So, my first journal entry. Being a writer, you'd think this would be easy for me. However, I live in a fantasy world in my head. Writing about something solid and real will be a new experience. Let's see how this goes.
It's Monday today. Last Tuesday, me and five friends - Rachel, Charlotte, Lillie, Ellen and Fran - set off in a rusted, groaning old minibus to Pembrokeshire, which is on the coast of Wales, UK. We were going camping on a beach called Whitesands, and the weather was on our side; it was hot, sunny and the sky was the kind of blue that makes you want to just stare at it in case clouds come and take it away.
It was a long journey, and the minibus didn't take kindly to hills. Here in Wales, everything is hills. That's how the welsh fought off the english all those years ago. Useful back then, but now? Not so much. Crawling up a mountain at 2 mph with a long line of cars behind us wasn't so bad when we whiled away the time singing cheesey songs at the tops of our voices.
The campsite was perfect. It was a long field dotted with caravans and tents, with the beach right on our doorstep. The sea glittered at us from a sheltered little cove, and each one of us ached to just jump in. Pitching the tent was simple enough, and we all chipped in a little work. I manned the tent poles - I wasn't experienced enough to handle anything more complicated.
Later, we went for walks to check out our surroundings. This was going to be our home for the next three days. The great outdoors! It was beautiful. I soon discovered that an island jutted out from the cliffs, and there was just enough rock to be able to climb to it without having to swim. I spent so much time sitting at the top of it, watching the sunset and the seals pop their heads above the surface of the water.
We did a lot of swimming over those three days. One time, we had a bit of a shock when Lillie suddenly screamed and ran out of the sea full speed. Confused, we looked around and realised we were not alone in the water. Above fifty pink jellyfish had come to say hi. I'd never been stung by a jellyfish, and I had no intention to at all. So I was not amused when the lifeguard chased me with a beached jellyfish in his hand for fun. Hilarious.
Next to our tent was a camper van, and the man and his daughter in it had a box ful of baby ferrets - kits - with them. Oh my, they were adorable. I couldn't take my hands off them, and I disgusted my friends by happily tucking into beans with one hand whilst holding a grunting little ferret in the other. Cute!
And how could a group of six sixteen year old girls go camping without having a little illegal fun? No, not the kind of fun you're thinking about. Well, not quite. First, we all went skinny dipping at midnight. It was dark, the beach was deserted; what else should we have done? Then, when we had all frozen half to death in the Irish water, we ran around the beach naked for a while, glowsticks in hand. Streaking. It's against the law, did you know? Indecent exposure. But god, it was funny. And thankfully, no one saw.
The trip ended with a bang. Literally. There was the most amazing lightning storm I have ever seen in my life. The claps of thunder were so deafening, my ears physically hurt. Furious clouds rolled above us, and hot pink forks of lightning shot down from the sky and struck the water so that at least twenty fish leapt out of the sea all at once. While the other girls cowered in the tent, me, Ellen and Charlie were on the beach front watching the storm. I was leaping around, dashing in and out of the water to see if I'd feel any electric currents while Ellen screamed at me that I was crazy and suicidal.
The rain came pouring down. And I mean pouring! It felt like bullets striking our skin, and eventually, when the bolts began to strike mere metres from where we stood, we decided to head to the tent. The campsite flooded, and we spent most of the night struggling to keep our things dry. The storm did not stop for another three hours, and the rain continued all night and all the next day. And when we got a text from Lucy saying that Michael Jackson had died, we all thought she was pulling our legs.
But get this. We killed Michael Jackson. No joke.
The night of the storm was the night MJ died. And that very night, Lillie had said, "If Michael Jackson was laying face down in the water, would you save him?" And then he died. We jinxed him. Holy focaccia, right?
Okay, so maybe we didn't actually kill him. But it was one scary coincidence.
Leaving Whitesands was hard. We had so much fun there, I hated to go. We deffo plan to go back, though. Soon!
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