Have I ever been camping?

Have I ever been camping?!!

You’re rootin’ tootin’, I’ve been camping. I’ll tell you – I’ve spent some of the most miserable days and nights of my life under canvas.

I’m cool with the notion of getting back to nature. I did, after all, spend eighteen years of my working life outdoors, in just about every kind of weather imaginable, when I was working with animals. That part doesn’t faze me at all. It wasn’t pleasant at times, for sure, but I knew come six o’ clock in the evening, I could head home for a hot bath, something nice to eat, and watch my favourite television programme.

That didn’t happen on any camping expedition I was on, that’s for sure.

You see, I was in the Boy Scouts. In the late 1960s and early ’70s. Camping was seen then as ‘character building.’ And I think that’s what turned me into the bitter and twisted wee character I am today.

The idea was we went on organised camps with the Troop Leaders to learn all sorts of useful skills.

Aye right! I’m not sure exactly how may tent pegs I’ve subsequently had to whittle from a damp log found in the woods, but I’m guessing if I were to count them, they’d come to less than a finger on one hand.

Map-reading? There’s another. Just jump in a taxi for goodness sake. Erecting a tent. Why? I’m never likely to go camping ever, ever again.

It was pointless. Why not just take us away for the weekend to a nice hotel in a distant city where we could all sneak out, meet up with the local Girl Guide unit , and blag a few illicit beers. That would have more of a practical life experience.

But no – not only were our parents so happy to pack us off for random weekends with the Scout Leaders, so they could … well … they were also happy to let us go without the adult supervision. And so off we’d go, maybe six of us from our own patrol; off to show the Leaders what great Scouts we were. Off to live under canvas for a weekend at the arse-end of the Earth.

One time, our ever-so-inexperienced band of idiots pitched our tent at the foot of a wooded slope. With a river about fifty yards away.

And it rained. Big, Scottish rain. Scottish rain is like rain the world over. Only more miserable!

At two o’clock in the morning, with our sleeping bags already soaked, we had go out in the dark, with some crappy wee torch thing (the wick in the lanterns we’d brought were too damp to ignite) and dig a bloody big, deep trench around the tent and divert the cascading water away.

Over the next two days, we replaced the rainwater in our clothes with smoke from the campfire which we eventually managed to restart.

And we couldn’t just break camp and head home, because we were in the middle of bleedin’ nowhere, and weren’t due to be picked up until the Monday afternoon.

And see all this palaver about digging latrines or using the bushes in the woods like a bear does??!! Whaaat?!

That was the last time I went camping.

(Oh no, wait. My wife and I did stay overnight in one of these plush Arabian tent things in Goa, India, a couple of years ago. And I got bitten on the chest by a huge spider that I witnessed escaping from under the bedsheet. The bite left a dirty great welt that I had to bombard with antiseptic creams for a week.)

And caravanning is no better! I’ll post my ‘Caravan Holiday Hell‘ tale, taken from my book ‘A Space Hopper Killed My Hamster‘ in a day or two. Once I’ve gotten over the trauma of re-living my Camping experiences.

SO THAT’S IT – CAMPING MUST BE BANNED! I’M STARTING A CAMPAIGN. HERE AND NOW! ARE YOU WITGH ME, BROTHERS & SISTERS? ADD YOUR NAME IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW, AND TOGETHER WE WILL CANVASS AGAINST CANVAS!