Tentage ventage

When I was a child, we did not go to museums or art galleries, or listen to classical music, or discuss politics and philosophy at the dinner table. I had to work out how (and whether) to do these things for myself, once I'd realised they were options. I spent a while feeling slightly disadvantaged in certain types of company, but then I got over myself. I still can't reliably tell a Monet from a Manet, and anything featuring a harpsichord is just plinky plonky noise in my head, but so what. There are swings and there are roundabouts, and one of the greatest of the roundabouts is that while we did sometimes go on holiday, with very mixed outcomes, we never went camping. I may have lost my technical virginity to a grass seed on a Majorcan beach in 1975, I may still have sunburn scars from a trip to Israel in the years when sunscreen factors only went up to 5, and I may remember the pain of both those events vividly. But my parents never made me sleep in a tent. And for this I will be forever grateful.

I have of course slept in a tent since. The first time was at school, where for nearly three years we had compulsory CCF. I was not as good at getting out of CCF as I was at getting out of netball, though I never did more than the absolute bare minimum. But that was still quite a lot, and one Friday we had to go on an overnight camp. It was in the summer term and we left after an afternoon of athletics, during which ex-housemate-then-schoolmate-S managed to break her own nose doing a Fosbury Flop. So she didn't have to go, and I was deeply envious, but too shit at the high jump to manage such a stylish self-inflicted injury. I can't remember where they drove us on the bus, but I do remember that the tent was triangular, canvas, and primitive - complicated ropes and poles, and a fly sheet that would basically pour water in if it touched the inner tent at any point ever. We cooked sausages in lard on tiny solid fuel stoves. I had recently become a vegetarian and pleaded for a Pot Noodle but instead I had to eat half-burnt, half-raw chipolatas which did their bit to keep me a vegetarian for the next 30 years. We tried to go to sleep but they woke us up for some kind of character building exercise where were in teams and trying to find each other in the dark. My night vision is spectacularly poor and I fell into a ditch. I cried with relief when we got back on the bus the next morning, only silently, so no one would hear. Formative.

The next time was after my A-levels, when a group of us went to the Lake District and camped in a field next to a pub for two or three nights. There are blurry photos of us trying to dry our socks on sticks held over a fire. The rain was torrential, but we did have Pot Noodles. And we were old enough to drink in the pub (actually, I wasn't, but most people were and no one was that bothered in them days). I think my main feeling was happiness that my A-levels were over, and more happiness that I'd been invited on the trip (the cool kids were The Crowd. Ex-housemate-then-schoolmate S and I were Pseudo Crowdists. Our currency varied). And then cider. I don't really remember much else, except that we christened Fairy Liquid Hairy Diquid, and I call it that to this day.

And then there were the festival years. You have to camp at festivals, at least, you used to have to. And I went to quite a lot of them: one Reading, four Glastonburys, six or seven Womads. I wanted to be at the festivals, so I worked on the camping side of things: we got a better tent, discovered Thermarests (a genuine leap forward), ear plugs and head torches, located the showers and the best time to go to them (4 am)… and there is decent food and booze at festivals, even before the music and the other happenings. If you have a bit of cash, you can cope. Or I could till the last Womad I went to, the first on its new site: we drove there through sideways rain, and the sign at the gate said 'welcome to Womud'. The first night I planted my camping chair in the mud and made the best of it sinking six inches and nearly taking my wellies with it. The second night I was pissing in a pint glass in the tent (and bladders hold more than a pint, so this is quite a strain on the pelvic floor) because I couldn't face the journey to the toilets. There was no third night. We aquaplaned out of the car park and counted ourselves lucky. I have not braved a festival since. Though of course we don't have a car anymore (of which more later).

