Camping

The first rule of camping should be:

Pay close attention when you put up your tent.

We were pretty excited when we bought our first tent recently, and within 36 hours of the purchase we had erected the tent in the spacious back yard of some friends, and they were kind enough to let us stay the night as well. 

I thought Supernerd was being a bit nuts but he was right, it was a good idea to practise getting a tent up with two children helping, so that when we actually went camping the following week we would know what we were doing. And we did. Right up until the point where I put the fly on backwards.

I'm still not sure how I did it, and it doesn't really matter, but I must have fluked it on the practice run, because by the time I realised what I'd done it was mostly pegged down and too much of a hassle to fix. 

All it really meant was that we couldn't put our verandah thingy up because it was technically on someone else's campsite. On our second day that site was vacant so we did put it up and sit under it for a couple of hours, until someone backed their caravan in. So we hastily took it down while Supernerd explained to the nice woman from the caravan park what a twit I am.

The second rule of camping should be:

Don't let all the things that go wrong ruin your holiday.

I threw out my brand new picnic plates with the rubbish on our first night away, and I didn't realise until the rubbish had been moved along to the gigantic bin full of big black bags of rubbish, any one of which could have contained my plates along with goodness knows what else.

Supernerd wouldn't let me search the bin. Instead he did it for me and told me afterwards, but he couldn't find them.

I got really angry with myself for being so stupid. I had even made a mental note earlier that day to not do exactly what I did. 

The worst part though is that we were only away for two nights, so I really struggled to let it go and get on with the holiday. When I realised what I'd done we were only 24 hours from coming home and it wasn't quite enough time to recover, relax and enjoy myself properly.

Also the man in the next tent snored worse than Supernerd.

The third rule of camping, as Edmund Blackadder would have it, should be:

Make sure you buy a tent big enough for your family, with plenty of room for Mr Cockup to stay the night.