There is definitely a correlation between age and camping, the discussion was had between many different groups and variations of folk on our annual bank holiday weekend camping trip over the “Long Minge”. The discussion centred on how much harder it is to recover from a camping trip with a bunch of lunatic, love em, parents and more children than adults, the enemy outnumbered us.

Once again this year we had some rain but not as much, the real issue was the cold; it must have been freezing on the friday night, literally and apparently there was a dusting of the white stuff on top of the minge early on the saturday morning. So we got through an awful lot of logs and kept the fire pits going all day and night until about lunchtime on Sunday when it was time to pack up and go. Just 2 nights this year, we all realised through bitter experience that a weekend camping takes at least double the amount of days to get yourself back to normal. That is the correlation I spoke of, and I’m sure minds greater than mine would be able to divide some sort of equation to quantify it in the mathematics world.

The campsite is a field next to a wood with a stream running along the edge, about a 10 minute walk to the wonderful Bridges Pub, I noticed none of you came up to see me on Saturday so I’m expecting you had other things on when I posted my invitation, short notice, maybe next time eh? There was no Morris Dancing this year but I had pretty much succeeded in persuading 3.5 of the 5 Dads that a suicide tequila in the pub would be a great idea until the pub fell short by announcing there was no Tequila. Not only letting us down but letting itself down, however they did redeem themselves earlier on in the day without even realising they had done so, because the future tequila conversation hadn’t happened just yet, by giving me a roll up on Saturday morning when I took the dog for a walk early doors. Well, you wake up in a cold tent on a semi deflated mattress squashed into the corner of the double sleeping bag because of the lack of turgidity of the bed, Mrs T almost on top of me because apparently “I’m Heavier”! The only thing to do is to get up, get the circulation going and have a fag and a coffee, the pub offered this service at about 8am, a real unexpected surprise. We were joined on Saturday by some special guest stars, camping virgins in our little group, and so the afternoon at the pub got a little messy, the walk home messier too and the evening just descended into chaos. We got told off by the farmer with a very bright head torch, like a floating orb of bad vibes, finding it hard to believe that it was happening. Will he allow groups next year? Were we really being too loud? I hope so, and maybe are the answers to those.

So its Tuesday and having wondered uptown the pub yesterday to see how the bluebell walks had gone once again i didn’t feel particularly rested today, work was tough to get enthused about so I called my colleague who can be relied upon to moan about the job, etc. That left me feeling even worse. So back to it, I’ll be writing every night this week and hopefully will feel inspired enough to get involved in the Friday Fictioneers again, I missed it last week for the first time in months, just couldn’t get it.

Night night.