How to Survive Summer Camp

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© Jacqueline Wilson 1985

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Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published 1985

First published in this eBook edition 2011

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ISBN: 978 0 19 279290 7

Inside and cover artwork by Nick Sharratt

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To Rebecca
and
Hannah Partos

How to Survive Summer Camp

I wonder if you’ve ever been to a special Summer Camp? Most children absolutely love the idea of going away somewhere great and doing all sorts of exciting activities—but it can feel a bit weird at first, especially if you don’t know anyone else at the camp. Stella in my story doesn’t want to go to Summer Camp at all. Perhaps she’s right to have misgivings. Evergreen Adventure Holidays would definitely be bottom of the list for good Summer Camps—but even so, Stella manages to have great fun there. She makes some very good friends (plus a couple of deadly enemies), she learns some new activities, she even starts her own magazine.

Children often ask me if Stella is based on myself. I think she’s maybe a bit fiercer than me—I was more of a quiet bookworm like Marzipan. I did love making up stories like Stella, and I also treasured my beautifully illustrated book of fairy tales. However, we’re the exact opposite when it comes to swimming. I was never a sporty girl but I really loved swimming and was quite good at it. I still love to go swimming now and can do a quick half mile in twenty minutes. However, I can understand how awful it is if you’re really scared of swimming. I think the Brigadier has a great way of helping Stella overcome her fears.

You definitely need to take your favourite cuddly toy away with you to Summer Camp. Stella has a little toy mouse called Squeakycheese. My daughter Emma had a very similar mouse when she was small. She also had a floppy little donkey—but thank goodness he never got dropped in a cowpat like Rosemary’s donkey in the story.

I thought it would be a good idea to include a real recipe in the book. It’s always fun to cook, but recipes can seem a bit baffling at first, because they don’t always explain everything properly. I have James write out an idiot-proof recipe for Star Biscuits. I’ve tried it out myself and it really works, I promise. I like decorating the biscuits with icing sugar the most. No, I don’t, I like eating the biscuits best!

Jacqueline Wilson

I
 sat in the back of the car in my new T-shirt and my stiff new jeans and my pristine trainers and groaned. I kept dabbing at my new haircut. It felt terrible. Everyone would laugh at me. I thought about all these strange children at the summer camp. I peered down at the black lettering on my emerald green T-shirt. It said I LOVE EVERGREEN ADVENTURE HOLIDAYS. My new T-shirt was a liar.

‘Are you all right, Stella?’ Mum asked worriedly, turning round. ‘Do you feel sick? You look a bit green.’

‘To match my awful T-shirt,’ I muttered, tugging at it.

‘I think you look very fetching in your new outfit,’ said Uncle Bill.

I didn’t answer. I just pulled a face at his back. I couldn’t stick my Uncle Bill. Which was a great pity, because he’d married Mum that morning.

I was the bridesmaid. Mum had bought me a very expensive blue dress with puff sleeves and a long flouncy skirt. It had its own white lace pinafore and with my plaits undone and combed out Mum said I looked like Alice in Wonderland.

Only I didn’t look like Alice at the wedding after all. I looked more like Humpty Dumpty, as bald as a boiled egg.

It was all a terrible mistake. Mum said I could go to a posh hairdressers and have my hair properly cut and styled the week before the wedding. She wanted to come with me but she had to work. I said I could go by myself, I wasn’t a baby.

So I went after school and talked to this man called Kevin who looked like a rock star. He asked me how I wanted my hair cut. I decided I didn’t want it too short. I measured a tiny amount with my thumb and finger. Kevin nodded and his scissors flashed. I screamed as they snipped. He hadn’t understood. Before I could get away he’d snipped one side of my head to a stubble. He’d thought I wanted it that length!

He couldn’t leave it like that, half stubble, half flowing golden corn, so he sheared the rest off. Mum cried when she saw me. Uncle Bill said he thought I looked cute, but he was only pretending.

I looked silly in the beautiful blue bridesmaid’s dress at the wedding. I looked even sillier now in my summer camp clothes. I was determined not to be really wet and cry, but I felt as if I might be going to all the same.

‘Do try to cheer up a bit, darling,’ said Mum, looking round at me again.

‘Why should I cheer up?’ I mumbled. ‘It’s not fair. You’re 

going off abroad on your smashing holiday and I’m getting dumped in this horrible summer camp. I bet it’ll be even worse than school. I know I’ll hate it.’

‘It’s not my holiday, it’s my honeymoon,’ said Mum. But then she looked at Uncle Bill and whispered, ‘Do you really think she’ll be all right?’

I shook my head fiercely.

‘Yes,’ said Uncle Bill. ‘Yes, of course she will. Most of my friends send their kids to summer camps and they all love it. They have a whale of a time.’

‘I won’t,’ I said.

They didn’t take any notice.

‘I do wish all those other camps hadn’t been fully booked,’ Mum said. ‘This Evergreen place does sound a bit …’ She searched for the right word.

I supplied it.

‘It sounds a dump.’

‘Now don’t you be so cheeky,’ said Mum, but she didn’t sound cross, she sounded worried.

‘I think it sounds a marvellous place,’ said Uncle Bill. ‘It’s practically a stately home and it’s got these huge grounds and a lovely swimming pool and—’

‘Sh!’ said Mum, but she was too late.

‘I can’t go!’ I shouted. ‘I can’t go there, not if there’s a swimming pool.’

‘I promise you won’t have to swim,’ said Mum in her special you-can-trust-me tone.

But I couldn’t trust Mum any more because she’d been mad enough to marry Uncle Bill.

‘They’ll make me. They’ll throw me in,’ I wailed, and I started crying like a baby.

Long ago when Mum was still married to Dad he had taken me swimming. I was only little and I was scared. Dad wanted me to jump in and splash and shout like all the other children. I didn’t want to. I just stood on the side of the pool and shivered. Dad was kind at first but then he got cross. I got cross too so then he really lost his temper and threw me in. It was only the shallow end but it felt like Loch Ness to me. Dad hauled me out at once and laughed and tried to turn it into a joke, but I shrank away as if he’d turned into the Loch Ness monster himself.

I still had swimming pool nightmares. I’d never been swimming since.

‘And you won’t have to go swimming now,’ Mum said, leaning over and dabbing at me with a paper hankie. ‘I’ve written to this Brigadier who owns Evergreen. I’ve explained it all to him. No one’s going to force you to swim, honestly.Anyway, you won’t be
able
to go in swimming because you haven’t packed a swimming costume, have you?’