Camping etiquette.........

As members of the Caravan Club, we get a monthly magazine full of stuff about camping, campsites, new products, test reports on caravans, motor homes, tow cars etc.

I was leafing through the latest issue earlier today when I came across an interesting snippet.

Apparently, camping has now become very hip and cool, and people are taking it up in their droves as a cheap alternative to package holidays in hot places full of foreigners and swine flu.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about that........all these Johnny Come Lately types muscling in on MY leisure time pursuit, with their screaming kids and their killer dogs, drunkenly carousing till all hours of the morning and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

Well OK, they're not all like that. But my heart does sink when I'm sitting quietly in our awning/tent, enjoying the peace and quiet, immersed in a good book, and a huge, great 4x4 arrives, towing a leviathan caravan. It sinks even further when the back doors open and a load of kids spill out, named respectively Wayne, Dwayne, Shane, Darren, Kyle, Kylie, Chardonnay, Bianca, Tiffany and Sharron.

Plus a Staffordshire Bull Terrier called Butch.

Each child has a bicycle, which they proceed to ride around the site at breakneck speed, through other people's pitches, between awnings, a hairsbreadth from cars and caravans.....the dog barks its head off if anyone sets foot within half a mile of it. Once on site and set up, the parents completely abrogate all responsibility for their spawn, instead delighting in exposing acres of sunburnt flesh complete with builder's bum, while keeping up a running commentary on the minutiae of their lives so that everyone can hear.

It's the camping equivalent of cretins on trains who bellow into their mobile phones at every opportunity.

As with everything else in this life, there is an etiquette regarding the acceptable way to behave in any given situation. I don't blame them for not knowing how to behave first time out, but surely some discrete observation of how other people are doing it might be a good idea.

OK, I'll get down off my soapbox now. I'll be signing off as 'disgusted of St. Leonards' at this rate.

Anyway, the whole point of this post, before I came over all reactionary and militant, was this...........





My daughter when she was very young, loved Sylvanian Families, and despite my feminist reservations, they were then really quite good quality and encouraged imaginative play.

This little ensemble is very cute, and obviously pandering to the zeitgeist.

Not quite sure about reinforcing stereotypical gender roles though. I know of no caravan which has an integral ironing board so that mummy rabbit can do some impromptu pressing.



Love this innovative foldaway toilet.... hope young master bunnikins has flushed it first though........eewwww!



It must only be a four berth caravan, despite the novel sleeping arrangements built into the roof, so I expect the grandparents are only visiting. Looks like a mother rabbit's work is never done though, as she slaves away in the admittedly stylish kitchen. I expect pater familias is out hunter-gathering......or preparing the BBQ. Although as rabbits are vegetarian that might be a bit redundant.



Anyway, I thought it was interesting to see how current lifestyles influence the playthings of today. And nice to see how well behaved the bunny children are too. They are a lesson to us all.....

Epilate, exfoliate, sandblast...........

In a spirit of bravado, I revealed in my last post that I would be exposing my legs in shorts and sandals over the course of the bank holiday weekend.

Having just re-assessed aforementioned appendages, I am now in two minds.

I should point out that my shorts are quite long. Below knee length. So not very short.

However my legs are.

Short.

So the effect of the two combined is, admittedly, comical.

In addition, they are also in urgent need of being deforested. I suppose I could plait the hairs in a boho styley, but the fact that my pins are not exactly gamine, would, I fear, detract from the overall effect.

So there's nothing else for it. I am going to have to go the whole nine yards and epilate (ouch), exfoliate (more ouch) and very possibly sandblast (eye-watering ouch) to achieve a smooth and glossy surface to properly reflect the sun for maximum glare.

Ditto feet, which have been concealed in socks and shoes/boots all winter, and bear an uncanny resemblance to those of Lon Chaney as the Wolf Man.

If I make a start now I might be done by morning..............

Have dongle, will travel.............

Our new sleek and shiny dongle thingy arrived in the post this morning. Just in the nick of time as we're setting off tomorrow morning to go camping over the bank holiday weekend.

So I'll be taking my laptop and hoping that the dongle self-installs quickly and easily and gets a brilliant signal.

Might even post a few blog dispatches just to see how well it works!

