Hurrah. I put the tent up in the rain last year at Camp Bestival, I put the tent up in the rain the year before in St Sauveur le Vicomte. I’d be disappointed if I wasn’t putting it up in the pigging rain in the New Forest 2009. Fortunately I am wearing a frock, a stupid leftover from Spain, with black Wellingtons, therefore giving Caro the opportunity to quip next to her expertly cracked-open canvas accommodation, that I do Kate Moss better than Kate does.
When it really started to tip it down, I dug out my kagoule and pulled it over my head. Sadly, I’d inadvertently packed a nine-year old’s for myself so the crimped sleeves stopped at my elbows and I couldn’t get the hood up. Oh how we laughed. Yeah, just like Kate, me.
Then as the final pole was secured and the guy ropes strung, the sun came out to bake me as I hammered the final pegs home.
That’s when the first pony arrived to check the handiwork. Followed by a whole pack of ponies and they are no respecter of guy ropes.
This was just what the doctor ordered - I was beginning to find order in everything again. There is something to be said for the methodical process of camping. First the bag, then the collapsed spectre. Then the bones. Then the chambers, tying, clicking, ticking. The first beer accompanies the first air bed. It took a stubby and a half to do the double. And bingo! A homemade palace. Hic.
The air was beginning to dampen and clever Caro was setting up the kitchen on her dear inherited vintage beanstalk. My old cooker has seen better days but it fired up beneath the pumpkin curry she’d brought and before long, plumes of breath matched each mouthful. I slept like one of the logs those eco rangers had strewn about to encourage bugs. Then the early rooks woke Caro but as is customary when we are together, she performed two vital, beautiful actions: she brought me tea in bed and she fed my son. She is an angel in a woolly hat.
I was still infected by Spain and unable to listen to a radio or read a paper, but I was a ruddy marvel at trowelling in the sausage and eggs. Isn’t camping genius? By noon, I was starving again.. I could eat a dead horse between two old mattresses.. Oops. No offence, boys.
Instantly, we took to our new muddy society and no tent escaped our scrutiny; my favourite belonged to a Dutch family. Taut as an Anish Kapoor trumpet, it looked like a prefabbed Amish barn. With zips. Constance accused me of a kind of racism for referring to them fondly as ‘Cloggies’. She is correct. But she could not in a million years deny that there actually was a divine row of Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear and Baby Bear souvenir style wooden clogs next to their state-of-the-art cooker and water tripod. And they’d even applied sand to their sods..
We liked White Van Man. He arrived with a brand new tent – as my dad would say, never raced, nor rallied – and then proceeded to forage in his very old works vehicle, amongst pickaxes and shovels and cones, for sections of black plastic piping that he fashioned into an angled towel drying system. His kids spent their time filching his hard hats and fluorescent vests and went round sledge-hammering masonry nails into trees.
Shouty Mum, who arrived with Silent Mum, astonished us with her stress levels. Commanding her offspring to remain within her sight at all times - yeah right, whilst elsewhere throughout the site children were roaming like Lord of the Flies – she practically frightened her tentpoles upright as her stoical companion plodded about unpacking thinking that this had seemed like such a good idea over that third end-of-term glass of Pinot Grigio. In trouble at all times, their kids were forever being lined up for Shouty to extract a confession from and then, while they sullenly trudged through their dinner, she stood and seethed with a flamboyantly indignant cigarette. Even at the last moment, after the tent had been put out of its misery, the boys were being interrogated about a lost headtorch while Silent Mum waited in the car and ached for home.
As Caro pointed out, as we absorbed the action like an afternoon soap, as amusing as our fellow campers were, none of them are like us. I commented that perhaps this was just wishful thinking – my world often resembles Neighbours, granted without the sunshine or Lou Carpenter. But look, she reasoned, as we dragged our chairs down the paths and over logs, across the little bridge, traversing hummocks and thistles out into the middle of the vast enclosure to sit amid the horses with our aperitifs, nobody else was grabbing the last rays among the cairns of horse turds like we were.
The ponies kept us occupied when our neighbours were absent. Especially because the neighbours were absent. One brilliant afternoon, we watched a pony get his nose stuck in the pocket of a child size picnic chair because someone had stashed their custard creams there. “Quick,” I hollered, “It looks as if it is caught on his tooth!” Cue the double dividend of witnessing Caro bounding several furlongs to release the equine monkey, who took one look at that woolly hat and galloped off.
Another time, the cutest cuddle of Shetlandy little beasts, their foals the size of spaniels, had sneaked into a officiously organised pitch – circle of matching chairs, table, bbq, neat cooking area and even a separate tent for the bikes – and split a nasty big rubbish bag open. Bent Fosters cans, nappies, crisp packets, leftovers, were scattered and stamped in everywhere. That’ll learn ‘em for being tidy showoffs, we scoffed on our way back to our own Gortex bordello.
Long Forest walks went right out the window in favour of short hops to the wash-house for an “Aunty Joyce”, as Caro calls it – and no other term captures the chilly sponge around the soft crevices at the sink when the shower queue is too lengthy – and into the village and back to replenish ravenously depleted food supplies. There was never anything left on our pitch for the ponies to scavenge.
Our most strenuous day was spent batting wasps off our Cornish pasties whilst sitting on the river bank watching our babies hurtle themselves over the water on a rope swing. It was the most refreshing snub to health & safety since I’d enjoyed since observing the youngsters in Spain turn cartwheels into the shallow end whilst attempting to bicycle-kick a football - crikey, I had to switch off the swimming teacher in me that afternoon. Today, I kept all my anxieties about Weil’s disease and whirlpools to myself and thrilled to the offspring’s bravery. What chips off the old block. What larks! When Fred begged me to come in, I said not bloody likely.
We had a final early morning cuppa on our chairs in the middle of the dewy field before packing up, relishing the moment that the cheeky newcomer who had bagged a double pitch for his retro tent and trailer emerged to survey his new domain only to find me and Caro in our PJs seated slap bang in the middle of his perfect view…
.. Then pulled up our pegs and with a final joke about wilting erections, slung our muddied ecoutrements back into our sagging motors (with the added bonus of both engines starting first time despite doors being left open with lights on for hours on end) and headed back to our respective domiciles. Coming home was a doddle this time despite the roadworks on the M3. As we swung down Acre Lane racing the wide boys, I felt completely back to normal.
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