Dropping the torch in the dark, forgetting tent pegs and, of course, the nettles. So why am I looking forward to this?
I SEE camping has revived. Quite fashionable it is now, in these recessionary times. What with the rise in the price of gas – 20 per cent, my increasingly dear reader – and the rise in the price of electricity – 12 per cent – camping must look like the ideal holiday option to those with too much luxury in their lives.
How little they know. Those of us who live in houses which contain more than three tents, and who have seen at least one of them loaded into the car this weekend, know a lot better. For the past few years camping has been disguised as graceful living in a few of the British Sunday supplements. You know the type of thing – huge tents are hung with fringing, and sometimes even floral fabric, and furnished with mirrored cushions, and then photographed in the Outer Hebrides. This really annoys me.
About camping I am conflicted. I am the type of person who is overwhelmed with feelings of abandonment if the hotel fails to put the chocolate on the pillow, and so not one of your outdoor types. On the other hand I am puritanical about camping, and do not want it corrupted by swathes of decorative fabric, or catering companies who are going to provide you with a three-course organic meal whilst you are pretending to live under canvas – or indeed under ruched cambric.
Despite the fact that I carried a lamb casserole two miles up a boreen on my first camping trip – and then of course couldn’t heat it – I have come to realise that the only thing you can eat when you are camping is sausages. Anything else is just wrong.
The raw truth about camping is that it is about spilling. Spilling the lamb casserole, spilling your tea, spilling the dinner as the pan slithers off the inadequate little ring that is meant to attach to those blue cans of gas. To pretend that camping is about anything else is intellectually and emotionally dishonest, and there are children involved here.
Children are the number one fans of camping, which is a warning note in itself. Children and dogs love camping because everyone is all together, and, crucially, goes to bed at the same time. Morning is a time of particular unity, as you all wake up at the far end of the tent, having slid down the slope during the night. And you do have good laughs all bundled up as the rain spatters outside, and the water runs down your neck as you unzip the door in preparation for what children insist on euphemistically referring to as going to the loo. Only there is no loo, unless you’re on a campsite. My God, I didn’t realise camping was this bad. Thank God we’re only going for three days.
In both my dislike of camping and in my puritanism about it I am like those atheists who are simultaneously certain that all bishops should be arrested and that the Catholic Church should never have abandoned the Latin Mass. Indeed, come to think of it, I am exactly such an atheist. You know, John Waters wants to have us burned at the stake. But he’ll have to bring his own butane.
I came to camping late in life. There was no camping in my childhood; my mother did not hold with the countryside, and she still doesn’t. However, I have ended up attached to the camping fraternity. To a group of people who like to have, often literally, a wardrobe of different tents, in much the same way that French women, allegedly, have a wardrobe of scents.
“I’m bringing the big tent this weekend,” they say. In fact, that’s exactly what they said last Friday.
In the Nire valley, at the foot of the Comeragh mountains, it was the two-man tent. History did not record who the original two men had been, but that tent felt distinctly as if it had been designed specifically for Ronnie Corbett and his much smaller brother. Dawn hit at about half past three, and dawn in a tent is non-negotiable. We were walking at five, on a glorious morning. That’s what camping should bring you: a sort of geographic madness.
I have camped in the Sinai desert and slept under the stars in an all-weather sleeping bag. Things went swimmingly until one morning, after about a week, I noticed the paw prints in the sand around me. Then I was not so keen. I retreated pretty sharpish and slept, several times, in a Bedouin tent – a beautiful, black, woven and ribbed thing.
It was like sleeping under a huge currach. The women sleep in one section, we were told, and the men in the other. It worked out great. The Bedouins don’t do this all the time, mind you. They live in houses now. But they have a strong connection with the desert. They encourage their children to familiarise themselves with it on short, independent journeys. The adults reconnect with the desert from time to time. They view it as their home.
You can’t call what the Bedouins do camping.
Squelching around a field in the rain is camping. Dropping the torch in the dark is camping. Forgetting the tin opener and the tent pegs is camping. Nettles are the absolute quintessence of camping. And yet I’m quite looking forward to it. I’m telling you, I’m conflicted. And if you’re not very careful I’m going to let you know how I get on.