Camping!

Oh god, I’ve just read my entry from Friday and it was incredibly morbid. So sorry to anyone else who I reduced to tears or prompted a mild depression to begin just before the weekend. How incredibly selfish of me.

So after offloading all my morose thoughts, I set off to Whitstable with my oldest friends in the world for a spot of camping. I had of course packed totally inappropriate things and I was told during the weekend that any heels were not allowed and that hair removal of any shape or form was banned.

We arrived in Whitstable and set up our camp, which I assumed would consist of two tents, but no. My super friend Emma has done us proud with a massive wind break for privacy, a table and four chairs, a stove, saucepans, frying pans, condiments, bottle opener, can opener, washing up liquid, bowl, basically all the stuff your mum and dad would have thought about and you would take for granted.

During Friday night I took the up the challenging position of ‘the cold moaner of the group’, and ended up looking like Mrs Miggins with a pashmina wrapped around my head, nose and mouth and a towel draped over my knees. Emma took pity and offered to make me a cup of tea, “Earl Grey, or PG tips’ -something I never expected to hear during camping. And then ‘milk chocolate digestives?’ Now we’re talking!

Saturday bought with it some slightly decent weather and Emma suggested we all go crab fishing. After buying some £1 fishing lines, we sat with our ‘crab bucket’ at the end of a tiny promontory (a word I thought Emma had made up, but it seems not) and lowered down our stinky fishy bait. Thinking we were in for the long haul we got comfy and started nattering. Within seconds I could feel a little crabby tug on my line and whipped it up only to find 3 crabs doing battle for the mouldy fish. Into the bucket they went, after lots of screaming and me having to manhandle the crabs much to the girls’ disgust. In the space of ten minutes, we’d caught about 15 crabs and had to empty our bucket and let them free. To be honest, rather than encouraging our fishing we were all slightly disappointed at just how easy it had been.
Saturday night we continued the fishery theme and threw ourselves into the local spirit getting stuck into the local fruits de la mer. Delicious rock oysters with lemon, chilli and a little tabasco, local lobster, cockles, sardines, moules and cod. Between us we devoured a couple of hundred quid’s worth of the stuff and it was awesome. Oysters in particular. One chew and down the hatch.

One minor hissy fit due to the rain, one downpour as we were taking the camp down yesterday morning and one minor incident of comedy road rage on the return journey. Apart from that a lovely, laughy weekend. Just what I needed. Now I just want my boyfriend home- Laura, I salute you my angel. You’re so much braver than me.