At Christian girls' camp there are lots of traditions, of course, like vespers on the hill, especially candlelight waterside vespers the last night, where everyone gets a tea candle in a glass jar and you need to hold it carefully and walk all the way to tent row.  Don't blow it out until everyone sings taps and your cabin is next and then -- candle out -- your group is in darkness and only the oldest girls and the counsellors are left singing. Finally only Rags or Jerry or Skipper or Bluebird, whoever is the camp Director, they're last and they blow out their candle, finally,  and it's so dark.  One year we had a meteor shower, just then, like a miracle.

There are other traditions, too, of course -- the square dance, where half the girls dress up as boys and some have their suitcases packed with fake facial hair and spirit gum and even though we've all been wearing shorts and jeans all week , wearing shorts or jeans becomes instantly, magically, masculine and the rest of the girls switch over to gingham skirts, perfume and lipstick.  You enter the dining hall with your date, arm in arm.

One night for evening programme one cabin always chooses >the dating game= popular as the talent night, year in year out, a new group of girls every year, one dressed up as the daring and dangerous bachelor and all the girls swoon.

Favourite song to lip synch to at camp: Patricia the Stripper by Chris de Burgh.  The same kind of girl is always The Judge.  She gets to yell at the end “this girl was in her working clothes!” Different girls are Patricia -- shy ones, pretty ones, girls who are boys on square dance night -- but one thing never changes: the catcalling girls from all the cabins as soon as the song hits >>and with a swing of her hips, she started to strip.@  No matter the age, no matter how much perfume -- all the girl voices yelling, you can count on it like you can count on taps the last night: "More! More! Take it off, baby, take it off."