But in all these years there was only one actual camping "holiday". It was towards the end of my relationship with my Significant Ex*, and the time of my life when my behaviour was the most normative. We hung out with other couples around the same age. We went to barbecues. We drank lager in pub gardens and watched football on big screens. It was the fading years of the Major government, all ladettes and Ellesse trainers and Britpop, and frankly I was a bit lost. I can't really see any other reason I'd have agreed to a week's camping in north Wales. I think I must have felt that this was the kind of thing people like me did now.

We went with one of those other couples, who picked up a caravan from a parental home on the way. I can see even less point in caravans than in tents, because you have to drag the fucking things behind you down the motorway and then drag them all the way home, but I've never had caravanning inflicted on me so I won't dwell. We drove to a field pretty close to the middle of nowhere, they unhooked the caravan and we pitched our tent next to it.

And then… I don't know. It basically rained most of the time. The facilities were of the kind where you have to put money in to get a hot shower and it doesn't last very long. Only the female wash block had a washing up sink in it. This made me SO ANGRY. The boys did their share of the washing up in a bucket, and thought it was funny. I didn't think it was funny. There was a lot of smoking dope, playing cards and eating cake around the caravan table, and we ventured the occasional damp day trip. I got to see Portmeirion in the rain, which was interesting I guess, especially as I was feeling pretty trapped myself. I also came to understand that I didn't like playing cards or eating cake, or, really, smoking dope. It occurred to me that I seemed to be spending a lot of time doing things I didn't really like doing (this felt like a big realisation, but then I was pretty stoned). So I took to the tent and read a novel, which came across as antisocial, I knew, but sometimes needs must.

The tin hat on that holiday was the night I needed to wee in the middle of the night, and it was raining. The wash block was a longish walk across a dark field, and we were the only people in our corner, so I decided to venture out in my pants and just wee behind the tent. I unzipped the inner tent and crawled out through the porch, which was held up by two poles. Unfortunately I stood up too early, and flipped the pool of cold rainwater that had been collecting between the poles up in the air and then down onto my naked back. I looked up at the sky as I did my wee, and I swore I would never do this to myself again. 

All these delightful experiences have only served to cement my view that camping is for refugees, masochists, or people who are too off their heads to care where, or even if, they sleep. Why would anyone *choose* to dispense with almost every benefit civilisation has given us - rooms you can stand up in, privacy, mattresses, electricity, kitchens, bathrooms, windows, a degree of climate control, cupboards - for a shit version of the same, which you have to a) buy in the first place despite having the real thing, b) keep somewhere in your house with all the other stuff that you only use once a year, and c) transport to where you will be having your authentic nature experience, assemble, then disassemble a few days later so you can do the whole thing in reverse, quite possibly involving another assembly so it can all dry out. Seriously, you can keep your cool boxes and your gazebos and your sporks and your wet wipes. I do not need them. The world does not need them.

And yet.

I really miss ex-housemate S. I always thought she would move back north too one day, but for various perfectly understandable reasons it hasn't happened. We do still see each other, but not like we used to, not in that easy, mooching around town kind of way that we started in Blackpool in the 80s and refined over several towns and several decades. So a couple of years ago I suggested that we might all go on holiday together one half term (has to be school holidays, annoyingly but also understandably, on account of her a) having had some children and b) working in a primary school).

I did some research, looked at some family-friendly resorts in Spain, Greece and Turkey, made some suggestions. I wouldn't remotely choose a family-friendly resort in Spain, Greece or Turkey myself, you understand, but I was thinking about the collective. Sunshine, swimming pool, beach, mini-marts, cheap beer / tapas / meze / pizza, hanging around in various permutations and combinations doing nothing very much. You get the picture.

This idea didn't fly. I'm still not sure why. I'm inclined to blame the patriarchy, but then I'm inclined to blame the patriarchy for most things. But for whatever reason, chilled out beach holiday went into the washing machine, and by the time the spin cycle had finished we were going camping in the Lake District.

