Hi-De-Hi

The campsite which perhaps at some stage in its life could have been called terra firma was less than firm now, having been beaten into a muddy pulp, and that was before 400 teenagers descended upon it. The rain started the assault on the campers, drenching even those with waterproofs and the wind finished the job, blowing a chilly wind through wet bones. Just a normal summer’s day in Scotland then.

The rain started on Friday and didn’t stop until Sunday. The grass turned brown with mud, and the mud seemed to permeate through our whole camping experience.

Fortunately we were not camping under canvass and had sensibly decided on the log cabin option. We are actually talking camping luxury here because the cabins had central heating and showers.

Within minutes of moving in, the girls’ room looked like an explosion in a beauty salon. Make – up, hair care products, towels, clothes and iPods were liberally strewn on every available surface. Soon the devastation had extended to the bathroom and the hall, with clothes soaking in the sinks, all manner of toiletries ready to topple off ledges, and 20 pairs of shoes strewn about the hall ready to trip up anyone foolish enough to cross it.

All the other teenagers at the camp seemed to be wearing welly boots and other assorted sensible shoes. Not ours. Silver pumps, beaded pumps and stilettos waded through the mud and will probably never look the same again.

Activities had been organised for the kids, but those that had not been cancelled due to the bad weather were not deemed cool enough for our youngsters so they spent most of Saturday having sweetie fights in the cabin.

I took myself off to a “Youth Leaders Seminar” where I managed to fall asleep, waking up just in time to ask a few pertinent questions, in the hope that no one would notice my lack of wakefulness.

The seminars were held in strange little huts, which although very basic, had curtains which could have graced a grand house, held back with fancy tie backs. The floors got progressively muddier and then the mud started climbing the luxury curtains. Whose idea was curtains?

In the evenings the campsite had a “Cinema” which was basically another hut with black bin bags on the windows and a DVD player. Despite the DVD player (possibly on loan from George W Bush) refusing to play “An Inconvenient Truth” on Friday night, I saw it on the Saturday night on a second DVD player. I also saw The Last King of Scotland and Hotel Rwanda. All are excellent films and well worth seeing.

Of course, our youngsters were not at the cinema, preferring the disco where the music was rotten but the boys were cute.

At the end of our stay the girls cried uncontrollably on leaving a friend who had moved away. She, however, seemed strangely unmoved, and was more interested in her mobile phone as she was driven off.

I arrived home on Sunday night with some song by Justin Timberlake and “Eye of the Tiger” ringing in my ears. I still maintain that for teenagers they have some strange musical tastes.

Ill - Communication

The weather was wonderful over the weekend. One might reasonably expect that I might have been out soaking up some pre-summer rays but unfortunately that was not to be. Most of Saturday was taken up with desperately checking through my bank statements to make sure that the TK Maxx fiasco had not seen me lose any money to the computer hackers. Fortunately after some hours it would appear that I had not despite the fact that I appear rarely to do any shopping elsewhere.

Sunday consisted of an eight hour marathon training session. We covered all the usual points - Leadership, Working with People, Food Handling etc and then we got on to Communication. This started badly for me as a friend had phoned me on my mobile just before the session, so I was a bit late getting in. I apologised profusely, my embarrassment compounded as I discovered that the only chair available was on the far side of the room so I had to cross between the tutor and all the other trainees. The tutor looked none too impressed at my tardiness and fixed me with a steely glare.

"Let's talk about the different types of communication there are." she started.

No one answered. "Well" she said pointing an accusatory finger at me "What have you just been doing?"

"Talking on the phone" I mumbled.

"Well then" she said with a slight note of triumph in her voice "That's one already. Any more?"

The session edged along in much the same manner with no one willing to do much communication at all. We had to perform part of the play "The Steamie" which was a little difficult as some of it appeared to be missing.

Then the final humiliation. We had to write on a topic and then talk about it for one minute. Not only talk about it, but also be taped talking about it. We all thought of ways of stopping the recording taking place - ie taking out the equipment's batteries, but to no avail. We were all duly taped talking on exciting topics such as "My Holidays", "My House", "My Pets" , "My Family" etc etc - you know the kind of thing. What will happen to the tapes is anyone's guess.

The most interesting part of the training course is that those who complete it get to come back and tutor new trainees so I'll be thinking up some interesting future communication sessions I can tell you.

Home time arrived eventually. The sun had gone down and the weekend was over. My dreams last night were filled with taking batteries out of machines and generally disabling any equipment I could lay my hands on. Would that we had managed it at the time.