WHAT I TREASURE

My camp blanket

My life. My history. My adventures. Captured in miniature, in four square metres of blue fleece. Although there’s little of the blue fleece visible. My camp blanket is covered – practically every centimetre – in sew-on badges. And, yes, I did actually sew them all on. It didn’t always look like this though.

It started life when I was a Guide, aged 10, going on my first camp, and I needed a blanket. My mum found a heavy woollen one, rough and scratchy, that had belonged to my Granny. I carefully started sewing my badges onto it. Over the years though, this blanket developed holes, possibly due to campfire embers, or sticky marshmallows, or getting caught on twigs. It was simply too big, and too heavy, to use easily. I took a tough decision to carefully unpick all my badges, buy a new blanket, and start afresh.

Unpicking all those badges allowed me to look at them, and reminisce about my adventures. My original Brownie Interest badges included Cook and Swimmer. My Guide badges, hard earnt. The Four Season Camp Challenge badges, one awarded for every season for camping outside. (It snowed that winter.) Badges collected while island-hopping, from the Isle of Wight to Lundy Island, Sardinia to Hawaii. There are my swimming, lifesaving and gymnastics badges… neckerchiefs, pennants, even an Icelandic Guide cap.

I did the sewing, slowly, over many winter evenings, while pregnant with my first daughter, in front of the open fire, blanket spread on the floor.

Buying badges is harder than it used to be. Often the badges are hidden away, requiring pointing or hand gestures, particularly if you’re in another country and don’t know the word for ‘sew-on badge’. Still, I track them down.

The blanket is now double-sided. Incredibly heavy, it’s draped over the sofa in my back room, ready to be admired by a visitor, or inspected by a child.

What do you do when the blanket is full, on both sides? Why, of course, you buy a second blanket. That’s now on the spare bed, with just a few badges around the edge so far, waiting for some more to claim their space. I’ve now added four lovely The Simple

Things Happiness Patches [see page 12]. And, in order to continue the story, both my daughters now have their own blankets...