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unpacking the borrowed photography equipment, trying hard to remember which lens went with which camera, when noises of an altercation seeped through from my next-door neighbor.
    I peeked out the door to eye the tent next to me. It bulged and rocked in an alarming manner. Unlike my tent, though, this one resembled an orange and white hippopotamus with its butt in the air, and its front end wallowing in the water. Worse were the noises coming from it.
    â€œGran, no, that’s not helping! You’re pulling my hair.” That was a very young-sounding American woman’s voice.
    â€œWell then, what about this?” answered a much more dignified, definitely British older woman’s voice.
    A side of the tent bulged outward.
    â€œAck! No! Balls, now the other end is going!”
    There was a metallic snap, and gently, as if it were a giant orange and white butterfly alighting on a flower, the far end of the tent wafted to the ground, leaving beneath it two squirming forms.
    I stood outside the now collapsed tent, hesitating before asking, “Hello? Hi! I’m Lorina, your neighbor to the south. I can’t help but notice that your tent appears to have deflated. Is everything all right in there?”
    The squirming stopped for a few seconds.
    â€œOh, hi, Lorina. I’m Cressy. Cressida, really, but everyone calls me Cressy. And we’re fine, Gran and me, that is. Gran and I? Whichever, we’re fine, but the tent is totes sucktastic.”
    â€œPerhaps the lady might unzip the door to allow us out?” came a gentle voice.
    â€œI’d be happy to, Mrs. . . . er . . . Cressy’s gran, but I’m afraid I don’t see a zipper.” I pulled up a long length of flaccid tent hunting for it. “Are you sure it was closed?”
    â€œGran’s name is Salma Raintree, and yes, we’re sure. We were trying it out to see how much light would be let in with the door closed. But then I tripped, and fell into the side of it, and broke one of the thingies that goes around making the curved part, and then Gran tried to help me put it back together, and my hair got caught when we snapped the rod together, and then I got a charley horse in my leg, and I couldn’t get it straight, and Gran said I should walk the charley horse off, but my hair was still stuck to the rod, so I couldn’t, and then Ihad to wee, so Gran said we should just take the rod out of the little pocket it sits in, and then it just all went horribly wrong.”
    â€œYou don’t have to explain any more,” I interrupted, laughing despite the note of desperation in Cressida’s voice. I dug around in more of the tenting, searching for the collapsed entrance. “I can see that it just went downhill from there. Are you still attached to the tent rib?”
    â€œNot anymore,” came Cressy’s sad reply.
    It took five minutes, but at last I extricated both Cressy and Salma from the remains of their temporary prison. Cressy emerged red-faced from the exertion, her T-shirt rumpled, and her shorts creased and grubby. She was an inch or so taller than me, which had to put her at six feet, with butt-length straight brown hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. Despite her experience with the tent, she grinned at me, quite cheerful as she stuck out a hand. “Hi, again.”
    â€œHello,” I said, shaking her hand, then glancing down at my hand in dismay.
    â€œOh, sorry, I should have warned you that my hands are sticky.” She held up a pair of hands that were grubby in the extreme. “Had a candy bar in my pocket, and I forgot about it, and it melted all over. It ran down my outer leg, but I licked it up. You wouldn’t happen to know where the bathroom is, would you?”
    I refrained from commenting about the dubious act of licking chocolate off one’s own leg, and confined myself to pointing at the barn, where I’d been told that the production