I know a bit more thought goes into it these days.
We can’t just rock up at a campsite with a two litre bottle of cider, a tent without pegs, and a hope that we'll find a Spar shop within a two-mile radius that sells Ginsters pasties to have for tea.
But
still.
I grew
up on a diet of family camping trips. France for summer. Somewhere wet in the
Lake District during the Whit holidays.
History
is now repeating itself.
And, similarly, just as I made a big fuss about how I wished
we could go on an aeroplane, or at least stay somewhere with a toilet in the
same field, Nancy is now embarking on her own protest.
We were
staying on an ace family-friendly campsite, boasting a healthy selection of
farm animals.
The
kind of animals that Nancy normally gets foot-stampingly excited about.
There’s
pigs of all sizes and colours. Chickens. Cockerels. Chicks. Lots of cats. And a
lonely goose, desperate for attention.
But, after
the initial excitement wore off, Nancy turned her attention to something else.
The
car.
This is
the girl who, on a long car journey, goes bananas before we’ve got to the
bottom of the road, shouting, ‘get out! Get out! Get out!’ whilst trying to master
the seatbelt like a tiny contortionist.
And now,
she’d prefer to sit in the driving seat of a stationary Fiat Punto, instead of hanging
out with a humongous pot-bellied pig.
The
other punch in the proverbials was that after several weeks of Nancy sleeping through
the night, she decided to give that a miss.
Starting on our first night away, when you get a bit red wine happy round the campfire and stay up way past normal bedtime.
Midnight. (I can feel my younger-self, slow clapping me, whilst head-shaking in despair.)
At 4.30am
Nancy starts having a meltdown.
At home, when all else fails, she comes into
our bed.
In a tent in the pitch dark, that’s not so
easy.
But I have a bash, and she squeezes into my sleeping bag with me.
Now. Anyone
who's ever been camping knows that 4ish is round about the time that you also
wake up absolutely bursting for a piss.
And there’s a very serious decision to
be made.
Get out of your warm sleeping bag. Put on a jumper that totally stinks
of bonfires. Find a pair of shoes amongst a tangle of clothes, bottles and
Tesco bags full of burger baps.
Then brace the harsh, cold, dark night in
search of a car to wee behind, or the washrooms, depending on what’s closest.
Or, find a position to sleep in whereby you can somehow ignore your bursting
bladder until morning.
Choice
B, unfortunately, isn’t an option when sharing a sleeping bag with someone half
your size, who kneads your tummy with her feet.
After
an hour of us both getting more and more frustrated.
Nancy- with the lack of Peppa Pig and light.
Me- with
the sheer heat being generated by two people sleeping in such close proximity, and
a third person, Ben, obliviously snoring and occupying two thirds of the
sleeping space.
Nancy
then asked to go and sit in the car.
This
isn’t the outdoorsy holiday I’d envisaged.
Sitting
off at 5.30 watching the sun come up, while listening to selection of nursery
rhymes, irritatingly doctored to avoid
royalties. (Example- the wheels on the bus go round- all day long, not all through the town.)
But on
the plus side, Nancy can pretend to drive while I snooze in the passenger
seat, and only have to nip behind the back of the car for a wee.
And old
habits die hard.
So with an emergency Ginsters cheese and onion pasty in the
glove compartment, at least we get to have some breakfast before everyone else
wakes up, two hours later.
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