For the love of camping

We weren’t a family of campers so I have no idea why, but I have always had a love of camping.

During the days of ‘the war’ when my father was away in the navy, my mother’s youngest sister stayed with us in Auckland and she was an inventive person. One day she fixed me a ‘tent’ on the back lawn. Tent? It was two Onehunga Woollen Mills tartan travel rugs pegged onto the clothes line, spread out at the bottom and held in place by a couple of bricks. It was meant to be for daytime use but I wanted to sleep in it, a notion that met stern resistance. So I whinged and whined until I wore that resistance down. That night, I was tucked into my ‘bed’ in this tent, followed by the inevitable “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon this little child …” then off to dreamland.

I woke up, in my proper bed! How did this happen?

I was told, “We thought it was going to rain …” (Onehunga travel rugs had the waterproof capability of blotting paper.) I looked out the window. My tent was still there, bone dry under a clear blue