tent angst

If this looks like a steaming face of discontent, then your observations do not deceive you.

Off we scurried off to Bath, with a pile of camping equipment in the boot. My friends - and this usually annoys me - laugh when they hear I love camping."Oh please Peas, since when?' Please bitch, since forever.

I inherited a tent and all this other awesome outdoor crap, and we vaguely checked the weather forecast, and I fuck with you not - Bath, Somerset was set to be drier than a nun's klunge.

We get to Bath, where I'd booked a spot of green, dewey meadow on the banks of a bubbling brook, in a place called Newton Mill Holiday Park.

It's the Brit's worst nightmare, he literally wakes up in a sweat when he dreams about caravans and holiday camper vans, so it was he who said, 'OK, it looks alright. Based on the fact that we won't be wedged between two Conqueror 58's filled with people from Liverpool.'

Except it took us three hours to erect our tent. Elton John seeing Gisele Bundchen naked could've pitched a tent quicker than we did.

Higher grade tent.com.

Christ.

After three attempts and loud, 'Oh for CHRIST SAKES. Can't we just go to the pub, sod this off and book into a B&B?' The Brit refused to be conquered by a tent, so insisted we do it another way. Which didn't work. And then another way, which didn't fucking work either.

I assume an Irishman manufactured the tent, and that my Saffa mates who gave me the tent were just baiting me. Because it was the most back-to-front contraption in the universe and it nearly made me turn mental in that green patch of meadow in Somerset.

As we lay down, complete in our work, the Brit fluffed up his pillow and said, 'Sigh...I hate camping.'

So that's the picture.

We headed then to a few pubs in Bath, where Poen would've been proud of me. I haven't pilfered from a pub since I was 26, and had a thing for the soap dispensers at the Jolly Roger in Johannesburg.

I saw a sign on the back of the toilet, whilst I was spending a penny after too much Bath ale, the 'Keep Calm & Carry On' sign. Which I wrenched off the wall, got into stealth mode and snuck it out the loo when no one was looking.

Bath is beautiful. Georgian, pale stone, and if you don't remind yourself almost constantly, you'd think you were in ancient Rome.

The city was formally known as Aquai Sulis, and run by Romans who ran amok having orgies and living the dream next to the, well, bath.

The Brits got in and renamed the previously ornately Latin name to the deceptively descriptive Bath, and henceforth, the only hot spring in Britain is now the hottest tourist destination this side of Doynton.

(Doynton is a town. So is Datchet. I passed them on the way.)

After oohing and aahing, eating a greasy breakfast in the square - sun streaming down - we dismantled the tent, threw it in the back of the car and agreed that we only want to see it when we go to a summer festival next year.