Connect with my body

My second New Year’s resolution is all about my body. It seems odd to have one resolution focused on loving yourself just as you are and another focused on changing parts of you that you don’t like. But for me, this isn’t about change, hating parts of myself or losing weight (although that would be lovely), its about reconnecting with my body. It’s about being mindful. And mostly it’s about being healthy.

Project Move Your Arse

I have always had an unhealthy relationship with my body. I ignore when I am in pain. I am very clumsy and uncoordinated like a real life Bella Swann. Worse of all I have high standards and I’m very impatient. I like doing things I am good at. Exercise is not one of those. So for this resolution I need to accept that doing an imperfect dog face down is better than doing nothing at all.

A couple of years ago I really successfully incorporated exercise into my life. Ever since I got together with HWSNBN I started eating more, exercising less and I piled on the weight. Gradually months would slip, in which I did no exercise. But in 2010 something changed, I heard about something called the Biggest Loser. Watching the show was inspirational and I realised there wasn’t an easy fix to getting healthy. I bought Jillian Michael’s DVDs. If you haven’t watched them, you should she is scarily amazing.

(OK, OK I’ll keep doing jumping jacks). At first I could barely get through the 20 minute work out. But it  was a surprise how quickly I improved. And within a week I started seeing results as my endurance increased. I lost over two stone and I felt so much better.

Then I had to have an operation. A couple of months later I injured my knee and had to undergo months of physio. Earlier this year I got mortoms neuroma and I could not do anything. I couldn’t drive, I could barely walk. I put the weight back on. But worse was how I felt sedentary, missing the endorphin rush of exercise. My foot is still sore but it’s Catch 22 it hurts if I do nothing and it hurts if I exercise it. So I’m committing to Project Move your Arse. I know what I have to do but it’s just making in happen. In the past I set high goals, fail to achieve them and then get disappointed and give up. Furthermore I’m in the final stretch of University and what with placements and study at the moment I have on free evening per week. I’ve never been more time limited. So I’m keeping my goals low but hopefully achievable.

Walk outside for ten minutes everyday – this has dual benefit of moving my arse (yes) and getting some light over the winter months.

Take screen breaks every hour – I’ve set an automatic reminder so I get up and move around.

Do 25 minutes of exercise once per week – 25 minutes is such a tiny amount but it’s much better than nothing. Doing a little frequently is better than doing nothing at all. Once I’ve done this for four weeks in a row I’m going to add in an extra session. But for now I’m keeping my goals low and achievable. To get myself exercising, I trick myself. I tell myself I must do ten minutes, then I can stop. I layout my workout gear the night before. Just get to the matt I tell myself, then whatever happens after that is a bonus.

Exercise with friends – in the past the fittest I’ve been is when I’ve worked out with friends like a chubby leech. Sadly my main exercise buddy has moved to deepest darkest Worthing. Come May I’m looking for an exercise buddy. Anybody Brighton peeps want to be my exercise buddy (hur hur hur). I promise not to perspire on you and with my crappy moves make you look good?

Confessions of a sugar fiend

I’m an all or nothing kind of girl. Which is great when it comes to things like retraining to be a counsellor or planning a wedding to the love of your life. But less so when it comes to cupcakes. I’ve always known I have a sweet tooth. But my lowest point came when I was suffering from multiple kidney infections. Advice said to keep the infection at bay I needed to cut out on sugar. But exhausted and in pain I just couldn’t do it. I needed that cake more than I needed to be pain free. A week later, I decided I wasn’t go to be anything’s bitch. So I cut out sugar completely. I’m not going to lie, it was hell. But sheer bloodymindness steered me through. And I felt so much better. In control of myself and my body without the afternoon sugar crash. Even when I did indulge on rare occassions like my birthday still felt better. I do it periodically and really giving up sugar is a lot easier than giving up gluten all I have to do was forgo puddings and soft drinks. The RDA of sugar=0 the amount I actually ate= a lot. Research suggests sugar is pretty horrible for us. The way I see it is even if you have a big appetite, like me, we have a maximum number of calories we can eat per day. I’m just trying to prioritise high vitamin unprocessed food over Oreos.

But then I lapsed, and lapsed and lapsed. Some people can just eat one square of dark chocolate, one bite of cake, or have a sweet or two. But for me it’s a slippery slope and I can never eat just one. For me abstinence is much easier than moderation. So I’m eating no sugar. No exceptions. No weekends off. No sugar. Ever. But if I lapse no drama, I’ll just stop eating the next day. So far a week in and I’m feeling fantastic. We’ll see…

Treat myself but not with food – every week I remain sugar free I get to do something lovely for myself whether it’s a long bath, reading a trashy romance novel or buying a new item of clothing (well charity shop clothing).

