“We were on the top and the world was spinning
We were only young in the whirlpool of warning
Communication lost in the thundering rain style
A shelter from the storm in the early beginning
Going out in the Big Sleep, out in the Big Sleep
Could have been years, you know it could have been years
Or only seconds ago”
Kerr, Burchill, Mac Neil,Forbes
This weeks post will be unusually brief, but will have attached a link to an extraordinary long reading of an older post from my Substack , featuring talks I’ve given in Nashville and Belfast.
The reason for today’s brevity is that I’m in a field in Stradbally with little battery life and no WiFi.
So here are 10 things I’ve learnt after TWO whole days camping in a tent :
1. Do not camp in a tent.
2. If you are contemplating attending a music festival in a tent please refer to point 1 above and stop reading now, go instead and randomly switch on lights, boil a kettle , or flush a toilet and smile.
3. Tents are always much smaller than advertised. I am currently using a ‘4 Man’ tent , borrowed from my friend Fonzo. It even came with a little graphic of 4 men in coffin like structures that I assume are meant to resemble sleeping bags, but in retrospect may have been a subliminal warning from the tent manufacturer. I am sleeping across the middle of the tent and my feet are touching one end and my head is grazing the other end. The only way three other men are fitting in here are if I chop them up into tiny pieces and stack them in jars around the edges.
4. Do not camp in a tent. ( Yes, this is the same as #1, and technically the same as #2, but it can’t be stressed enough.
5. Do not borrow the rug from the small sitting room to use as a comforting reminder of family and home while you’re away. It will be missed immediately and it will be assumed , ( correctly) , that you just wanted somewhere to take off your shoes and not have grass and mulch littering the floor of your tent.
6. Leave ‘coolers’ , camping stoves, camping chairs, cups , plates , cutlery, pots. None will be used as it is raining and windy and you are surrounded by food vendors that learnt their trade in airports and have no shame… but are still preferable to the thoughts of shuffling g everything around your tent to cook food while squatting .There is hardly enough floor space in your ‘4 man tent ‘ for you alone, let an all your ‘essentials’.
7. Do not talk in a tent. It may seem unnecessary to point out that tents have thin walls … if nano thin nylon can be described as a wall… and that they are not soundproof. But I am currently surrounded by tents and am privy to a drug deal, a marriage breakup, confessions of infidelity, and commissions of infidelity… and that was Wednesday night ! People seem to operate in tents in the same ‘personal space’ mode that they do in parked cars on their speaker phones sharing intimate details with passing pedestrians.
8. There is no such thing as a waterproof tent. Technically there is, but in the same way that a black plastic bin bag is waterproof, and I wouldn’t want to live in one of those either. If the rain doesn’t get you the condensation will. Do not leave anything you intend to wear, sleep on/in , or clean yourself with anywhere near the tent fabric or in the awkward angley edges.
9. Sleeping bag is an oxymoron. Many years ago my friend Ray got me involved in rescuing a swan. ( I’ll do that blog as next week’s audio). The short version is that I ended up in the back of Ray’s car holding a sedated swan by the back of his head, the rest of him was in a large clear plastic sack. As we drove to the lake to release him … sorry, the swan was called Nigel… his sedation started to wear off and he was trying to open his wings and kick me with his feet, and got very anxious and angry at his confinement. That’s what ‘sleeping’ in a bag in a tent is like.
10. Don’t camp in a tent.
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This is for people camping in tents, Big Sleep by Simple Minds
P.P.S And this is the link to my second audio blog ever, ever.