Small dog is beside herself with excitement at the prospect of yet another camping weekend, this time at her very favourite site with the lakeside walks and baby animals.

As the weather forecast is good (unbelievably so for a bank holiday weekend) I have today unearthed my shorts and sandals and am girding my loins to expose my winter-white shins to the general populace. Fortunately, most camping types are very easy going, extremely casual-bordering-on-scruffy individuals, so the glare from my legs hopefully will go completely unnoticed and raise no comment.

Or sniggers.

Apart that is, from small dog who will laugh her silly head off when I emerge from the campervan, short-clad for the first time this year. I will try to rise above her ribald remarks and maintain a sense of dignity and decorum as I know for a fact that she has absolutely no sartorial savoir faire and thinks that an outfit fashioned from an old sock is the height of sophistication.

Font of all knowledge.........

Despite the sun shining fit to bust all day today, I have been hard at work indoors.

Two casting sessions, stocktaking check and several hours productive work on my book, which is finally, after several months of faffing about, beginning to take shape. I'm still a few years away from retirement but I've had in mind to put my quarter of a century worth of experience in the miniature world to good use and pen a series of instructive manuals on various different topics.

It's much, much harder than I thought it would be. All the knowledge of how to do stuff is in my head, and I've had years of practice at writing easy to understand instructions and can make a reasonable fist of the macro photography, but those aren't the problem.

Every time I try to plan the layout and design I end up with a mish-mash of different styles and formats, none of which are quite what I'm aiming for.

The whole thing would be a lot easier if I actually KNEW what I was aiming for but I'm hoping I will stumble across the perfect layout by accident.

And don't even get me started on fonts.

I now know more about fonts than can be good for anyone who is not a professional font designer or typographer. For example, who would have thought there could be a font called Girls are Weird..........?

In the process of my font research I've come to realise that I'm very font sensitive.....I get all nervy and jangly if I read something which is in a completely inappropriate font. Fonts are something we take for granted and if they're doing their job right, we're hardly even aware of them, at least in normal body text.

However selecting an appropriate font for a project is a nightmare. I don't want anything too formal, but also I don't want it too look like a nursery school reading book. It's got to be easy on the eye as there will be a lot of textual information, but I also want it to stand out from the crowd. Also I'll probably have different fonts in headings and text boxes and they all have to look kind of unified and not fight with each other visually.

Initially I'd been thinking along the lines of something in a plain cursive script but having tried out various fonts on a piece of text, that would be way too much hard work to read. I think I want san serif with no twiddly bits but I keep getting distracted by the zillions of fonts available on the internet.

I've trawled through the Top 10 Fonts lists of dozens of design 'experts' and I'm not even close to that eureka moment of discovering my perfect typeface.

If anyone in the blogosphere has a favourite, do feel free to leave a comment and I'll check it out.

Anyway, after I'd done some desultory font-finding, I changed tack and did some research on pleating, which is not in itself a particularly fascinating subject. However as a result I found this little gem of a blog which I'll flag up as this week's 'featured artisan'.

Phew............!

The worst thing about coming back from a few days away is the mountain of emails which flood into my inbox, despite my best efforts with spam filters, firewalls, electric fences and laptop-to-air guided missiles.
It's taken me several tries today to get to the bottom of the influx, clear out all the garbage, rescue the genuine emails, untangle them from the junk and leave them gasping for air to recover.

So.

We have bought a dongle.

PP was assigned the task of wading through the labyrinthine terms and conditions of the top 10 mobile broadband suppliers to identify the cheapest, most highly rated, no contract, no fees, pay-as-you-go with no monthly usage commitment package.

Sorry?

What's a dongle?

*deep sigh* Oh alright...........I didn't actually know what a dongle was either, but isn't it a really good name and much better than the possible alternative of 'Wireless and Non-Kinetic Ethernet Receiver', although on reflection the acronym may have put the kibosh on that one.

A dongle is a thingummy you plug into a whatsit port on the side of your portable computer notebook doobry which allows you to connect to the interweb, wirelessly and spontaneously, while camping in the middle of nowhere.

Don't ask me how it works for I have no idea. I think it has something to do with fairy whispers being carried through the air on invisible gossamer threads, to a celestial telephone exchange where the binary pixies decipher them and pass them on.