Record everything you eat – beyond sugar I’m not really restricting myself food wise. I’m just trying to eat healthy more vegetables, more fruit and recording everything I eat. I lost half a stone just doing this even with eating cake last year. I’m on my fitnesspal, friend me if you want to.

Be prepared – if I get HANGRY I will smash down the world hulk style in the search for a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup. This means eating regularly, carrying healthy snacks (almonds and apricots it is) and avoiding the danger zones. Petrol stations, you calorific temptress you.

Meditate once a week – I want to be more mindful, because I am so caught up in my own thoughts, emotions and stories I barely notice the world around me. So meditations downloaded, meditation space created I’ll be meditating once a week. Building up eventually to meditating every day so I can finally tick that pesky item off my life list.

How about you my lovelies? On a new years healthkick too, commisserate with me/ tell me what a wimp I am in the comments

Loving myself

Over the next couple of days I will be posting my three new years resolutions in the hope that declaring them publicly will give me an incentive to keep them!

The first is deceptively simple (and a little hippy dippy): work on loving myself. However, I expect that this may be more of a lifelong struggle than a one year blitz.

I know I am not alone in having trouble with this. At the end of my first counselling session with a new client I always set them a task. To do something during the week, just for themselves, that makes them feel good. It shocks most people that they cannot think of something. Most of us spend our lives focused externally, never considering how we can best take care of ourselves.

One of my favourite meditations metta is focused on offering up loving kindness to groups of people. First you visualise loving kindness surrounding your loved ones, then acquaintances, strangers, enemies, all beings and finally yourself. Always I struggled with the last part of the meditation offering myself the same love and respect I easily offer up to other people; even my ‘enemies.’

Throughout my adolescence and through my twenties, I hated myself. And I was really good at it. No matter how hard I tried I was never good enough. I would compare my insides to other people outsides and always find myself wanting. I had to hide away that sad, bitter, angry, jealous, judgemental side of me because if other people saw they would never accept me. But I knew that shadow self was there: an empty void I would do anything to hide.

I strongly believe that loving and accepting ourselves improves our relationships with everybody we encounter. If you hate yourself and are constantly striving to hide aspects of yourself how can you possibly connect authentically with others. If you do not respect yourself, how can you reinforce boundaries and ask for what you need. If you cannot love yourself how can you ever love another. As the Buddha said ‘You could search the whole world over and never find anyone as deserving of your love as yourself.’

Counselling is an ongoing process of learning to accept myself.  Falling in love with HWSNBN was a great healing process . I love him and respect his opinions. And if he could love me unconditionally then surely I could try too. I suspect loving myself will be something I always struggle with but this year I really want to work on getting rid of self hatred and start loving and respecting myself. Here’s how I am going to do it.

Be kind
Act as if you love and respect yourselves and your thoughts will begin to follow your actions. Take care of yourself: eat well, move your body, give yourself the time and space you need. Make sure you do something you enjoy everyday.

Silence your inner critic
Often we catastrophise, ‘I am such an idiot, I always get it wrong.’ Stop. Take a deep breath and reframe the thought. ‘I did an idiotic thing. Sometimes, I get it wrong. But that’s OK.’ Daily affirmations can help replace the inner cycle of negative thoughts. For example: I am always learning and growing. I am good enough.

Be honest with yourself
If you are sad or angry or frightened, acknowledge it. Feelings are not good or bad, they just are. And they are all valid.

Forgive yourself
When I client is being particularly self critical I ask them to flip the perspective. ‘If your best friend was telling you this story what would you think and feel.’ It is much easier to extend kindness to others rather than ourselves. Reframing allows us the distance to examine our actions.

In one of my favourite chick flicks Bridget Jones Diary, there is the following exchange:

Mark Darcy: ‘I like you, very much.’
Bridget: ‘Ah, apart from the smoking and the drinking, the vulgar mother and… ah, the verbal diarrhea.’
Mark Darcy: ‘No, I like you very much. Just as you are.’

When she tells her friends they are amazed ‘Not thinner? Not cleverer? Not with slightly bigger breasts or slightly smaller nose?’. ‘No just as I am.’

Like Bridget, I am worthy. I am good enough. Just as I am. And you are too.

2012: the rollercoaster year that was

2012 has been a real rollercoaster year. It contained the most magnificient high as I said ‘I do’ and married the love of my life surrounded by my friends and family. I felt so full of absolute joy that day I worried my body would not be able to contain it. I know it’s a total cliche but it really was one of the happiest days of my life.

