There is no such thing as a comfy air bed, camp bed or futon mattress. Inside the tent will get dusty, muddy, sandy, grassy or all of these. And this dirt will find its way into sleeping bags, rucksacks, food boxes and coating toothbrushes. While I mention sleeping bags, they are either too hot, too cold, the zip opens too easily or is so stiff you feel trapped. You get cold in the night. Hot in the day. With a crick in your neck you wake up in the dark because children need to wee at 2am, or maybe it’s you who wants to wee and you are mystified because you never wee in the night at home. Walk to the toilet block or pee in the washing up bowl?
Pre-dawn is the kids’ alarm clock, and before daylight has even broken the girls want to play and talk loudly, complain they are bored and demonstrate no whispering skills whatsoever. I marvel at how other children cannot be heard until after 8am, an eerie silence with no demands for screens or Jo Jo Siwa.
Talking of other families, they have bikes, BBQs, gazebos, flag poles, fairy lights. They have neat pitches with lovely tables and chairs. They hang out laundry, take showers and have kids who are independent, sensible, eat apples and go to bed late yet don’t turn into morning monsters. A mum across the pitch is recycling, while I see other dads washing up and cooking, playing football and planning activities, checking the weather forecast, and just generally doing stuff to help.
These are the (my) failures of camping.
Triple Trouble Tribe 