I should have protested harder. I suspected that ex-housemate S actually knew fuck all about camping, and what she did know, she'd forgotten. "It'll be fun!" she said. The last time she told me something would be fun, she was talking about the 72 hour Magic Bus journey from Athens to London she persuaded me to take in 1991. [It was not fun. Nothing about it was fun. It was wildly uncomfortable, sexist, racist, in parts actively terrifying, we drove through an actual war zone, we arrived at Victoria Coach Station with a police escort, and my ankles did not return to their normal size for a week].

But I am not bringing up children, and I have learnt that - generally - if you are making plans that involve them you should defer to their parents, because for some reason children don't want to hang out in interesting little backstreet bars reading Joan Didion novellas, drinking ouzo, and playing backgammon. So eventually (via a plea for Center Parcs - at least they have a spa!) I was ok, fine, camping, whatever, and I found a little campsite that was next to a community swimming pool, near a train station, and had a Co-op and two pubs within walking distance.

No. They wanted to go to the National Trust campsite on the empty side of Windermere... I think again partly because they just didn't think through how fucking far from anywhere that is, and also because they didn't actually own a tent, and they wanted one of those ones that is already there and has beds and furniture in it.

Now they might not have had a tent, but we don't have a car, so then we were getting into serious logistics. We booked a camping spot on the edge of the lake, just down the hill from their megatent, made arrangements for them to pick up the stuff we couldn't carry on their way past, and headed for the 555. I kept saying things to myself like "well, it will be a beautiful wilderness experience".

We got there first, sans tent, and we dumped our rucksacks on the goose-shit covered spur of land we were directed to, sat on them, and wondered if it was too early to start drinking (it clearly wasn't, but then we remembered that we'd left the box of wine with the tent and had already established that National Trust campsite shops do not sell beer).

Our buddies turned up a bit later, cabin-feverish from many hours on the M6 and wearing their winter coats (it was not a warm May) but bearing our stuff, including the organic hot dogs I'd bought thinking they would be easy to cook on an open fire and eat with, I don't know, some nice salads and wraps and things.

Dinner that night was organic hot dogs rolled up in white sliced bread with tomato ketchup. The kids went to bed in the megatent around 8.30, and the adults sat outside drinking wine and shivering gently (despite the fire, it really was not a warm May) for about another hour, then called it a night. We descended to our normal tent and got into our sleeping bags for the warmth.

Being kept awake by goose-honking is a kind of torture, it turns out. Please! you cry, after some hours. Just PLEASE SHUT UP for FIVE MINUTES, I am SO TIRED that if I GO TO SLEEP you will not WAKE ME UP. *honk* they reply. *honk honk* - pause for 180 seconds - *honk*. Around three in the morning I decided a shower was the thing, beat the queue and all that. Three till five I lay awake with a cold damp towel round my head, wondering if it was too early to start drinking. When it got light, the bastard geese went to sleep (I genuinely did not know nocturnal geese were a thing) and so, for a bit, did I.

So Day 1 of the Beautiful Wilderness Experience started with tent hair and sleep deprivation, but nothing too serious. Our pals had some kind of family Lake District experience pre-booked (I'll be honest, this was a slight point of annoyance, but all the earlier points about family dynamics apply, and god knows I would not want to try and entertain kids all day in the Beautiful Wilderness) and M asked me what I wanted to do. The absolute non-negotiable #1 thing was 'buy earplugs', so we walked into Ambleside (four miles? five?), did that, had a nice lunch, bought some nice salads and wraps and things for the next day, got the ferry back, and settled in our sleeping bags (for the warmth) with our books till they returned.

That evening was one of the two nights a week the National Trust will make you pizzas, if you are organised enough to book in advance (we were). They were not cheap, but they were pretty good, if not the hottest by the time we'd carried them across the campsite, and I was working on my optimism. Hey, we have pizza, salad and wine. We also have to go to bed at 9.30 again because it's cold and the kids are asleep in the megatent, but you know what, we're tired, that's fine. And we have earplugs!

