In praise of ........camping

Hi-de-hi!

Camping is not what it used to be. Gone are the heavy cotton-twill tents of yore, upon which many a corporate team-building challenge was based. Gone are chilly nights in draughty, single-skin abodes. Gone too, the need for a logistics expert to organise a family camping trip.

On recent camping forray to Hay Festival, teenager Georgia had thrown tiresome teenage strop when her help was demanded for erection and packing away of tent.

There are, of course, 2 ways of resolving family conflict;

1. Angst-ridden method. Confront and forcibly control the problem (in the camping case, force daughter to join in, stomping, tutting and lip-curling, helping under fear of with-holding of pocket-monies), or alternatively

2. Coward's Method - my preferred option. Remove source of conflict (i.e. don't camp).

But since chilled camping trip had been planned by My Friend Mary, neither of the above was an option.

So it was that I resorted to the The Third Way. The Third Way being that middle-class luxury of throwing money at solving the problem. And what an investment that money proved to be. Just £54 bought us a self-erecting tent; a Quechua 3-seconds Air Tent that, when thrown skyward, frisbee-like, from its flat pack bag, springs into action, transforming itself from 1 metre disc to 3-man tent, landing upright and ready for pegging. (for demo see, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI9m8aSZaEU&mode=related&search= )

No teenage strop; instead filial bicker ensued for rights to fling tent, but in the course of the argument the tent was tugged from its bag and took its own decision to metamorphose before they even had chance to launch it.

Carry on Camping, I say!