Hanging onto the side of the mattress to prevent it floating away with one hand and indicating for him to unzip his sleeping bag and climb out of it with the other, wasn’t working. Needless to say, like Blowhard, I was doing a fair bit of yelling. ‘Are you hurt, Mr Blowhard?’ I shouted into his ear, wondering if that was the reason he wasn’t moving. He shook his head. ‘If not, you’ll need to get out of bed and do a bit of paddling. It’s not far to the shore.’ Still hanging on to the mattress and shivering and getting colder by the minute, I watched as Blowhard finally decided to make a move. Grunting and squirming and still in his pyjamas with the tiny brown bears on them, he wormed his way out of the bag and crawled hand-over-hand towards me. It must have been the weight transference that did it, for suddenly the mattress started to rock – violently. ‘Oh, oh,’ I heard myself saying as I watched the scenario unfold before me. Then the inevitable happened; like a bull seal, Blowhard toppled slowly over the side into the lagoon.
