Swedish Spirit camp 2.

And don’t start me on laughing. Are you a woman? Do you post-face every utterance with 3 to 5 gafores? If so you have a problem, if not generally then with me. The gafores in effect state, ‘I have just uttered a banal stupidity that’s totally unworthy of your attention.’ Let me assure you my weak empathic smile thinly covers loathing. People thus think I’m shy or more honestly just poor company. Not true, I’d just rather be elsewhere sharing glorious mock misery with those of more delinquent sensibilities. I laugh to think ‘God help me I should laugh this much’, which again shows the conundrum, the un-straight answer. I clean the toilets as though my life depends on it. Eager, eager, eager, I sense the first signs of smugness. I sit alone to regain my composure. I get my first reprimand. Beatemouse’s tension rises, “You must never put the sponge back in the box after you’ve cleaned the toilets.” “Sorry I just put it back where I got it from.” A dumb mistake I apologise for making and smile honestly; a case of two indisputable good caravanning rules coming into conflict. A combination of arrogance, a joy of chaos and the wonder of imagination make me too serious for caravaners, and somehow this wilderness campsite seems governed by the transparent rules of some local authority. I enrol. This entails visiting six stations. At the second, ‘do I have a bundle?’ No. You can buy one for 25Euro. I consult my higher authority. ‘Sod that!’ “Can I hire one?” A little Swedish “Irski shmooda fa vinta poo?” and I get one free. Station 5, “Do you want a book of life reading to learn what you need to work on in the year ahead?” (70Euros) Sweetheart I’m 68, I couldn’t give a fuck so long as I’m alive at the end of it and still getting some money back from the pension company that’s been screwing me for the last twenty years. This is the work for me, humility, that’s why I’m here and I’m not doing very well. The problem is ‘I know’. My friends also know in a perishable happenstance fashion. We know it’s incomplete, half arsed, problematic but I don’t think we’d want it any other way. It’s my unique construction and I’m OK with it. In fact I fiercely defend it, yes to the death if needs be. The ancient wisdom is good but it’s not mine, not found by me. These days I learn from animals. How our cat Britney follows her intent as closely as she follows her own nose without pity or prejudice. How cows stand and flirt, how pigs negotiate with ferocious intent over food and how swallows delight in air. It’s all there. And in my gut a white joy swells up into tears of just existing. Who taught me that I don’t know. I sense there is a place of going, a wordless vapour loved of the heart, gentle and accepting like grass.