Painting, Trapezing & the Tale of the Lost Oreo Keyring

And so we move in the off-season, just us, caretakers Bren and Ian and a few cans of paint. It´s a strange time to be at camp because everything is so quiet. There aren´t any slamming bunk doors, no meals in the mess hall and the noise and traffic of people and cars is replaced by the chugging of three golf carts. It´s a great time to spot wildlife because all the animals who have been hiding away all summer come out to reclaim camp. Our Top 5 - deer, squirrels red and grey, chipmunks, woodchucks and wild idiotic turkeys. We would include the giant snapping turtle who lives in the lake, but he´s so elusive we´ve never actually managed to spot him in our combined 16 years at camp. Pah!

At some point we moved into the main house at camp. Having access to a gas hob after three and a half years of solid electric plates in Cornwall can´t be put into words, but let´s just say Caroline was very happy. One thing to mention - Americans don´t do electric kettles! All very strange being in one of the most advanced nations in the world waiting for a kettle to start whistling like you´re in Little House On The Prairie, but just one of those quirks. Anyway, needless to say, a few home comforts after a few months in bunks and before three months of dodgy hostels were gladly taken advantage of! That said, we had a huge electrical storm in September which took out the TV, internet and telephones for a couple of days. We had nothing else to do but read and talk to each other! Nightmare...

Our days at camp consisted in the main of scraping old paint off bunk walls, then re-painting them. Sounds boring? Well, when it´s October and it´s 88 degrees and you´re outside listening to music by a beautiful lake where tiny baby turtles are sunbathing on logs, it´s really not so bad. We also got to put the virgin coats of paint on some new extensions, so I hope everyone appreciates the fine job we did come next summer! With working hours of 8am - 4pm, we did manage to take advantage of the good weather with some dips in the lake and some walks around camp, spotting deer through the orange leaves of the changing trees. Ah, good times...

Our bosses are very generous and also let us use one of the camp cars, so we managed to get down to the City a few times. One highlight - we managed to get tickets to see Paolo Nutini after his joint gig with Amy Winehouse was cancelled due to her dodgy excesses. We´re pretty sure he was drunk throughout the show, but seeing as he´s Scottish it was difficult to tell...! He got going after a slow start and it was a decent gig in a small, cosy venue that was only spoiled in part by the incessant jabbering of the New Yorkers who had no idea who Paolo was in the first place. But that´s something that they do and it was the same when we saw the Stereophonics in NYC a few years back.

Jim´s (33rd, cough) Birthday Weekend! That was a good one, with plenty of fun, games and refreshments. We stayed at Andi Arnold´s and started the weekend with some sushi. Saturday morning we bussed up to Washington Heights to spend the morning participating in the FYI Servathon. There were various projects we could have got involved in, but we chose to join our Dave, Diana and Audrey raking leaves at a public garden run single-handedly by an elderly Puerto Rican lady called Jenny. After some chicken curry and rice, we left with a warm glowing feeling inside.

What better way to celebrate a morning of volunteering than with an evening in the company of drag queens! We had a very pricey dinner at a small place in the Village decked out with mirror balls and all kinds of sparkly, fluffy paraphenalia. Our hostess, ´Ginger´, was charm itself and even congratulated Jim on his birthday by pressing him to her scarily ample chest! Some frozen Cosmos and rude lip-synched songs later and we were skippety-skipping our way home up the Yellow Brick Road like Judy Garland herself. The next day was not quite as enjoyable on Caroline´s part. Swiftly moving on.. The weekend was topped off by an evening show on Broadway - Avenue Q, which we´ve been wanting to see for ages. Imagine Muppets with operators that you can see, who are also singing and delivering lines at the same time. You get used to it after a while, partly helped by one of the characters being Gary Coleman of Diff´rent Strokes fame, being played by a woman. Very funny stuff, but you kind of had to be there.

Monday morning we rolled on down to one of the piers on the Lower West Side, where we had a two hour trapeze class. Picture being on top of a huge building with views of the Statue of Liberty and then being told to climb up a 30 foot ladder and swing around upside down. It was great! We were thrown into it pretty quickly and were all managing to perform a ´knee hang´straight away, where we swung out, hooked our knees over the bar and let go. We moved on to a back flip dismount and the grand finale was the catch. Caroline is a bit upset that she was the only one who muffed it up under the extreme pressure, but Jim´s catch was class itself! Had he been wearing some small spangly shorts, the picture would have been complete. It´s fair to say Jim was a very spoiled birthday boy indeed. Roll on January and see what we can do for Caroline´s 28th (cough)!

As a special birthday treat, Ian let Jim shoot his gun at the old riflery range on Girls´Side the next day. Jim´s never shot a gun before. Which is probably why on his second go he got a bit cocky and managed to smack himself between the eyes with the gun´s sight. It would have been quite amusing but for the blood...

After several days of frenzied packing and disorganisation, we were ready to leave camp and head to the City for our final weekend in the States. We were very kindlyinvited to stay at Dave and Diana´s and were entrusted with a set of spare keys attached to a bendy plastic Oreo cookie figure. With a family event up at camp, we were home alone and luckily Caroline waited until the day before we left to throw the keys down the lift shaft! She´s not quite sure how it happened, but it appears to have been an accident of the ´just slipped out of my hand´variety. What to do when it´s Sunday and the building´s caretaker won´t answer the door and you´re trapped in a New York foyer? Luckily help came in the form of a British neighbour who called the caretaker and got him to dig around in the basement. We could have gone without telling our hosts, but the story was too good to pass up... Last time we´re invited round, we´re sure! Luckily we had already been promised a ride to the airport the next morning and so off we went to bed...