The Joys of Camping
I had amazing childhood holidays. We'd never go abroad (well, we did once and it was so shite you would not believe) and virtually always it would be camping. My dad couldn't drive (he became epileptic in 1982) and my mum wasn't the most confident of drivers, she certainly couldn't have coped with towing a trailer or caravan, so there we were (me and me little sister, 2 years younger than me) squished up in the back of the Austin Maestro or whatever heap of shit the building society Dad worked for gave him as his company car. My dad was a master at packing the car, but it always took about 2 hours to load the roof rack as my dad got a bit OCD about getting everything tied on. You've never seen such tensioned bungee cords - a tornado wouldn't have loosened the tent, pole bag, and whatever else was on top of the car.

Obviously, holidaying in britain inevitably meant it rained a lot. We did a lot of jigsaws, drawings and played card games. We'd often go to those 'haven holidays' type sites with an 'entertainment' thing on-site, with overpriced beer (i'm told) and talent contests. We did have a few good hot holidays - whit week in weymouth, and the first two weeks of august 1990. Then of course there was the hurricane that hit cornwall one year - my dad's OCD extended to using tent pegs you could have held up a marquee with, so whilst the other tents around us blew over or blew away, our (apparently good danish-made tent) took a beating but remained standing. Happy days.

Fondest memory is getting lashed for the first time - those two hot weeks of August 1990. We rocked up at a campsite in Brixham, and my mum says 'oh, I think those people were here last time we were"(87 or 88). Anyway, we're beginning to unpack everything and over come this couple with cups of tea for mum and dad and some fizzy pop for us kids. This couple are also friendly with about 3 other families on the site as well, so there's about 10 adults and a load of kids between about 8 and 15. Lots of water polo, general mischief and going to the local pub and getting a sly pint of devon scrumpy pushed in my direction by my dad or one of his new drinking buddies was the general theme.

I was beginning to get a taste for this scrumpy stuff as we got towards the end of the second week and the head drinker of the adults decided a group barbecue (read: massive session) was in order. So off they pop to the cider farm and get about 5 gallons of 10.5% scrumpy, a load of meat and charcoal and the party kicks off at about 6.30. Me and this welsh lad are kids in charge of fire, whilst the head drinker decides it's mission to get these two 14-year olds larruped. Three pints of scrumpy later and i'm strutting around like some cokehead, being a cocky little shit, not agressive but full of cheeky chat to the adults. For the only time in my life I was in the communal campsite bogs having a lash and my dad comes in, pushes me against the wall, grabs my t-shirt by the neck and quietly but intensely says 'calm down, stop making an idiot of yourself and your parents'. Which worked, because although I got more pissed I didn't get any more lairy.

Did a bit more barbecuing and then the rest is a blur. By this age I'd been given my own little 2-man ridge tent, which was a good job considering I lost control of all three bodily functions during the course of that night. I've never been able to drink scrumpy cider since...

And although they don't camp anymore, my parents still go on holiday with the people they met on that holiday. But now they can afford it they get on planes and go to warm places now.

Length? Too squigy to tell...
(Calamity wetter than a fish's wet bits - bloody rain on, Mon 6 Aug 2007, 18:05, Reply)