Lockdown Camping

As all my work disappears like all other self employed folk in my industry, I’ve dusted off the cobwebs on this old friend of mine, my ancient, long-neglected. I realise live streaming would be more 2020, but fashionable is something I’ve never really managed. Anyway, if you happen by for a read, I thank you.

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It started with a Whatsapp message from the Beaver Scouts. A challenge to camp overnight. Those without a garden could build a den and sleep in that and I presumed we’d be going for that option. We are lucky enough to have some outdoor space, but it’s 2.5m x 3m of decking. It’s a lovely place to sit and and we’ve worked out you can fit a game of swing ball in there, but otherwise, activity options are limited.

My husband remembers a two man tent we were gifted 10 years ago and thinks he can make it fit outside. He makes the mistake of pondering this out loud in earshot of the children and we then have 48 hours of the question ‘When is daddy going to put us a tent up?’ from all three interested parties. We also have a brownie and a guide in the household, both equally interested in this tent promise.

Finding the tent was the first obstacle. Yes, we live in a flat, but it’s amazing the places you can find to store things as we frequently find out. We eventually found it stuffed behind a bed. Thankfully the sleeping bags and roll mats were easier to locate. The roll mats are in daily usage for PE with Joe, so currently line the stairs down to the garden (we live on the first floor). I imagine many of you keep your camping mats on stairs, right? No? Well, if you’re wondering how they stay in place on the stairs, we balance them on the set of ladders that live there, of course.

The tent poles and tent are far bigger than our garden when laid out flat. This is part camping, part real-life tetris, as everyone dances around the garden in a succession of moves to ‘help’ whilst not losing an eye from a pole. Ending up on the wrong side of the tent once it’s up does come with the danger of spending the whole night trapped at the wrong side of the garden, avoided only by a display of badly executed gymnastic moves, as I sadly found out. We tethered the ropes to the fence and used gardening canes as pegs to stick through the decking and into the ground below. Fine boy scouting and girl guiding skills, I’m sure we can agree.

And there we have it, a new guest room. An airbnb when all this clears and we need to make up for lost income. I’m joking. I think. I mean I’m not ruling anything out. We’ve had situations where a few friends and family have come to stay at once and working out where everyone can sleep has taken some inventiveness, and it’s clear my husband is completely viewing this as a breakthrough in extra bedroom space for guests, so I suppose time will tell.

We’ve barely finished putting up the tent and a whole bedroom of stuff starts appearing. Blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, much loved cuddly toys, board games and at one point an upturned box. I question my 7 year old on this and he informs me it’s his bedside table.

Adults end up spending the night on the couch, as it’s closer to the garden. Slightly less fun than an indoor den, but there’s been enough building for one day. We nervously try and sleep, wondering if this was such a good idea after all. But actually, they have a wonderful time. No one gets scared or cold or attacked by a fox, though to be fair this was always low risk as they can’t do zips. There’s lot’s of trips in and out of the kitchen for snacks, and in the morning we get a great deal of gleeful detail about who stayed up the latest and had the least sleep. They spend most of the night playing games by torch light. I’m told that it felt like spending the night in a jungle due to the amount of animal noises. This detail makes me nervously question ‘Erm…what animals do you think you could hear?’ Turns out it was mainly birdsong, so all is fine and I breathe again.

In fact, the whole thing turns out to be a bit too much of a success and when we suggest taking it down the next day, three pairs of sad eyes turn to us…ok, one more night. I add sleeping on the couch to my mental list of parenting sacrifices. How do you sleep on a couch? Very badly.

They’ve had a wonderful adventure. They haven’t touched a screen in two days (I inwardly scream for joy). There’s been a lot of curtain twitching across the back as people spot the spectacle. Happily, our neighbours love it, as otherwise that could have been awkward. We keep the garden lights on overnight, adding a festival spirit and a neighbour snaps a pic and sends it to us. We have an unofficial street seed growing competition on the go, and have now added operation sleep outdoors. We send a photo to family and within the hour, photos of our nieces and nephews with tents up getting ready to do the same are sent back. A communal activity across the country that doesn’t involve zoom; so rare for these times. I imagine a tent has rarely been put up in these back yards. To be honest, if it wasn’t for lockdown, we wouldn’t have put one up in ours. We would have happily been at the seaside enjoying the spring sunshine and sharing fish and chips. But we’re not, we’re home and we’re finding new ways to make adventures for our children and take their mind off lockdown.

I manage to write this today as it turns out that if you let your children spend two nights having very little sleep outdoors, they sleep for a straight 14 hours the night after. Top parenting tip for the day.