But don't quote me on that.

Anyways, all being well, it will arrive in good time for our next camping trip, for which rain and gale force winds are forecast. The perfect opportunity to hole up in a cosy little campervan and marvel at the wonders of technology. Always assuming we can set it up and get a signal.

And before the nay-sayers among you weigh in with:

"But I thought you went camping to get away from the tyranny of the laptop, emails, work and all that...."

Yes, well.........there's no answer to that one. Should have thought this blog post through a bit more carefully really.

*shuffles off fridgewards in the hope of liberating some suitably chilled liquid refreshment... it's been a looooooong day*

Home again, home again......jiggety jig

After 4 whole days of drop dead gorgeous weather.......sun shining from a brilliant blue, cloudless sky, and little noise 'cept the sleepy buzz of bees, the cooing of courting wood pigeons and the occasional cuckoo in the middle distance, I have returned from my birthday camping trip.

Woke this morning to dull grey skies and steady rain which looks set for the day. The weather has shown perfect timing for once, and I don't mind at all that it's damp and miserable outside as I am replete with the great outdoors for the time being.

I was mercilessly pampered on my birthday.......relaxing in the sunshine sipping chilled white wine while PP and small dog arranged everything, from a delicious three course dinner to a plethora of presents.

The campsite itself was one we hadn't visited before, but it's not usual in the UK to be able to sit with a view of a herd of rhino grazing on a gentle slope a few fields distant. Previous campers had mentioned spotting giraffe and zebra too, but we didn't see any. Presumably they were on vacation in another paddock.

My presents included some wonderful stationery (I LOVE STATIONERY!!!) and these fantabulous Timberlands which I've coveted for some time.



Other more esoteric gifts from friends included a pale lavender ukulele and a glow-in-the-dark hula hoop. I have it in mind, in the fullness of time, to unveil a novelty variety act combining virtuoso ukulele playing while simultaneously performing acrobatic feats of hula-hooping so keep a look out for me on Britain's Got Talent at some future date.

However, in the early hours of Saturday morning, my MS gremlins ( NOT to be confused with the displacement goblins, who are altogether more benign) decided that I'd been having way too much fun and decided to issue a severe reprimand. This took the form of having me wake to the sensation of being submerged in oceans of pain, which were only slightly allayed by a large dose of mega heavy duty painkillers. These in turn zonked me out for a large part of the day and rendered me incomprehensibly insensible without a drop of alcohol having passed my lips.

Thankfully, over the course of yesterday, (Sunday) the pain subsided sufficiently to allow me to enjoy a wonderful birthday lunch laid on by friends en route back home, and this morning, *touch wood* I am almost back to what passes for normal.

Fortunately, when we returned, the house was still standing. Am I the only person who is pleasantly surprised to return home after even only one night away, to find that the house hasn't burnt to the ground in my absence, or expecting to round the corner on our way up the hill to see a clutch of police cars and 'Crime Scene' tape all around the front garden? I ALWAYS expect to see a smouldering heap of charred ruins, or the scene of a ghastly murder.

Anyway, it's back to work today and lots of lost time to make up. Small dog, as predicted, is fast asleep in her basket, working hard at reversing her nap deficit. I still have several hundred emails to sift through, scanning for a glimmer of gold amongst the dross. Not to mention writing up the copious notes from one of my birthday notebooks. Then in deference to the greyness outside, I may clear the decks to start some long overdue casting, in the hope that the Radio 4 afternoon play will be suitably engrossing.

And speaking of engrossing, here is small dog attempting to hypnotise my birthday cake..........

Don't leave it too late...........

My last post seems to have resonated with many people judging from the comments and emails I've received since.

I'm a firm believer in 'what's for you won't go past you', not to mention Carpe Diem so it's fair to say that we have decided to put in train a series of events, which we hope won't be unfortunate.

I am particularly heartened by Joyce's comment ..... 'Don't leave it too late'.

Anyhoo......we're off on a camping expedition to celebrate my birthday tomorrow and I suspect the main topic of conversation, while we're barbecuing our dinner, sitting watching the sunset will be 'The Plan'.

I'm taking my notebook..............