Carry on Camping*.
What a fantastic idea! I said enthusiastically when my mate G suggested taking the kids on a camping weekend.
But as the weekend approached I started getting a bit nervous, the prospect of spending a night under canvas (it was nylon actually, but saying "spending a night under nylon" makes it sound like I went to a fetish party) was starting to get a bit scary. Alone, in the wild, just me, big'un and little'un with no support team (Wifey), it would be like a coming of age, rite of passage type thing. The kids might get something out of it aswell.
So, on Saturday myself (aged 40), Big'un (6), Little'un (3) accompanied by G (36) his two eldest boys (8 and 4) and another bloke called Fergie (43, I think) and his son (9) set off to deepest, darkest, Hertford (just off the M25 and up the A10 a bit).

The plan was simple,

• arrive.
• put tents up.
• have a BBQ.
• play games etc to wear kids out.
• throw sleeping chidren into sleeping bags.
• drink beer.
• go to bed.
• wake up.
• have brekkie.
• pack up tents.
• go home.

It all started to go awry when G's GPS led us to the wrong place (it was a typo apparently). When we arrived at the campsite I took the kids off for a toilet break while G and Fergie started to unpack the tents. As I supervised Little'un sitting on the toilet (he's just starting to get the hang off this toilet lark) I noticed that He'd managed to somehow wee on top of the seat, I realised that the angle of the dangle had been all wrong and Little'un had overshot the seat and wee'd straight into his pants. Disaster! I thought, we've only been here 5 minutes and already I'm involved in a toilet incident, all my worst fears were coming true. We returned safely to the pitch, with Little'un going commando.

Surely nothing else could go wrong? but bad things always come in 3's and the worst possible thing you could imagine happened. Yes that's right, one of the throwaway BBQ's didn't light! (we had to throw it away) and the fish fingers got burned. ( in case you're wondering why we would cook fish fingers on a barbie, it's because G's kids are veggie). By 9.00 saturday night it looked like the kid's would be putting the adults to bed as they were still going strong and we were shattered.

The rest of the trip went just fine and the kids had a great time. We went swimming at the Lea Valley Leisure Pool on the way home and later on sunday G and I took 3 of the kids to see the Fantastic Four. (3 film reviews coming soon).

This week I'm off on a training course for 2 day's so Wifey will be home alone, with 3 children for 2 nights, while I'm getting pissed, whoops I meant to say studying and stuff.

* much to our dissapointment a young Barbara windsor looky likey and a coachload of young ladies completely failed to arrive and start exercising in their bikini's. I feel cheated.