‘Hang on. I go get a weapon. We can beat it out of the tent.’
Beat it out? With its hooves pinning my sleeping bag to the ground?
‘Melody,’ I called out, causing the sheep to waggle its head in my direction.
‘Yes, my darling?’ she replied, from within her separate compartment.
‘There’s a sheep eating my sleeping bag.’
‘Well, that doesn’t sound very good. I wouldn’t let it get away with that if I were you.’
‘I don’t think I have any choice in the matter.’
Silence.
‘Are you coming to help me?’
I heard a zipping noise, but Melody’s door into the main tent remained closed.
‘Mel? Melody?’
My teammate, friend and spiritual sister had scarpered out of the back entrance.
At that moment, I paused to consider how the sheep had got inside in the first place. Carefully, keeping the rest of my body still, I rolled my head to look behind me.
Yikes!
Another sheep, staring at me through an enormous rip in the back seam. Wearing a yellow and pink striped bobble hat.
I was surrounded.
And judging by the yelps and baas now erupting from all directions, I wasn’t the only one.
Rosa poked her head back in through the tent flap. Her arm followed, clutching a mop.
‘Here. Whack it with this. On the nose. It will soon be getting the message and coming out of there.’
‘Yes. Either that or it will lose its temper, bite my face and trample me to death.’
‘Faith. It is a sheep. You need to do your breathing exercise. Then show it who is boss.’
‘We both know I’m not the boss.’
‘Oh for mercy’s sake! I come in there right now to sort this out.’
‘Wait! Let me get out of this bag first.’
But every time I tried, the sheep began to wave its head around in agitation, moving closer rather than further away from my all-too-squashable head. In the end, it stepped off the sleeping bag and I hastily wiggled out of the entrance, like a caterpillar sneaking out of a bird nest, and feeling just as vulnerable.
Straight into a scene out of a post-apocalyptic movie.Planet of the Sheep.
Tent one – admittedly our first, and therefore worst, attempt at pitching – was no longer upright. Tent three had a sheep standing in the entrance, chewing on a guy rope. The wet coats we had strung up to dry between a couple of trees now lay on the damp grass, all except for April’s parka, which one sheep now wore on its back.
Uzma reckoned that with a pair of dark glasses, it could pass for a nineties rock star.
The food supply, safely stored in tent one, now lay trampled across the clearing in various states of dishevelment.
‘Honestly.’ Leona snatched a packet of crumpets from the mouth of one of the smaller beasts and nearly got her fingers nipped off. ‘You can eat grass. Look around, you dumb animals. It’s all around you. More than you could ever need. Grass, grass and more grass. We, however, cannot eat grass. We needed that loaf of bread. And you didn’t even eat the butter. You just trod on it.’
