Carry on Camping

It’s August and high season for holidays. Indeed, a colleague is off soon for a week of wetly squelching around the Lake District, reading his weatherproofed Wainright and finding out that his £700 hand-held GPS ‘where the hell am I?’ detector does not work in drizzle.

He is camping.

Camping, I am told, is the new staying in. Staying in, apparently, used to be the new going out and going out has always been the new way to obtain a better class of hangover and sexually transmitted disease. The only sort of hangover you get camping is if you don’t drop enough water purification tablets in the home made elderflower wine you got from the farm down the road and the only disease you’re likely to catch is foot and mouth.I have tremendous respect for campers.

In my youth a tent weighed around as much as a small pony was made of the sort of canvas that lines the gussets of the underwear of fat girls and had no doubt been bought second hand from a scout troop being disbanded after their pack leader got knocked up as a result of the great woggle-on-the-cock scandal of ’72. To this you added pots, pans, salve, gas, cookers, lights, lamps, first aid kit and many layers of wool and oiled cotton.

Now you pop into Tesco and pick up the sort of kit you could assault Everest with for a tenner, and it all fits in your back pocket.

As for GPS, don’t get me started. I’m not saying it’s a shame when a party of schoolkids dies of exposure because none of them can read a compass and the weather closes in and blah blah blah but think…do you really want that sort of person to possibly one day be in position of responsibility, possibly involving landing aircraft?

Three weeks of holidaying in the Peak District, where you can only tell it’s daytime because the rain warms up a bit, where the locals speak fluent grunt and where they think ‘integration’ is what you do to keep heat from escaping your house would either see any would-be Brit citizen sprinting for the coach station and a one-way ticket home, These are my kind of people.

Great...Like Your Family Wasn't Gorgeous Enough!!

I have to say big congratulations to Allie, Jed, Avery Murphy and Winston on the safe arrival of Miss Ainsley May.

Ainsley I have only a few words of advice for you.

Enjoy every bit of life.......Do as Mommy and Daddy tell you.........and listen to your big sister!! She knows what's best!

Y.M.C....Eh?

A (much younger) male colleague of mine has today been regaling us with a re-telling of his adventures in clubland this morning.

He and some friends apparently got a little, shall we say merry, and wound up (they claim, unknowingly) in Kent’s most infamous gay club. This was apparently around 11pm. Now most heterosexual men upon realizing their mistake would no doubt beat a hasty retreat whilst keeping their 21 year old tushies firmly against the wall. But no. Colleague and his chums stayed until 3AM.

Now this worries me about colleague because although he seems to consider himself the kind of guy who stayed at this club in an ironic way, or because he liked the music…..what he actually likes is the tight shirts, tight trousers and – I strongly suspect – a cock up his arse.

You can call me Al (fresco)

The only sane response to temperatures gone mad is to avoid manual labour and drink heavily during the day, refusing all food.

I find that gin is the drink of choice, as it’s kept in the freezer and so the very act of fetching it out every twenty minutes provides blessed relief.Starting at nine in the morning means that one is fashionably unconscious through the worst heat of the day, usually stretched out prone on the stone floor of the kitchen.

Regaining consciousness in time for cocktails and the cool of the evening, it’s recommended that one dine outside. By nine, the heat is tolerable and appetite returns, given that edge that only starvation and alcohol poisoning can produce. Favourite meals include salads, fruits and, of course, a really, really huge bowl of crisps.

Water Water....Everywhere!!

Sunday presented an interesting dilemma. Should we carry out a few household chores and basically have a quiet day at home….or should we BUILD AN ARK????

Oh yes, we had rain. This was not normal rain either…this was rain of biblical proportions. At one point it was raining UPWARDS after it had hit the ground so hard.

Unfortunately, when the deluge began, we were not safely under cover of bricks and mortar. Oh no….we were in the middle of the local park with our canine companion. It had been overcast but dry when we set out, but by the time we got back we were beyond wet. We were soaked….saturated, and at one point I believe I began to develop gills and flippers.

Of course the one member of the household with fur decided this was all very amusing, and wouldn’t it be a jolly hoot to stand in the hallway upon our return and shake off 8 gallons of water along with 4 lbs of dirt. All this before she turns to us with a look that says ‘Hey, I’m a dog. It’s what we do!’

Hey, Raynard...Ya little Shit!

For sheer bloody cheek, an adolescent fox sat outside my front door last night takes the biscuit (and probably the leftover chicken and whatever else he can scrounge from nearby bins).

Urban foxes are nothing new, but one showing this level of relaxation around humans was something new. I immediately wondered if he was hurt but, given the vigorous way he was scratching and licking his balls, I’d guess not. A quick hit on the RSPCA web-site revealed that young foxes are a common sight this time of year and that they have mange. It then went on to list how to trap one for rescue, but quite frankly I stopped reading after the word mange.

Reaction to young foxes falls into three camps:

The first is the urban reaction, filtered through Disney, which is to feed the thing and hope that it takes up residence as an amusing but wily pet, possibly bringing along some woodland friends.

The suburban reaction is to remember the last time a fox got in among the trash bags, recall the chicken carcasses spread down the road, and chase the little bugger off with a shovel.

The country reaction is to get the local hunt on the ‘phone with one hand, while trying to load and cock a shotgun with the other, all the while trying not to vaporise the chicken coop, weathervane or cycling vicar in the ensuing carnage and chaos.

By the time I had worked out what to do, the fellow had scampered off. No doubt he heard one of my neighbours opening a can of dog food and went off to try his luck.

Food, Glorious Food

There’s nothing like home grown vegetables. I can’t see why everyone doesn’t do it. All you do is pick a small plot in the grounds, plant, pot, water and of course wage a constant war with pests, frosts, the elements, frosts, cats, frosts, over-watering, under-watering, worry about the effect of lacquering the plant with pesticides and, of course, frosts.

The benefits are two-fold. The first is that in terms of food-miles (this years obsession) the food has traveled from your back garden to your kitchen, so we’re talking food yards.

It also means you are sticking it to the supermarkets, surely a good thing.

The real benefit though is the taste. Tomatoes are basically sunlight and water - and that’s what they taste like. It’s like having summer on your tongue. Like a tomato should taste. A supermarket tomato, though lovely normally, tasted different by comparison - it tastes of lorry and packing material, of underpaid picker’s hands, pesticides and profit.

Still, stick enough ranch dressing on it and it is, if I’m honest, usually fine.