Twenty-five minutes to put the tent up, you say? Forty-five? Double that last one and you start to come close. The grim reality, played out against the unforgiving backdrop of a mid-afternoon Sou'Westerly blustering in across the sand dunes straight off the Irish Sea, had me and Charlotte battling with bendy poles for fully ninety-five minutes. It felt like a hundred and ninety five. Young Frankie, showing a presnce of mind beyond his tender years, witnessed the entire farrago from the comfortable vantage point of the inside of the Fiat Punto. Occasionally he would break off to raid the carefully-packed food basket for biscuits, or to unpack one of the more interesting-looking suitcases and spread its contents over the dashboard. A happy camper indeed.
Mind you, even once we had the darned contraption more or less erect, the outlook was far from convincing. While other, more expertly assembled, tents seemed to brace themselves sturdily against the incoming gale, ours swayed drunkenly from side to side, as if undecided between staying pegged to the land and taking its chances overhead among the rainclouds and seagulls. At each gust, the walls buffeted alarmingly outwards, threatening to split the canvass. A casual observer (perhaps taking in the action from the inside of a passing Fiat Punto) might have been forgiven for concluding that our sleeping quarters were the venue for a no-holds barred wrestling bout between a pair of heavyweight midgets.
Still, we got the tent up and fit for purpose in the end- which is more than could be said for the camping stove, which malfunctioned at the first time of asking, leaking freezing cold calor gas in liquid form all over my hands, and sending me hopping half-naked and screaming across the undergrowth. This impromptu tea-dance served to break the ice with the neighbours, one of whom was kind enough to lend us his sturdy one-ring hob to boil a cup of tea. After gulping that down, we decided that any attempt at more ambitious culinary endeavour was surely tempting fate, and hot-footed it in the Fiat Punto to the nearest chip shop.
That first-night chip shop dinner ushered in the holiday's halcyon days. There were walks to secluded coves. There was pasta, cooked on our own brand new one-ring hob and flavoured with a delicious combination of pesto, sand-dune and pebbles. Best of all, there were the pitchdark evenings, with Frankie fast asleep under the massive three-man duvet, Irish state radio whispering sweet nothings from a tinny FM set propped up against a pile of jumpers, and me and Charlotte clinking beer bottles while the rain battered in vain against the sides of our canvass fortress.
The bliss, of course, was too good to last. On the third morning, while clambering to a standing position on emergence from the front flap, I felt a sharp, almost unbearable stab of pain right along the base of the spine. For the rest of the holiday I could hardly walk. The forty yard journey to the shower block (featuring rugged terrain and a three-tent enclave housing approximately three dozen perma-stoned scousers) became the outer limit of my daily trajectory. Links to the outside world (or to Anglesey, which isn't quite the same thing) were maintained by the heroic Charlotte, who, in addition to keeping Frankie entertained with a bucket and spade, undertook regular visits to the village, returning laden with broadsheet newspapers, air-filled mattresses and Ibuprofen.
You'll be thinking, no doubt, that we packed our belongings into the Fiat Punto forthwith and made an early return to Manchester. Hell no- these holidaymakers are made of sterner stuff (and also neither of us fancied the job of explaining to our beach-besotted four-year-old that the holiday had to be curtailed due to the small matter of daddy having been more or less snapped in half). So we stayed to the bitter end- well, very nearly, returning on Thursday afternoon instead of the anticipated Friday morning.
On our return we called into Didsbury Tescos for a pint of milk, then to the emergency outpatients department of Manchester Royal Infirmary for a diagnosis. It seems I've done nothing that a couple more weeks' supply of broadsheet newspapers and Ibuprofen won't put right- hell, in a couple of weeks I might even be able to walk straight up, instead of lurching to the right like a drunken gunslinger falling off a horse.
Back at work (I took Monday off, but was forced by the darned Catholic Work Ethic to hobble back in on Tuesday) I've started looking already for the next available week's leave. Anglesey again? Maybe. Camping? No- not again for a while, and possibly not in this life. That cosy looking B and B on the seafront might cost a trifle more than fifteen quid a night, but it is starting to look like a tempting alternative to extreme holidaymaking by-the-sea.
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