Cornish, Dawnish......

Well, for the last two mornings, The Beard has woken to dawn breaking through the widows of a transit van.... or even the windows of one..... contrary to the perceived meaning of that pseudo-sentence, we are not plagued by early rising female burglars, and neither has the Beard yet received his just desserts and been rendered homeless.... no, instaed the pitching abilities of Beard junior and his accomplice left the tent I was due to inhabit wetter inside than out, and, discretion being the better part of the virtue of your choice, I decided to inhabit the rear cargo compartment of my box on wheels.... which was comfier than I thought it would be, with my cargo blankets laid beneath me, and a 4 season Blacks sleeping bag.... in fact, it was a lot comfier than the alst van I slept in, which was an Astramax, if anyone remembers those..... and I'm sorry if you do... although, to be honest, they remain my favourite car based van.. but i digress... the camp in question was laid on at a beautiful campsite owned by our Scout District, and involved our Cubs, and their leaders... one of whom had planned the whole thing.. so at least we knew who to blame.... for a first camp, it was quite successful.... more so than many other first camps I've been on.. so kudos to Baloo for the event... and to good old Jim for bringing his spinny-thging target, which made the shooting far more worthwhile.... but before this degenerates into some Scouting blog (and what sort of person would involve himself with such a thng... cough, cough...) I shall attempt to vainly make some point to replace the one I was going to make and have now forgotten.... waking in a strange environment can be a tricky thing... admittedly, I 've woken in some very strange ones in my time, from cardboard boxes (of which more later) to vans, to other peoples gardens.... most of my awakenings have been under canvas of one type or another, and it is only when opening the flaps that the strange surroundings take hold with that feeling of "where am I???" which seems to not occur on a regular holiday.... I rarely get that feeling nowadays, accustomed as I am to spending most of my summer weekends in fields, but it still occurs.. not to the extent to which it consumed an erstwhile friend of muine, luckily.. once, waking in someone elses house after a party, he went to where his bathroom would have been, and proceeded to perform the most necessary of his ablutions in a totally innappropriate room.... to the horor of his hosts... now, a certain young lady of my acquaintance is currently ensconsed in one of the many equivalents of Alan partridge's Travel Tavern (hopefully not a sordid little grief hole.... ) down in the Summer Country of Kernow.... there are many such places masquerading as hotels the world over, the most notorious of course being the Holiday Inn and the Granada Travelodge.. myself and Beard Junior stayed in the York one once, simply because the YHA was booked solid.... and it was not a bad experience, but that was possibly due to the fact that we spent only the hours from 10 till 8 within its walls, and for most of that we were asleep.. and tired in a far off land, a bed is a bed.... but yet again I digresss... or maybe not... now, the view from our window was a surprisingly picturesque drainpipe and yard-with-bins aspect, but luckily the window was so small and high thatin order to view it we had to move the trouser press so that we could get the sofa bed close enough to stand on.... and then wondered why we had bothered.. even more fantastically, we found that we had allegedly the best view of the hotel... looking up we could vaguely make out the sky through the orange glow of Wetherspoons... on the floor below, the same angle took in the greasy kitchen vent of the same establishment.. or so I was led to believe... but it reminded me of something Jasper Carrott (or possibly Billy Connelly.. who may or may not be the same person...) said on stage.. that before going to bed, he would write a message on toilet paper and stick it to the ceilking, so that on waking he would be greeted by the words... "YOU ARE IN SHEFFIELD!" or wherever he was... simply because the sameness of these places had led him to ask one night how everyone in Manchester was, to be greeted by silence from the Swindon crowd he was addressing... even more embarassingly, he allegedly walked around a German town for three hours believing himself to be in France.... but yet again my point evades me.... except to say that this sameness is, in small ways, a seemingly good thing... at lerast we all know that wherever we are we can have flat trousers... but in other ways, it is eroding the individuality of towns and villages, and, even more frighteningly, the very individuality of individuals... as the places around us conform to each other, we attempt to rebel, and show our individuality by our choices of clothes and behaviours, without even realising that we are being conned into conforming...everyone jumping everybody elses train, as the cure would have it.... for if everyone's style was completely different, then copying someone would be non conformist.... but it isn't... biut it grows late, and the Beard possibly needs to sleep... but not in a van this time.... so, until we are all lying there in the Start Suite (sorry to Mac Davies), Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!