20-odd years ago, I was persuaded to attend a motorbike rally held in January.
The time of year was apparently chosen to discourage all but the most serious bikers. Well, I should have stayed at home then.

I scrounged an old canvas tent and some prehistoric sleeping bags, the down-filled sort.

The only way to cope with the intense cold was to get as drunk as possible and then attempt to get into the sleeping bag before passing out.

The boyfriend at the time was a restless sleeper and being well over 6' tall, he found his lower legs protruding from the tent several times on the first night.

After being woken up a few times by his complaints about the cold and damp, I got up, went outside and put a binbag over the protruding sleeping bag.

This worked OK until some bastard nicked it.

So the next night, we had two ancient, rotten sleeping bags, one of which was soaking wet at the bottom, a leaky sagging tent and two ferocious hangovers.

That night, we got even drunker and the boyf at some point decided to get warm by attempting coitus inside my sleeping bag, despite the fact that I was wearing all the clothes I had brought plus leathers.

The bag split from top to bottom and the tent filled with feathers. We staggered out, choking.

Next morning, we took the tent down, stuffed the remains of the two ruined sleeping bags into our remaining binbag, shook the groundsheet and watched in wonder as a million fluffy white feathers floated across the frosty field. Not a sight you see every day.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Fri 29 Dec 2006, 21:55, Reply)