Week 93- long journeys, weeing in the countryside and Ginsters pasties

How can a two-day camping trip warrant a car-load of stuff, so massive, that you can’t see out the back window?

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.