So many miles from Normal: The Camping Chronicles

So we drove two hours from home and spent two nights and two days in a tent in a field. With two kids. And we didn’t die. The experience was an eye-opener. Not all bad. Not all good. Kind of like trying an exotic dish for the first time. You weren’t completely sure to begin with, but you may need to try it a few more times to be certain of exactly how you feel about it. I’ve given the experience a lot of thought and I’ve decided that camping is a lot like making a speech…

You Need to be Prepared

- Never is there a bigger trainwreck (except of course an actual trainwreck) than when someone tries and fails to wing a speech. To go off script and shoot from the hip. With spectacularly bad results. I’ve watched it happen. I’ve clenched my buttocks in shame, horror and mortification for the person making a complete jackass of themselves on a stage. While the audience sits helplessly through the ordeal. Wincing at every word and trapped for the duration. Hell, it’s been me a couple of times – the git on the stage that is. Not that I knew it at the time of course. Although my wedding speech is immortalized on a DVD hidden away never to see the light of day unless my children beg me to see it when I’m a geriatric. Anyway, like a good speech - you cannot wing camping. There’s no going off piste. You need to plan. You need lists. You need stuff.   

- What stuff? Well less of what you think you need and more of what you don’t have a cooking clue about if you’re a novice camper. This is where a list comes in handy. A list from a professional. You need things like a basin for washing up, bin liners, matches, a dust pan and brush, dishwashing liquid, tea towels, wipes, paper towels… there’s a whole world of little necessities that mean the difference between feeling like you’re conquering this nature thing or being tempted to chuck it all in, crawl into your car and head home. The devil really is in the detail. Make the detail your bitch.

- When you’re packing to go camping for example, open your suitcase and remove everything except a rain-proof jacket, a pair of jeans, a pair of shorts, a hoodie, a few t-shirts and a few pairs of socks. Transfer these to a duffel bag. Take the duffel bag. Leave the rest of the clothes and the suitcase at home. Also leave your book. You don’t need make-up and any other form of footwear besides slops and wellies. Save the space in your car for torches, lanterns, towels, braai equipment, a coffin-sized cooler box and booze.

- Your tent is your Mecca. Seriously. Think big. Then double it. There’s no cozy in camping. That’s a deluded little fairytale brought to us by Disney. There’s nothing cozy at 3am in the morning when you’re sleeping 30 centimetres from your spouse and your sprogs on either side. And there’s a foot in your back and snoring hot breath on your face. Mankind was not meant to sleep with their children. Ever. It goes against nature. Get a big tent with compartments. Sleeping quarters, living quarters, cooking quarters. With an awning for when it rains. Because it will rain. At some point. It’s like Wimbledon. Rain eventually stops play. No matter the forecast.

- Make sure your mattresses are quality. There’s no fun in sleeping on the ground after your cheap-ass blow-up mattress deflates. This may be fine when you pass out after late night campfire revelry but when you wake up sober on the cold hard ground in the wee hours, life will never seem as bleak. Except perhaps at 4am when the sun starts to pound through the tent in tandem with your head.

- Make sure food is sorted. Again, an area you need to plan. You can’t forage in the depths of your freezer or grocery cupboard to whip together an impromptu meal. Get at least a two-burner cooker. With a monster supply of gas. There is no shame in gas here. This is cooking, not braaing we’re talking about. You want to have your bacon and egg at the same time as your coffee in the morning, not half an hour afterwards.

- Refrigeration is also something to consider. Invest in it if you can. If there are no electrical sockets at your site, freeze a ridiculous number of ice packs before you go and replenish perishables at a local store close by or on-site shop. Yes - you do need fresh fruit and veggies. Despite what every male on the planet thinks, one cannot live by bread and meat alone with a packet of potato chips or a few fried eggs thrown in for good measure. Constipation is never pretty. Less so on a camping trip when your ablutions are less private and you pretty much share your toilet time in half-walled cubicles and a dozen or so witnesses to your movements (bowel or otherwise). Like I said, never pretty.

You Need to Keep it Short

- Even the best speeches need to end. And the good ones usually end on a high. With you wanting more. It’s the same with camping. Stay a couple of nights. No more. It’s bloody hard work. Infinitely more than you’d think. Setting up, facilitating meals, washing up, ablutions, keeping order of the chaos. And believe me there’s chaos. Everything requires a lot more thought and effort than your usual day-to-day. Don’t try and be a hero. Leave with happy memories so you’re looking forward to the next time. If you overdo it, you wreck every positive memory and all you remember is the misery and pain of the final hours.

- This is remarkably like when you’re at a party and the mojito’s are flowing and you reach that crossroads in the evening when you can either leave respectfully having had a marvelous time. With your dignity intact. Or, you can stay on five hours too long and the end of your evening sees you being unceremoniously dragged home with scant recollection of the unspeakable things you did or didn’t mean to say. And you carry your shame with you into the next day (and usually forever) as you heave and dry wretch into the toilet bowl recollecting one painful flashback of humiliation at a time. It’s just like that. Well for me anyway.

A Lot Depends on the Crowd  

- A tough crowd can kill even the best speech. If the feckers have no sense of humour. If they’re a deadpan uptight, miserable lot who don’t want to give you anything to work with. It's the same with camping. Go with people you genuinely like. All of the time. People you want to spend time with. And have already spent time with. When you’re sober. And they’re sober. Think of people you’d be able to be around after you’ve had a bad night’s sleep because your kid kept kneeing you in the kidney, you had to stumble way too many times blindly in the rain and dark to the toilet 100 metres from your tent, you’re rudely awakened by your kids at 5am and it’s wet and cold and you want to puke and then cry at the thought of walking 500 metres to fill a water bottle so you can wait 20 minutes to boil a kettle for a cup of insipid instant coffee…. Pick those people. If you’ve ever thought of punching someone in the face for any reason, you can’t go camping with that person. It will end badly. For both of you.

- Also, you become a parent to a whole tribe of children. You indiscriminately feed, take to the toilet, discipline, entertain and console any child. Regardless of whether they’re a part of your kin. So if you have a problem with any particular kid…if they’re a cretin when you’re at home, if they’re a whiner or a ninny or an irritating little bastard, they’ll only be worse when you’re in the elements. Nature brings out the best and the worst in people.

Lastly, I have to acknowledge a massive stereotype that I harboured about camping – and by extension campers. I thought they were all just a bunch of closet cheapskates. People who couldn’t afford a real holiday who made do with hanging out in a field, eating rehydrated food and drinking warm beer. I take it all back and I apologise to every camper I ever judged. Camping can be a serious business, with serious costs involved. Some of the tents we’ve seen start in excess of £1000 alongside some very fancy vehicles and when you see all the extensions and paraphernalia, it’s most definitely not a cheap pastime for poor people.

Camping is simply a different way of spending time in the fresh outdoors with friends and family. Getting away from the city and the Heathrow flight path (in our case) with the space to let one's children run free without the fear of them being nabbed by a lunatic or run over by a pantechnicon. Chucking out the routine and being presented with a different perspective. Enjoying laughs, long walks and late night fireside chitchat with marshmallows and a good red.

And like most things in life, you can go with it and embrace it with a positive attitude or you can let it suck and never consider it again. I’m hoping I’m in the former camp. Although I’ve come to the cringe-worthy conclusion that instead of me being too good for camping, perhaps camping just may be too good for me. Who’d have thought it? Not me in a million years, that’s for sure.