Random reminder

Press, 14 January 1986, Page 26

Random reminder

CROCKPOT COOKERY

When you are tramping and when it is raining, and when the three of you have been blundering around in the bush for far too long, it is easy to understand how the olden time people became worshippers of the Sun God and the magic of fire.

The Girl Guide Handbook is all very well with its pictures of little wigwams made of dry twigs, but what do you do when all around you is a gusting, dripping jungle, centimetres thick in moss?

You struggle to the lee of a railway embankment and vow to stay there till the railcar comes, this time tomorrow. You chip bits off a pole and you scrape the bark off “standing dry timber.” It is not dry but it does start burning. Sensibly, you use most of the heat to dry the next piece of firewood, and gradually you start to win. The wood for tomorrow is stacked to drain. It is time to think of

There are two tiny tins of beans and a larger tin of spaghetti. A place is found for them to take the chill off.

The first beans go down nicely, counted into equal shares. The second tin also. How fortunate you are. The fire is small, but soon enough the logs shall catch alight and warm you all. Dry socks — even dry clothes — are possible. Coffee, too, for the tins have been balanced. It must be nearly time for the spaghetti ... BOOM. Cinders, ash, and flying fragments. The coffee spread itself on the pebbles where the fire had bean. Plop, went a strand or two of spaghetti from eyebrow and wrist. Rich with savoury tomato, the steam blew over the embankment.

No-one was to blame, for “no-one” had pierced the tin. The long cold hungry night began.