Like many groups who meet regularly, fixing a date in August for the writing group has been tricky so we have decided to have a month of rest, and meet again as a group in September. No doubt we will see each other or bump into each other at various times and places before then, but it’s giving us plenty of time to come up with a splendid piece of writing to share. The challenge this time is to write a story or a scene from two different points of view of between two people who remember it differently. This will take some thinking about, but my immediate thought when I learned what our challenge was, that my mum and her two sisters had a real experience of this.
My mum and her sister Beryl were born a year apart, the younger two girls of a family of four – an elder sister, and an even older brother. Beryl and mum were very close, almost like twins, and although they went to different schools, they remained close, and married chaps who also became close friends as well as brothers-in-law.
Back to when they were teenagers,, maybe thirteen and fourteen, a year or two older. They and their elder sister, Audrey, were in the Girl Guides, and loved all the activities they were involved in, particularly going away on camp. In those days, in the 1930’s, they would go on camp in a coach or bus (charabancs declined in use in the 1920’s) and when they arrived at the camp site – usually a farmer’s field, the first thing that had to be done, before even putting up the tents, was to dig the lats. Lats was the term for the latrines, toilets in fact – a hole or narrow ditch, dug down three of four feet, and boards put across with a gap between two of them, where you had to squat to… well, you know!! I guess the “toilet paper” was squares of newspaper!
There would be a couple of big tents erected, probably circular ones, a ground sheet put down in one, and either bedding or sleeping bags laid out to sleep in. Another tent would be where the troop could meet – or shelter and have their meals if it was rainy. Sometimes there would be extra tents, but it was all very communal and basic – as were the toilet facilities, and washing would be in a tin basin of probably cold water with a flannel and a bar of soap.
While on camp they would go for walks, play games such as rounders, explore the local area in groups, do tasks like learn to make a camp fire, and to cook over it, learn to tie knots – different ones for different uses. There would be activities going on all the time, mostly of a practical nature and to learn what I guess we now call survival skills, and nature studies – identifying plants, which were safe, which were poisonous, which could be used medicinally (like rubbing dock leaves on nettle stings).
This has drifted away from the point of the story. Mum and her two sisters were on guide camp somewhere by the seaside, and the shore was covered in big pebbles. Mum and Beryl found a big round shaped rock which they lifted up – it must have been wet from the sea because it slipped from their hands and fell back onto the pebbles. To their amazement it cracked open and inside were what seemed like hundreds of little rocks. I was told this a very long time ago, and I can’t properly remember the details, but I seem to think they were shiny crystals – but that could be me imagining it. It was so exciting, but they obviously didn’t bring the rock or the stones home, it wasn’t what they they did in those days, maybe.
It was just a story – and I don’t remember Mum telling, but Beryl told me the story some time after Mum died while we were chatting about all sorts of things. The main reason she was telling me was because their elder sister Audrey had repeated the story as if it had happened to her! There were other stories too (which I don’t remember or wasn’t told) which Audrey would tell as if they were her stories – and I now think, she was convinced these things had happened to her. And I now also wonder if this was one of the early signs of Audrey’s mental deterioration which sadly clouded her final years.
I thought of this while I was pondering on what to write for the group – one story, two different perspectives. I won’t use this, it’s a bit convoluted, and needs more to it I think, but the ideas are there!
My featured image is rather blurry, but there are the three sisters, Mum, Audrey in the middle, and Beryl on the end.
Lois Elsden 