Chitra Ramaswamy

Published on Friday 19 June 2009 13:55

THIS week I'm going camping. These are very strange words from someone who once said (okay, okay, blubbed through great sheets of snotty tears), "I HATE THE OUTDOORS! I'M NEVER GOING OUTSIDE AGAIN!"

And this while on a gentle Sunday stroll in the Campsies, about 20 metres from a car park and the pub. Now, many years later, I am choosing of my own free will to sleep outside for an entire week with just C, C's sister, the hulking shadows of Munros and two million midges for company. I've clearly lost the plot and should be put out to pasture except, well, I wouldn't really like it. Too much fresh air and bird noise.

Here's the thing. C loves camping. I love C. So I love camping. This is another one of those pesky relationship equations, like listening to Kaiser Chiefs really loud in the car (because C likes it) or talking about the Tudor queens every third day (because I like it). This to-ing and fro-ing is supposed to be about sharing and compromise but, let's face it people, it's about point scoring.

If I go camping for a week with C, then for approximately three months (after which I will go camping again to top up), whenever I want to discuss the mythology surrounding Anne Boleyn constantly for a week, C has to agree to it. It is the way of the world.

What C doesn't know is that, in the process of using this camping trick for five years, I have secretly come to love the business of tents. I thought camping was for self-denying miserablists, students and people who refuse to have a television in the house. Actually, camping is for anyone who likes to eat sausages twice a day, sit around drinking and has a tendency towards pyromania. In short, me.

Naturally, I'm keeping all this to myself. My plan is to be the model camping partner. I'll knock pegs into muddy ground, make tea on our mini stove and only get C to check the tent for spiders on the hour. Every once in a while I'll sigh beatifically, as if to signal how hard this is for me but how happy I am to be doing it. Meanwhile, ever so quietly, I'll be popping hot blackened sausages in my gob, stoking the campfire and having a whale of a time.