Chapter 4
It took a little longer than Annie had anticipated to pick out a tent. The outdoor supplies store she had found herself in had such a large selection of camping material, with huge variances in prices of the tents, that it was hard to choose.
Thomas, the gangly young salesman, had probably thought that Annie would be a quick and easy sell when she told him, “I need anything good that will last a week,” but in the end it took him over an hour, stomping in and out of the stockroom with accessory after accessory before she made up her mind.
Eventually though Thomas had got her to settle on a pink pop-up tent. Annie didn’t want the trouble of setting a normal tent with all those poles to deal with. Much easier to just open the bag and have it explode into life with minimal effort, she thought. Thomas gave her a demonstration on how to put the tent back into the bag.
“It’s easy enough,” he said without confidence that Annie would actually find it easy, “you lift this handle, push it under here, and pull it up.”
“OK, I can do that,” Annie said, studying the movements.
“Lift, push, and pull,” Thomas said, as a made each motion.
Annie had no clue how he was doing it. The tent seemed to disappear back into the bag and despite watching Thomas’s quick hands with intent, she had no idea how he was doing it.
“Got it?,” he was asking her.
“Yea…well, I’ll figure it out,” she replied with little confidence.
“She won’t,” Thomas thought.
To go along with the tent she had decided to get a nice blow up mattress, a comfy, soft feeling sleeping bag, and a small lamp that she could hang from the roof of the tent when it got dark.
“Any suggestions for anything else I might need?” Annie asked.
“You’ll need a sealant too, in case it rains,” Thomas offered.
Annie peaked out of the window at the blazing sun and blue skies.
“I think I’ll be OK. What else would I need?”.
“What about a stove or utensils? Will you be doing your own cooking?” he suggestion, with little motivation; he was quite ready for Annie to leave now.
“Probably not?” she said, as if it was a thought she had spoken aloud, “what else have you got?”
“What about chairs?” Thomas tried, wishing she would just pay and leave.
“I can sit in the car....anything else?”
Thomas didn’t want to sell anymore, he’d had enough after Annie spent 30 minutes trying to decide which of the two shades of purple tent available was best. As far as he was concerned they were the same colour. It had been a full hour of his time now, any other customer would be long gone at this point, he thought.
“No you have everything you need, let’s take this to the checkout” he answered quickly, grabbing the gear and racing to the counter for one of his other colleagues to deal with.
Though Thomas was glad to see the sight of her leaving the store with her bags full of her new camping gear, Annie was actually very pleased with her haul. She like a real explorer now as she weaved her way through the car park towards her rental car. Chucking everything in the backseat she wondered how many other women had done this in the past, throwing off their chains and ‘going wild’.
“I’m a female Bear Grylls,” she thought, imagining a book deal and a TV series; Annie Goes Wild.
“Maybe I’ll start a blog about it,” was the next thought, one she considered a little too seriously.
Starting the car she attempted to set the sat-nav for Castlebar, halfway between Sligo and Galway. It was a good stop off point on the way and Thomas had recommended a couple of campsites that were in walking distance of the town centre.
…
Around ten miles after leaving Sligo a feeling of Deja Vu was coming over Annie. The sunny skies were slowly being taken over by coating of ominous black clouds and her sat-nav was now providing directions to Belfast instead of Castlebar.
She gave the sat-nav a light punch in the vain hope that it would reset itself. Instead, the sucker that kept it in place on the dashboard came loose and it fell from the dash, rolling under the passenger seat and out of sight.
“Damn,” she said.
It was basically a straight motorway all the way there, so she wasn’t worried about the sat-nav; it was the clouds that were causing her most concern.
“Should I go back and get the sealant?” Annie pondered, “what if the tent does leak?”
She checked her watch: 5:20pm. No, she needed to keep going, it would be after 6 o’clock by the time she would arrive in Castlebar and she had to make sure there was a campsite with room for the night. And, after all, the tent was brand new so it wouldn’t leak on the first night, at least. She could get sealant tomorrow and seal it then.
Taking the exit on the N17 motorway and joining the N5, she heard the first rumble of thunder. Castlebar was only twenty minutes away now as the thunder continued to roll somewhere in the distance, the rain clouds holding off. Holding off for now, she thought.
Annie was surprised by how easy it was to find the campsite Thomas had recommended. His directions had been perfect, and within half an hour she had secured her spot by a large tree. The campsite owner, a small white haired man who had practically peaked over the desk at her, had said the tree was a ‘fairy tree’.
He seemed perplexed when she had replied, sincerely, that the spot would be perfect as she had always wanted to meet a fairy.
Her tent flung itself into life as she removed the outer wrapper and was fully formed within seconds.
“That’s a real miracle,” she thought as she circled the tent; a mallet in one hand, a bag of pegs in the other. It didn’t take much bashing to get the pegs into the sodden soil.
Then, just as she finished the last peg, the rain clouds opened; big heavy globs of raining battered and crashed through the leaves above the tent. She dived quickly inside, kicking her boots off in the corner and trying not to get the mud from them everywhere.
“I’ll put them outside under the flap once the rain eases off,” she thought.
Maybe luck was finally on her side, she considered, as she unfurled the sleeping bag. Two free spa treatments earlier in the day and the rain had held out until she was safely in her tent. She would wait until the rain stopped completely before she attempted to pump up the air mattress.
Checking the seals on the joints, Annie could find no spots where the water could seep in, so she lay back, wiggled her way into the sleeping bag and watched the rain bouncing off the roof of the tent, listening to the wind whistling between the branches of the fairy tree.