I have just come back from a weekend camping in a field

It was arranged by a group of enthusiastic parents at my son’s school, who thought it would be a fun and bonding experience.

I do not like camping.  I like a bed, a shower, a wardrobe with my clothes in and an oven that works.  I like it when insects, weather and other people’s children stay on the outside of where I am living.  Wrestling with acres of canvas and metres of poles, before shattering your wrist bones as you pummel bendy plastic pegs into solid mud – just so you have somewhere to sleep?  No thanks.  If I’m going to pay for a holiday, frankly the very least I expect are some walls that don’t threaten to blow away at the first puff of wind.  Quite why I’d part with hard earned cash to sleep in a lumpy field next to three head-banging teenagers and a dog on a string is beyond me.

That being the case, I do not own a tent.  Or a sleeping bag or a calor gas stove, or indeed anything that would enable me to go camping.  Not a problem in my world, except that this camping weekend was effectively an ambush, and I was to be forced to attend.

The enthusiastic parents and their feral kids had started talking about the camping trip at school, so of course my two had heard about it.  Worse, they had assumed that their class mates would not be channelling their inner Swallows or Amazons without them.

When the subject arose, I made my best sympathetic face and pointed out I didn’t have a tent, so we couldn’t go.  Simples.  However boychild had already worked this out, and happily informed me that his best friend Harry’s mum said she had a spare tent we could borrow.

You can go right off some people.

And so it was that we turned up at the camp site, clutching duvets, a hastily purchased torch, and an awful lot of wine.  And then I saw it, and everything changed.  The reason that boychild’s friend’s mother had a spare tent was because they have a camper van.  And it is awesome.

It has an upstairs!  With beds for the kids!  You don’t have to erect a tent!  IT HAS A MATTRESS!  And a cooker and a fridge!  You can bring all your stuff with you!  I know.  You knew this already but I’ve never seen one up close and personal.  I had literally no idea they were so amazing.

I’m more than happy to commune with nature, but not if going to bed involves aforementioned wrist shattering and lumpy field.  But if I basically all I have to do is rock up, park, and crack open the wine, then I’m in.

I’m home now, showered and warm, hips recovering from the bruising field.  And yes, I am sipping wine.  And yes, I am googling “camper vans”………