Pondering life under canvass

When you move to a new place, whether it be house, city or country, it usually takes time to settle. To learn what the strange noises are, what is getting the olfactory sense going and the general geography of the place. After my last entry I had the most wondrous idea of writing my blog in my tent, loading it up at work and having some strange juxtaposing rants about old vs modern, nature vs computers but guess what? They don't have an ap for it! So i went old school. Even older than pen and paper, older than chalk and rock, I went back to the future and just thought and wrote about it in my head! Very little in my life would I class as pure genius moments. I have had some. It's an amazing moment of pure crystalline clarity, which yields a result that feels like you've been graced to succeed, in the task you solve, with said essence of genii. This wasn't such a moment!

At 25 I lacked the sponge like absorbency of a younger mind. While I push into new decades I recede great thoughts to blank stares of wonderment. When passing into a dream like state, in my tent, having written in my head, with afore mentioned crystalline clarity, words of such magnitude they could stop evolution, it pains me in the morning when all that's left is an arbitrary mingling of confusing anecdotes. But then I'm like 'Wise up Norval! You've got a blog that's full of that stuff. Just palm it off on them.' 

Last time I wrote I was commenting on the glorious amusements of the Scottish summer arriving in April. How living under canvass was the highlight of it all and 5 months would be a quick and enjoyable summer jaunt. I nostradamus-ed myself by mentioning rain, it finally came. However, it yielded much thought on my part. 

The first night I closed my eyes the rain sounded like an epic fireworks display. Some drops sounded like multi-stage, high flying, ooers. While others were long drawn out aaaaaahhhhers. My brain joined in with my ears and created a light and noise show to herald the coming of a new era. Soon enough I was conducting my own fireworks display in a technicolour paradise in my head. While it was an enjoyable adventure for a short period, after an hour of no sleep and with no way to switch the fireworks off, I began worrying. Sleep eventually came and there were no dreams of explosions or bombs, which I thought may have followed.

The night after was a strange one. It started of dry but I could smell the rain coming. Sure enough I was in my sleeping bag for twenty minutes and then the first pop came, then the next, a couple more and then it got more frequent. I lay there in my sleeping bag thinking i was in a giant microwave bag of popcorn. It's just how it sounded. It didn't take long for me to imagine myself spinning round in the microwave, warming up and getting close to exploding. Luckily, when i popped it was off to the land of nod! 

The next night the rain was pounding it out to a different beat. Tonight it felt like there were twenty kids outside my tent with a barrage of water bombs. My tent was shaking feebly under the onslaught. I was inside unsure of how to broach the subject and stay dry at the same time. Sleep came slowly that night too. After that I was blessed by a starry and moon lit sky. It was quite beautiful on my stroll to bed. The massive cat/dog/beast/four legged animal from the deep being projected by the moon, through the hedge, onto my tent was slightly unnerving till I called it Biggles and decided it was actually my guard beast.

Unfortunately, Biggles got eaten the following night by the dark skies, which brought back the rain. This time it was like I had an army of marching ants swarming my tent. The 6 legs of each one pitter pattering over my tent. However, that evenings ant attack was short lived and my new wild style of living meant i was more mentally prepared. Today my new fear is a branch getting blown off  one of the trees and spearing me in my sleep. An odd way to go but i'm not ready to bow out so soon. (If you get the joke on the last sentence you're my friend.)

Overall, tent life suits me. It's a conversation starter and stopper, it allows me a personal amount of space, which yields a musing ground for blogs, it puts off the wrong sort of people and attracts the best. People think I'm a little bit crazy, which is better than them knowing I'm actually a whole lot more. But I feel settled, which is the main thing. So i'll go back to a blustery, canvass covered, rain hallucinating sleepy life tomorrow and report back shortly.

Ramble on..............

Life in the tea and cake lane

So I'm leaving India for a blog about life in a tent. It's been a wild month since returning to the 'real' world of the UK. Well not like snakes, tigers and elephants wild. Nor hedonistic partying or extreme revelry wild. In fact the only wild thing happening is that I live in the wild. Well not even that wild but I do sleep in my tent now.  Pre-tell why a tent? I've got no other place to sleep is the shortest answer, here's the longer one.

Once upon a time I had a job. That job was working in a bar. In that bar I met a woman and we became friends. Funny that, me making friends with a lady in a bar. Now this woman had a dream that was filled with tea and cake. MMMM cake. Said dream is now a reality in the form of a tea and cake shop in Pitlochry. Pitwhatry? Small Scottish town pertaining to the travelling octogenarians and world travellers alike. Seems to be a half way house for the masses on the move north and south of Scotland.

Quaint wee place crawling with touristy traps. However none as successful as ours. Like the ingenious carrot on a stick the powers that be came up with cake in the window! Like the Klingon's masterful tractor beam, the tearoom Hettie's, which I am running for the summer, has an intense power that draws people through the door. No, I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about layers of cakes, muffins and scones, the lure of calorie indecency, the sugar buzz needed to help the weary tourist on their way.

It's a daily occurrence to think that a bird has hit one of our windows. When, in actual fact, it's another hapless wanderer being drawn into a cake paradise. But what has all this got to do with me in a tent? Well Pitlochry is not very well connected to the real world. I had the choice of a three hour commute a day, splashing all the cash I'm going to save getting a car or living in my tent. I chose the latter. For the next five months, after travelling in one of the world's largest tea producing countries, I'm now a tea peddler myself.

I'm lucky considering the last three weeks have been Scotland's summer. So my tent and I are enjoying a renaissance of warm evenings and no rain. The birds poop on my tent and I smile, the bees buzz merrily around me and I become entranced in there wondrous flight, even the cat's trying to get laid I salute at 3 in the the morning. I'm worried that my tent living fantasy bubble will be shattered when summer starts proper!

When it's constantly drizzling, the winds are howling, the bees sting and the midge make an appearance perhaps bricks and mortar will become more appealing. But I doubt it. My reputation as the one who lives in a tent is growing. I'm going to clean my BBQ and get the summer furniture arranged so I can have guests. Every night still feels like I'm on holiday. So it's good times for me. It also means this blog will be a sporadic indulgence between past and present rambles.

Will it make it better? Me thinks not, however, we all want variety in our lives. Not a monotonous drone of similar verbal expulsions. But a waterfall of colourful indecencies, cascading over a precipice, spraying delight and wonder into our face. This is what I'll strive for you my reader.

Till then ramble on...................