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24/8/03 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minervasoloThe screen is jumping arond and flickering madly. I don't like that. I did not just get back from ten days internet deprivation to have the computer die on me.
And on that note, hi, I'm back! My typing is going to be even worse than usual, and I shall subject you all to mad recap of hippy camp holiday.
Sooo... Dance Camp East. Utterly utterly mad. It didn't really sink in til last night, when 50+ Pip, who trains gas fitters and is the strictest vegetarian I know, offered Roz and I a spliff. Then Fillipa (sp? Portugese name, you see), mother of three, wanted to know how strong it was, and Julie, mother of two and wife to a guy to talent spots business executives, was the one who provided the weed. My mind went "but, but, but, respectable adults, adults, respectable... oh, right, ex-hippies". Jon, who spent the entire time in a purpler sarong, under which only about 50% of tbhe time he wotre speedos, used to own a huge IT company. My mind can't comprehend that. People I know at Dance Camp never strike me as the sort of people who have normal lives and jobs during the rest of the year. Having said that, Harry, my mums partner, who's a civil engineer, wanders around dance camp in a orange sarong all the time, and also doesnt always wear stuff under it, so I suppose other people think hte same about him.
Open Air Showers. I m going to miss those. Don't look so horrified, they're asolutely amazing. Cold air, plus warm water (all heated and pumped without any electiricty or gas whatsoever, thank you very much). The only aguely similar experience I can think of it the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, and the swimming pools there too. It's jut ww. And they were even better that previouis years, in that they tended to stay hot. Compost Loos. Don't smeell reat, but v enviromentally frendly and cheap, and much nicer than hte portaloos. Dear god, did the portaloos stink! They looked ugly, they ran out of water, they kept filling up and they smelt hideous. Compsot loos really nice by comparison.
At dance camp, people set up tents in circles. You then get to know everyone in your circle, and cook communally in the evening. It's good fun, but cooking for thirty on a log fire can be a chalenge. You generally end up doing vegetarian stuff, because (a) a lot of people are vegetarian and (b) you're much less likely to get food posoining. We did get some bacon and sausages and marshmallows this year, which was good, and thevegetarian dishes weren't all ratatoui (sp?). There were curries and pealla and chinese and a Blazing Saddlws night, all of which were fun, and our neighbouring circle invited us all over for a 'date', since so many people knew each other. In the evnings you get people wandeirng around in hte dark and sitting around camp fires, playing drums and guitars and improvising the most amazing music. The newbies don't like the drumming going on til 3Am ,but I can't think of anything more soothing. Plus flutes and violins and al sorts of stuff. They might stick that in the brouchure next year, to falstall any complaints. Personally, i find sitting in front of a huge fire at midnight, watching for shootingstars and listening to usic no one has ever heard before and no one ever will again, and occasionally joining in, absoluytely exhilirating. ^_^ Just thought I'd explain all this stuff now, since I reference 'circles' and the improv music a fair bit.
We took Roz with us, or rather she joined us there. So happy, she wants to come back again! Shows how fun it is, methinks. She's very good for the go, too, and we left half her stuff there so we have to meet up again before the end of the hols. I felt very protective of her; we broke her, you see. She sprained her ankle badly on Thursday. :( Good thing about dance camp: 90% of the people are massueres and homeopaths and osteopaths and whatevers, which means she can already walk without limping, which is great considering the original diagnosis was that she'd be sitting down for at least a week. I am also ill :( Really sore throat, or rather swollen and throbbing. Mother keeps trying to feed me soup, but it kills to swallow. Doesn't make a difference whether it's water or splintered wood, it hurts to swallow even when my mouth is empty. And I was throwing up the other day, which was also not fun, but managed to recover in time to watch the sumo egg wrestling (ask and I'll explain) and go to the caberet, in which my sister and her friend performed the caan with multiple other girls (and one guy who used to be a ballet dancer and is now simply extremely camp!).
I learnt CanCan too, but didn't feel well anough to bounce about. I consider it a life skill, and Roz, Clo and I may have to show people our new talent It is so much fun! Also learnt Capeiora (pronounced cap-a-wear-a, roughly). That's the Brazilian Dance/martial art that's on one of the BBC advert whatsits. It's great fun, and you don't hit people, which is useful! And the musics nice too. Oh, nad the Brazilian teacher was FIT. There was much "Psst, Marcello shirtless over there". Mm! There was a Brazilian girl as well, who was in the cancan and the afro-brazilian samba, who was grogeous. Stunning. And bendy. And stunning. And that's the closest I've ever come to a purely physical attraction, and I don't even know her name. She ended up with Marcello though ^_^ Two pretty people being pretty together. Clo's friend Sara ended up with Jake, who's four years older than her and is coming to stay with us on Tuesday, because he wants to look at Gford school of Music. Joy.
