Rhi Axtell – Writer

The day is hot and sunny, and I’m standing in an unfamiliar section of Penarth looking for a stranger. I’m trying not to look too uncomfortable, although I will admit my imagination has been accused of being overactive*. Is the sweat on my head from anxiety or from the fact I’ve just power-walked up a hill because I don’t want to be late? No one can be sure.

*What if the person I am meeting is a murderer/cultist/organ stealer/someone who wants to take me hostage? Julie doesn’t have enough money to pay a ransom! And my organs are sub-par at best. I hardly ever exercise!

Why am I looking for a stranger? Because I am buying second-hand camping equipment from them of course. Nothing like buying a sleeping bag over Facebook Marketplace to make a whole transaction feel shady and potentially life-threatening.

In two weeks time, I am not only camping for the first time in a while, but I am camping on my OWN for the first time EVER. Naturally, I have left it until almost the last minute to remember that, apart from a tent that has been sitting in my wardrobe for the last half a decade, I don’t really have… anything?

Camping needs a lot of stuff. Like… sleeping stuff, and cooking stuff… and maybe a mallet? Pegs? And will I need a warm hat? Do I own a warm enough hat? And a can opener! Don’t forget a can opener (to open the cans – also don’t forget cans to open).

This is a small glimpse into my mind at the moment. A spinning maelstrom of thoughts and anxieties which have led me to a housing estate in Penarth, waiting to buy a sleeping bag.

The woman who emerges, sleeping bag almost the same size as her head, whistles at me from her front door. We meet on the street and she hands me the sleeping bag. I give her the money, and wish her a good day because I am always polite to potential murderers. In response, she, very kindly, does not murder me. I am now the proud owner of a large-size, good for up to 0 degrees (-5 if you have a decent pair of socks), bright orange sleeping bag.

Something about holding the bag eases the maelstrom for a second. I am one step closer to not dying of exposure or starvation on a campsite. Go me. Perhaps I overreacted a smidge.

I reward myself with a coffee and a cinnamon fruit toast from a nearby coffee shop.*

*As I sip the reward-coffee, I hope the sleeping bag isn’t actually full of evidence from a crime recently committed, and will result in me being hauled off by the police and locked up, despite being innocent. I make a mental note to read less crime novels for a while. Or perhaps read more. Maybe camping-equipment-based crime is a genre just waiting to be written.

I am one more step forward on my journey.

See you next time.