I am NOT a camper - sorry!

We've been talking about going camping during the December holidays. I was actually even starting to get into the camping vibe with self-speech like: it'll be sooo good for the kids; it's healthy; it's stress-free; we'll just get away from it all.

Part of the pre-planning planning stage of going camping, for us, was to erect the tent to see what bits and pieces we may be missing (another item on that end of year to-do list - CHECK!).

When Friday afternoon arrived, our four-man tent was erected in our back yard. We discovered that we were, in fact, missing two tent pegs for the shade cloth that fits over the whole contraption. At least we know - shew!

But an erected tent in the backyard - let's just get back to that statement right there, shall we? It was all the kids could do to not explode with excitement. Excitement which spilled over into anguished pleas to sleep in the tent.

What the heck, right? We might as well get a bit of camping practice in while we can, before we set out on a trip only to discover that we were not made to camp.

So we set up camp; the kids sharing on a spare mattress, and the mother of the year and me on the blow-up double mattress. With all the essential necessities (duvets, pillows, reading material etc), our whole family went to bed at 20h30 - but only because we couldn't put the kids to bed outside by themselves now, could we?

Sleeping in your garden poses a couple of, shall we call them, discomforts. Firstly, we live in South Africa. Secondly, our house is fully secured by burglar alarm, but sadly, our garden is not. Thirdly, we live in South Africa.

So the first thing I become aware of, is how bloody loud the traffic is when I am not surrounded by the volume control of brick and cement. I swear there was some kind of drag race down my street. All. Night. Long. No kidding. I woke up about six times due to speed freaks zooming past our house throughout the night.

The next minor irritation was the size of my shared sleeping space. I am accustomed to a king-size bed. I like to be able to toss and turn until I find my comfy-position, without rolling over into an elbow, an armpit or a forehead. And another thing about blow-up mattresses is that when more than one person is lying on one, the lighter of the two tends to roll towards the heavier one who is demonstrating far stronger gravity effects than the less heavy of the two. So I spent most of the night clutching onto my side of the mattress, trying to anchor myself and avoid slipping into the valley of the elbows.

There's that, and then also the fact that whenever your sleeping partner moves on a blow-up mattress, you tend to get bounced around a bit. And this is not conducive to good sleep.

And did I mention the bit about living in South Africa? Well, we do. And with that comes the constant awareness of crime. Every South African has some degree of cognizance of what kind of a target you may represent to a lurking criminal. And even more so when you're sleeping in your garden. Outside of the protection of your burglar bars and laser beams. Every little noise raises the hair on the back of your neck. Even the bunnies munching grass sound like ominous creeping feet.

So all in all, it was not an easy night. And by 4am when T-Bird had a bad dream and yelled out: "Daddy, look out! The bad guy's behind you with a gun!", I can honestly say I had had enough. As you can imagine, my adrenaline levels sky-rocketed. My heart was beating so fast I thought my sternum was going to disintegrate!

I settled my T-Bird, and placed her next to her (deeply sleeping) father. I climbed into (the single mattress) bed with AirBear and tried to while away the next couple of hours.

The discussion the following morning between my darling hubby and myself revolved around how much I do not want to go camping. That, and how flipping stiff my neck was. He assures me the problem lies with the mattress. But would you blame me if I turned down the invite?