Hmm, what else? Face painted small children. Drew pictures. Found Elijah Wood lookalike, who turned out to be younger than us and abnormally thin. As in you could see his ribs, backbone, hips etc, and yet his stomach stuch out futher because it was muscled from doing capeiora. But with his shirt on he was nice to look at. Plus he was really sweet. Guy called Damian, who was in our circle (group of tents) was quite possibly the most alarming nice guy I've ever met. He also brought body paints. Woo! Body paints!
Strange things about being home: typing. Cutlery being in drawers instead of on a handmade kitchen unit oustide. Eletricity. Loos with water. Lack of drumming at night. People wearing trousers. Electricity. Not cooking for thrity people, or having other people to cook for you. Not being able to see the Milky Way, and just Gford's orange glow instead (light pollution sucks!). Typing. Being able to do things after it gets dark, other than sit round a camp fire. Electricity.
And so on and so forth. Roz sugestd we take Tor next time, since she'd probably love it. No fear, Anria, we know you'd hate it. mJ would enjoy it - a lot of women wander around topless (give it a few more years and I'll probably be one of them, but when I'm not camping with family, perhaps ^_^). I think there's soemthing everyone in my groups of friends would love, but not everyone would enjoy the whole experience. The best bit's are teh opening night caberet, where all the teachers show off what workshops they're going to do, and the final night caberet, where all the punters show off wha they learnt at the workshops. We also had a cardboard Karma Sutra, which was hilarious, and very very bizarre. All shadow-puppets, you see. And then Peter, the ex-ballet dancer, grabbed a tennis racket and started acting it all out behind hte curtain, with someone he kidnapped from the audience, which was just as funny. Pete is a darling, and it's very hard to beleive he's striaght some times. Tour guide IRL, apparantly.
So, that was the Dance Camp experience. I'll probably keep going on about it for at least another fornight, until it finally sinks in that I haven't touched my psych coursework and college restarts soon. I'm going up to Cambridge the day after tomorrow, which is a pity because DCE was damn close to there, so it's way too much driving around in a short space of time. Jake appears here the day I leave, so my sister may well dump him in my room, which she better not. Now, I must go and curl up and find paracetamol, because ill :( nasty throat blargh. Oh, and bath. As nice as hot outdoor showers are, baths are good to and much missed. Oh, and lok up Capoeira places in surrey, because that's a martial art I think i can bear. ANd finish reading up on comics, lj entires, forums etc that have hapened while I'm away. So, basically, bed may be a long way off, but at least I won't be woken at 7 by sun through the tent blinding and boilinge and smal kids shouting outside.
*pouts* just heard that most of our circle is still there, singing and dancing and having fun now that a lot of punters are gone. Damn coming home so soon. No one ever wants to leave Dance Cam, not once they've adapted to it. I do hope they do it again soon.
And on that note, hi, I'm back! My typing is going to be even worse than usual, and I shall subject you all to mad recap of hippy camp holiday.
Sooo... Dance Camp East. Utterly utterly mad. It didn't really sink in til last night, when 50+ Pip, who trains gas fitters and is the strictest vegetarian I know, offered Roz and I a spliff. Then Fillipa (sp? Portugese name, you see), mother of three, wanted to know how strong it was, and Julie, mother of two and wife to a guy to talent spots business executives, was the one who provided the weed. My mind went "but, but, but, respectable adults, adults, respectable... oh, right, ex-hippies". Jon, who spent the entire time in a purpler sarong, under which only about 50% of tbhe time he wotre speedos, used to own a huge IT company. My mind can't comprehend that. People I know at Dance Camp never strike me as the sort of people who have normal lives and jobs during the rest of the year. Having said that, Harry, my mums partner, who's a civil engineer, wanders around dance camp in a orange sarong all the time, and also doesnt always wear stuff under it, so I suppose other people think hte same about him.
Open Air Showers. I m going to miss those. Don't look so horrified, they're asolutely amazing. Cold air, plus warm water (all heated and pumped without any electiricty or gas whatsoever, thank you very much). The only aguely similar experience I can think of it the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, and the swimming pools there too. It's jut ww. And they were even better that previouis years, in that they tended to stay hot. Compost Loos. Don't smeell reat, but v enviromentally frendly and cheap, and much nicer than hte portaloos. Dear god, did the portaloos stink! They looked ugly, they ran out of water, they kept filling up and they smelt hideous. Compsot loos really nice by comparison.
At dance camp, people set up tents in circles. You then get to know everyone in your circle, and cook communally in the evening. It's good fun, but cooking for thirty on a log fire can be a chalenge. You generally end up doing vegetarian stuff, because (a) a lot of people are vegetarian and (b) you're much less likely to get food posoining. We did get some bacon and sausages and marshmallows this year, which was good, and thevegetarian dishes weren't all ratatoui (sp?). There were curries and pealla and chinese and a Blazing Saddlws night, all of which were fun, and our neighbouring circle invited us all over for a 'date', since so many people knew each other. In the evnings you get people wandeirng around in hte dark and sitting around camp fires, playing drums and guitars and improvising the most amazing music. The newbies don't like the drumming going on til 3Am ,but I can't think of anything more soothing. Plus flutes and violins and al sorts of stuff. They might stick that in the brouchure next year, to falstall any complaints. Personally, i find sitting in front of a huge fire at midnight, watching for shootingstars and listening to usic no one has ever heard before and no one ever will again, and occasionally joining in, absoluytely exhilirating. ^_^ Just thought I'd explain all this stuff now, since I reference 'circles' and the improv music a fair bit.
