CAMPING. This correspondent is again under threat from camping.
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Over the years we’ve made our thoughts about camping well known. We have no trouble with consenting adults going camping. Why, consenting adults can take their children camping if they wish. If they want to place their offspring in danger from marauding wildlife, well, that's their decision. Certainly nothing to do with us. Camp to your heart’s content, we say.
However, leave us out of the equation.
It’s not as though we haven’t had some experience in camping. True, it was more than 30 years ago, however, we have toughed it out in the wild. We vividly recall a northern expedition where we actually slept in a tent. Or at least that’s how it was supposed to work out. However, after a long night of negotiations at a hostelry, we couldn’t work out how to open the tent. So we slept next to it. We think. Either way we remember feeling a touch off-colour the next morning for which we blame camping. So in the years since we have vowed never to rough it again. We won’t be sleeping in a tent and fending off swarms of voracious mosquitoes and other wildlife when there’s a hotel room that can comfortably accommodate us. Bear Grylls we ain’t.
The logistics in preparing for a camping trip would be enough to turn a sober thinking person off the entire exercise. Realistically, more planning seems to go into a camping weekend than the D Day landing. Jamming a car full of tents, cooking implements, sleeping bags and the like just to spend two days at Knorrit Flat (wherever that is) seems like a complete waste of time.
However, we may have a problem. This correspondent has a new friend. All good so far. During an early conversation she told us how much she enjoys camping. Nothing better, she claimed. Just to underline this, The Happy Camper (THC) has spent the past few days somewhere in Far North Queensland (FNQ) where she has been happily camping, kayaking and swimming in pristine waters. Just like Gilligan’s Island (for older readers), there’s not a single luxury. Just THC, her camping friends and Mother Nature.
“We’ll have to go camping,’’ she wrote on a communique that arrived via carrier pigeon the other morning.
“You’ll love it.’’
We have news for THC. And none of it is good. We won’t love it at all. In fact we’ll do everything in our power to avoid it. So to borrow from Black Adder’s Baldrick, we came up with a cunning plan.
“Certainly will,’’ we scrawled on a note to go on a return carrier pigeon.
“Just like you will enjoy going to the State of Origin next year.’’
Thus far we haven’t received a reply.
We’ve said it a thousand times. No-one wins a war.