I do use the 'f' word, 'w' word and the 's' words though, a lot!!!
(please see key at end of blog before reading on)
My mid-life crisis finally manifested this week as a sudden urge to prove my family and friends wrong and show them that I am indeed capable of....camping! Bearing in mind, my idea of slumming it had previously been a new style executive lodge at Center Parcs!
Get me!! .....to coin a phrase, it's 'cheaper than a (-nother) divorce, a Mini Cooper soft top and colonic irrigation'.
In fact, on hearing the news my mum immediately rang my brother and gave him three guesses what item his sister was least likely to buy:
Guess 1: A 4x4 (please refer to previous blogs for references to my loathing of all vehicular monstrosities)
Guess 2: A motorbike (see above)
Guess: 3: A tent.
"Boys, get in the car, we're going to Go Outdoors!" (please note the capitalisation, Go Outdoors is the name of a shop, not just me letting the kids out of the attic; please don't call Esther, I'm on a final warning)
So, my knowledge of camping is limited to the fact that one needs a tent.
I bought a huge tent in the sale and splashed out on a portable toilet (stop it, you're making your own jokes up now!).
I arrived home quite pleased with myself and booked a camp site for that very evening. Sorted.
It was then that my camping-savvy friend pointed out I would need more than a tent and a toilet.
Quite a lot of f***ing stuff.
Anyways, said savvy friend has all the gear so I loaded up the car until I could just see out of a square foot through the windscreen and I've got the kids strapped to the roof (put the bloody phone down, I'm only joking!).
Friends scoffed that a 5* camp just up the road with a heated pool, shop, pub, spa and golf course was not necessarily slumming it or being at one with nature.
So here's my camping experience in a series of number 1s (I told you before, STOP with the toilet humour).
No 1 weird experience: Walking away from a check-in desk without a key.
No 1 catchprase of the weekend: "It's a right blooming rigmarole." (even the 6-year-old was saying this after the first few hours)
No 1 (and no 2) new experience: Being so hot in the UK that I thought I would melt, being so cold at night I thought I would freeze. Note to self, tents are not good at heat regulation.
No 1 best experience: Playing rounders with a bunch of complete strangers as the sun goes down.
No 1 surreal sighting: A lady in a bikini with her baby the small circular paddling pool. (...and realising you had seen her before....on the telly in a bikini in a small circular birthing pool popping out her baby on One Born Every Minute.)
No 1 lesson learnt (despite having the phrase 'never a lender nor a borrower be' drilled into me from birth): Don't borrow a friend's fancy fridge then fried it to 'beyond' an inch of its life in the baking heat.
Pre-camping No 1 desert island soundtrack of life: Kids playing, the sweet titanium tonk of driver head hitting golf ball and birds tweeting on a summer's morn.
Post-camping No 1 'line-them-up-and-shoot-them' soundtrack of life (when I'm trying to sleep): Kids playing, the sweet titanium tonk of driver head hitting golf ball and birds tweeting on a summer's morn.
No 1 son camping blooper (uttered en route to camp site): "Mum, when they are driving, how do blind people read the road signs?"
I'm enjoying the list thing but going to stop now and leave you with a classic non-camping-related blooper borrowed from a friend (I'm sure copyright / libel writs will one day haunt me, if only from my own son).
Child of friend: "Mum, you know that insulin stuff that that they have in lofts, is that the same thing which keeps Diabetes people warm?"
KEY
c = camping
f = five star hotel
w = weekend in Paris
s = spa
