Carly dislikes camping. Actually, she really hates it. Which is odd. Carly considers herself to be a naturist and therefore, by rights, she should at the very least enjoy camping to a greater or lesser extent. But she doesn’t. It’s not that she hasn’t given camping a go. Oh yes, she has. But really the whole overall experience was ghastly, she complains, and never, ever to be repeated.
When she grew up, she never went camping. It wasn’t her family’s sort of thing. They just didn’t do camping. Probably because they were a teensy bit snobby. Actually, they went on very sedate holidays by the sea. Carly does remember one terrible occasion where she was insolent and saw the back of one of her parent’s hands. This incident happened in an elevator in an Orlando hotel and was forever known going forward as a “Florida Lift”. In fact, this wasn’t a seaside holiday but a Disney one. All Carly remembers were the size of some of the local population. Every family had at least one ginormous member.
Carly tried quite hard to reject this way of life when she left her parental home. Like many things young adults do when they want to break away. It is saying that these are my values and mantras, they are different from your ones, and I am sticking to them. For the most part. Until the values swing back the other way to be almost identical to the original parental ones. But when Carly became a parent, she wanted to be alternative and different. Her son Tobes is convinced this really is the case. He informs everyone that Carly made him left-handed, so she could be seen to be flying in the face of convention. He thinks she only did it to support her over-the-top personality. But really? Carly frowns. She didn’t bind up his right hand to ensure this outcome. Nor did she stand and beat him with a stick until he used his left hand competently. And how does he explain the fact that he is left eye dominant and kicks a ball (now very occasionally indeed) with his left foot? Tosh. Tobes is left-handed because it is in his genes. Carly’s mother and sister are left-handed. Carly doesn’t need to do additional ridiculous things to fit in with this “stereotype”. She just is alternative and different. End of.
So, Carly never went camping with her family or as a child. And she wasn’t a brownie or girl guide. She isn’t sure why not. Her sister was. Maybe the troop only took left-handed girls? No that clearly is nonsense.
She does remember camping in a huge tent, that was more like a yurt, in Morocco. She was there with her boyfriend, Ades and their travels seemed to coincide with the “World Peace Games”. This hadn’t been their intention and it was a very minor affair as only three other countries turned up. Bizarre. But staying in this yurt with about 29 others was strange and weird. A bit like the games. Surreal. Yes, it was surreal. Her only other time she was in a yurt was for Cornelia and Wilhelm’s wedding. This a rather fun and strange affair. It did mean you were only there for the day. No sleeping under canvas. Phew.
Carly does have a problem remembering stuff. It is not like things aren’t important to her. They are. But she is pretty sure that when new information is fed into her being, old stuff has to exit. She is like a hospital inpatient ward at maximum-fill bed capacity. So, she is pretty pleased with herself for remembering three true camping occasions. Yes, she was able to pull them from the deep recesses of her mind. Good. Well good she has remembered them, but the experiences were sub-optimal all the same. Unfortunately, there is no getting round this fact. All three were pretty ghastly. Worse than suboptimal. She still has no idea why after the first time she allowed herself to be manipulated into repeating the experience. Who is she kidding? Can you be self-manipulated? The bottom line is humans are fickle creatures and Carly is no exception.
Decades ago, she camped in Becca and William’s Donga wood. This was in deepest, darkest Dorset. Bill owned a wood and let it out to the Donga tribe sometimes. They roamed around nude. Carly was a bit upset they weren’t going to be around. They had been told to vacate the woods for this particular weekend. The weather was inclement to an extreme. Bill put up a tarpaulin to shelter the five couples he had invited. Carly was convinced that she and Ades were the most tent and camping naïve. Both had sedentary careers whilst all the other couples seemed very much to commune with the land. And they all lived locally. Despite the best efforts of the weather to ruin the camping, Carly and Ades were nice and warm in their tent. But there were lots of crashing noises all night long. In the howling gale, all Carly could assume was that there was a MAM (mad-axe-murderer) on the loose. Carly imagined this MAM was slashing through their tent roof to slay humans. In reality it was probably coming from twigs falling. Carly was totally traumatised then and vowed she would never camp ever again.
But surprise. She relented. Mostly because she convinced herself that camping wasn’t too bad. Her memory is shocking. So, she decided to take her own children and her left-handed sister’s children to Canvey Island. They had a five-man tent and a kid’s one from Ikea. It was all going to be sooooooooooo much fun. Things got off to a bad start as the roof box on the Volvo estate catapulted itself off its brackets just three minutes into their journey. Back to the drawing board. Well actually just back to putting the roof box on correctly. So, they loaded up again and there was no further incident with the car. Two adults in the front, three kids in the back (squabbling) and two in the boot. Oh, and the dog Jake a collie/whippet lurcher-style dog.
The kids weren’t that helpful putting up the tents. Jake barked at everyone and anything, so things got off to a bad start again. It drizzled most of the time and the only local entertainment was crabbing. Not great when you are bunch of Jews forbidden from eating seafood. The kids were too young to be allowed in pubs and it was too wet to light a fire. Oh dear. Another failed camping experience.
The final trip that springs to mind was when Carly and Ades went to Scotland. They drove up in Culfy – their red Nissan Cherry. But in the whole trip they only spent two nights camping. They had the curiosity and flexibility of youth, but the midges proved too much for them. To be bitten in such a relentless way when it wasn’t even hot felt like they’d been cheated. Instead, they stayed in cheap hotels and relegated the tent to the deepest, darkest caverns of the Culfy’s boot. One memorable day they were in a café in Fort William having pizzas. Bizarrely Carly flipped her one over. It’s not that she routinely looks at the underside of her food. But she did then. It was covered in fluffy green mould. That was it. They packed up and sped south to return to safety at home. They interrupted a friend’s romantic endeavours by returning early. He was staying, allegedly, to look after the cats. But he felt he could multitask. Carly calls her cats her feline devotees. Carly does often have delusions of grandeur. Anyway. “So sorry to have interrupted” murmured Carly who was devilishly happy to have run away from midges and mould.
These piss-poor camping experiences have been quite enough for Carly. She and her new boyfriend David have made it conditional on their relationship continuing. No camping. Under any circumstances. Ever, ever, ever. No fickle changing of minds. Meow.