The next morning, we awoke to the steady thrum of rain on flysheet. Ah, the joy of the combination of chilly and humid (my towel never did get dry. It retains camping residue to this day). Our co-campers had another day of organised family fun to attend to, so we bid them farewell and basically stayed in our tent till hunger drove us from it. For reasons which I'm sure represent our respective subconsciouses at work, I was reading Toni Morrison's Beloved, and M was reading The Narrow Road To The Deep North. At some point during that relentlessly wet morning, trapped in a confined space with no way of escape that wasn't going to involve getting at best much wetter, we realised we were both reading books about slavery.

Eventually we had to eat, and we made our way up to the empty (and surprisingly dark) megatent, where M fashioned a lunch of nice salads and wraps, including lighting the fire to heat some things up. In the rain. We ate inside, and I had a little cry at the misery of it all, then we returned to our sleeping bags (for the warmth) and wondered if it was too early to start drinking. It clearly wasn't, but we'd finished the wine. Never mind, I thought, our guys will be back soon and we'd agreed that tonight, we would trek to the nearest pub (approx 2 miles) for dinner.

Around 4.30 they returned, and ex-housemate S came down the hill in her cagoule. She brought more wine (yes!) but also bad news - they were cold and tired, and they weren't up to walking to the pub, so were staying put.

Well we had been hanging out for the exotic allure of a pub (Chairs! Ceilings!) All. Fucking. Day. by this point, so we decided that we *were* up to it. And so we got our full waterproofs on, and assembled our walking poles, and set off across the fields in search of the Outgate Inn. It appeared as a beacon through the murk (I may be exaggerating here, it was only about 6.30 when we got there, but that's absolutely how it felt) and as we staggered in through the door my glasses steamed up and I thought, oh, we will be ok here for a while.

We peeled off our waterproofs, and M went to the bar for beer and the menu. He returned bearing two pints, with a glassy look in his eye. Jo, he said, they Have Rooms. I thought he meant in the conceptual sense: imagine if it wasn't half term and/or we'd booked well in advance. We could have stayed here, in the comfort and the dryness, for money! But what he meant was: the Outgate Inn was under new management, and they had not quite finished refurbishing the rooms, so they weren't taking bookings, but if you happened to walk in off the fields and look desperate enough, they could provide you with a bed with a mattress and pillows and sheets and a duvet, and a bathroom with a hot shower and dry towels, and electric lighting and carpets and a *full English breakfast sitting at a table inside*. For money. 

Oh my god, I said, book it before anyone else does.

They laughed very hard at us when they realised we had no luggage (not even toothbrushes) because we were actually supposed to be sleeping in a tent a couple of miles away, but they were lovely - the landlady lent us shampoo and shower gel, and even the house phone so I could let ex-housemate S know we would not be back till morning, as our mobiles were dead. I don't think she took it that well but I also think that was mainly because she'd have loved to have been having a pint and a burger and then getting into a real bed like a normal person.

And honestly, that bed. We stretched out in it like starfish till our limbs unknotted, and then we slept like logs, showered like heroes and breakfasted like kings. We bid our hosts and their kids goodbye (we were the only guests, so it was basically like hanging out in their family room) and marched back across the damp fields fortified by creature comforts and pork products. Only one more day to go! We can do this! We might even get those books about slavery finished!

We burst into the megatent brimming with good cheer, to find ex-housemate S packing things up. I can't do this anymore, she said, we're going home. I didn't have to ask her if she was sure, and I couldn't even pretend to be sorry. She did rather marvellously organise a lift home for us, via her niece R, who was coming out to see us all anyway, and we did all manage a very nice lunch in Ambleside on the way back.

We have never spoken of it since, and (as is often the way with long and successful friendships, and certainly with this one) I suspect it will be at least a decade before we do.

For reasons I do not fully understand, we still have our tent.

joella

* After we split up, people would sometimes ask me how things had worked out (there was an obvious wealth disparity between us). I used to reply 'let's just say that he got the flat and I got the tent'. This was unfair on several levels but funny enough to be worth it at the time.