there was not a whisper.

Sometimes getting lost can be a very good idea.

On the way back to Blunderbus, my friend was showing a distinct tendency to list to the port side, and paused to swap her shoes over onto the opposite feet.

I started to cackle.

“Oh god,” she said, lurching on in a distinctly lopsided manner, “I can feel a column coming on!”

“Names will be changed to protect the guilty,” I said.

We’d been in a bit of a hurry setting off, and my companion had seized a pair of old trainers suitable for trudging through mud as she’d left the house. Unfortunately, they turned out to be not so much a pair, as two left ones.

It was a toss-up between those or sandals for the woods, and one look at the path and she ditched the sandals. Hence the somewhat lurching gait of a person wearing two sinister shoes.

“It’ll fox anyone trying to track us,” she said.

True.

Looking behind us, it looked like someone had been hopping drunkenly along beside me.

So in a spirit of pure charity, I would appeal to some kind soul out there to go find the group of boy scouts who are still trying to find a very small tank and a one-legged athlete lurking in the heart of a nearby wood.

Then again, we could go down in legend.