We took Roz with us, or rather she joined us there. So happy, she wants to come back again! Shows how fun it is, methinks. She's very good for the go, too, and we left half her stuff there so we have to meet up again before the end of the hols. I felt very protective of her; we broke her, you see. She sprained her ankle badly on Thursday. :( Good thing about dance camp: 90% of the people are massueres and homeopaths and osteopaths and whatevers, which means she can already walk without limping, which is great considering the original diagnosis was that she'd be sitting down for at least a week. I am also ill :( Really sore throat, or rather swollen and throbbing. Mother keeps trying to feed me soup, but it kills to swallow. Doesn't make a difference whether it's water or splintered wood, it hurts to swallow even when my mouth is empty. And I was throwing up the other day, which was also not fun, but managed to recover in time to watch the sumo egg wrestling (ask and I'll explain) and go to the caberet, in which my sister and her friend performed the caan with multiple other girls (and one guy who used to be a ballet dancer and is now simply extremely camp!).
I learnt CanCan too, but didn't feel well anough to bounce about. I consider it a life skill, and Roz, Clo and I may have to show people our new talent It is so much fun! Also learnt Capeiora (pronounced cap-a-wear-a, roughly). That's the Brazilian Dance/martial art that's on one of the BBC advert whatsits. It's great fun, and you don't hit people, which is useful! And the musics nice too. Oh, nad the Brazilian teacher was FIT. There was much "Psst, Marcello shirtless over there". Mm! There was a Brazilian girl as well, who was in the cancan and the afro-brazilian samba, who was grogeous. Stunning. And bendy. And stunning. And that's the closest I've ever come to a purely physical attraction, and I don't even know her name. She ended up with Marcello though ^_^ Two pretty people being pretty together. Clo's friend Sara ended up with Jake, who's four years older than her and is coming to stay with us on Tuesday, because he wants to look at Gford school of Music. Joy.
Hmm, what else? Face painted small children. Drew pictures. Found Elijah Wood lookalike, who turned out to be younger than us and abnormally thin. As in you could see his ribs, backbone, hips etc, and yet his stomach stuch out futher because it was muscled from doing capeiora. But with his shirt on he was nice to look at. Plus he was really sweet. Guy called Damian, who was in our circle (group of tents) was quite possibly the most alarming nice guy I've ever met. He also brought body paints. Woo! Body paints!
Strange things about being home: typing. Cutlery being in drawers instead of on a handmade kitchen unit oustide. Eletricity. Loos with water. Lack of drumming at night. People wearing trousers. Electricity. Not cooking for thrity people, or having other people to cook for you. Not being able to see the Milky Way, and just Gford's orange glow instead (light pollution sucks!). Typing. Being able to do things after it gets dark, other than sit round a camp fire. Electricity.
And so on and so forth. Roz sugestd we take Tor next time, since she'd probably love it. No fear, Anria, we know you'd hate it. mJ would enjoy it - a lot of women wander around topless (give it a few more years and I'll probably be one of them, but when I'm not camping with family, perhaps ^_^). I think there's soemthing everyone in my groups of friends would love, but not everyone would enjoy the whole experience. The best bit's are teh opening night caberet, where all the teachers show off what workshops they're going to do, and the final night caberet, where all the punters show off wha they learnt at the workshops. We also had a cardboard Karma Sutra, which was hilarious, and very very bizarre. All shadow-puppets, you see. And then Peter, the ex-ballet dancer, grabbed a tennis racket and started acting it all out behind hte curtain, with someone he kidnapped from the audience, which was just as funny. Pete is a darling, and it's very hard to beleive he's striaght some times. Tour guide IRL, apparantly.
So, that was the Dance Camp experience. I'll probably keep going on about it for at least another fornight, until it finally sinks in that I haven't touched my psych coursework and college restarts soon. I'm going up to Cambridge the day after tomorrow, which is a pity because DCE was damn close to there, so it's way too much driving around in a short space of time. Jake appears here the day I leave, so my sister may well dump him in my room, which she better not. Now, I must go and curl up and find paracetamol, because ill :( nasty throat blargh. Oh, and bath. As nice as hot outdoor showers are, baths are good to and much missed. Oh, and lok up Capoeira places in surrey, because that's a martial art I think i can bear. ANd finish reading up on comics, lj entires, forums etc that have hapened while I'm away. So, basically, bed may be a long way off, but at least I won't be woken at 7 by sun through the tent blinding and boilinge and smal kids shouting outside.
*pouts* just heard that most of our circle is still there, singing and dancing and having fun now that a lot of punters are gone. Damn coming home so soon. No one ever wants to leave Dance Cam, not once they've adapted to it. I do hope they do it again soon.