But 2012 also hosted my lowest day as my best friend Lianne lost her battle with brain tumours and passed away this summer. I still miss her like I have lost a limb and this world seems quieter, duller and empty without her. At points, I really wasn’t sure how I would survive the tsunami of grief. But somehow I have and battered and bruised it’s time for another year.

2012 ripped back the veil I had been hiding behind ever since I was a small child faced with my sisters accident. As children we don’t have the resources to conceptualise sudden tragedy so I decided that if I looked after people and tried to control everything I could keep tragedy at bay. This belief was a comfort blanket but it cost me in guilt as people I love got hurt despite my efforts. Unable to realise that this is how the world works I thought it was my fault: for not planning better, for not loving more. This year I realised that no matter how many plans you make, or how much you love somebody, you cannot keep them safe. Life is random, chaotic and tragedy falls from the sky. You can love somebody so much and still they might be hurt or die. You can do your best and try with every fibre in your being but your life might still fall apart to ashes in your hand. I had a full-on existential crisis. This was both very exciting (as a newbie counsellor I had read about this in books but to experience one first hand!) and horrifically painful and disorientating.

However as my mother, a very wise lady, reminded me it isn’t just tragedy that falls from the sky but serendipity. Life’s a rollercoaster and sometimes you’re at the top and sometimes you’re down and the only guarantee is that everything will change.

And so my wish for you, all my readers and for myself, is sadly not that the year ahead is smooth upward climb for that is outside of our power. But that when the lows come you, and I, have the courage and resilience to hang on tight to that rollercoaster and get through that low until the climb begins again. And when all is going well, we’ll appreciate every tiny moment of it. Here’s to 2013 and whatever it may bring.

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

This year, I’m not feeling Christmasy at all. I have no money. An essay due in the second week of January. But mostly I am heartsick and missing Lianne.

Lianne loved Christmas. She always gave elaborate presents, dressed up in festive jumpers or reindeer horns, and was the always the last woman standing after the drunken debauchery on Xmas eve. Now she is gone, but never forgotten, I needed something anything to get me in the Christmassy mood. So with her old advent calendar He Who Shall Not Be Named and I are taking it in turns to treat each other to some presents. Although there are one or two mini presents, in the most part we’ve focused on advent activities to get us in the Christmas spirit. Here’s what we doing if you want to play along at home:

Advent activities

1.  Nom some chocolate coins

2. Write a list to Father Christmas. Have you been naughty or nice?

3. Eat a satsuma to help alleviate scurvy gained from living off sherry and mince pies over the holidays.

4. Put up a ribbon sash for Christmas cards. Detangle cat from ribbon sash.

5 .Make a wreath. Pinterest as ever is your homegirl, for any tutorials.

6. Look at old photos of Christmases past and reminisce. (This one made me sob a lot. But in a healthy cathartic way. HWSNBN: *comes into room, clocks me crying* are you OK. Me: Y-YYYes. Fiinne)

7. Make gingerbread men. Devour gingerbread men headfirst. Feel guilty for cannabilistic intentions

8. Write Christmas cards

9. Decorate the tree

10. Buy a Christmas jumper. (Yes, I am not crafty enough to knit on. Don’t judge me!)

11. Make hot chocolate, snuggle up and watch your favourite Christmas. Think Elf vs Home Alone. Muppet Christmas Carol vs It’s a Wonderful World. Miracle on 34th street vs Die Hard. http://www.empireonline.com/features/30-best-christmas-movies/p30

13.  Clean out your wardrobe and bookshelves and donate to a charity to prepare for all the presents.

14. Make mince pies

15. Wrap up Christmas presses

16. Listen to your favourite Christmas music. Are you a cheeseaholic or a christmas hipster?

17. Hang mistletoe in your house and kiss under it

18. Go iceskating

19. Wrap up warm and walk around the neighbourhood voting on the best/tackiest Christmas lights

20. Drink mulled cider. Like you need an excuse.

21. Watch the burning of the clocks. This is a Brighton-centric thing. Nowhere else makes giant paper mache clocks and throws them in the sea to celebrate the longest night.

22. Go to a carol service. I love in the Bleak Midwinter

23. Put on jammies and snuggle up in bed. Not long to go now…

24. Drink lots while clad in sequins. Because this year I’m doing Christmas, Joan Collins style

Any advent activities planned? Let me know in the comments.

Book review: The Fault in our Stars by John Green

Reading a book about teenagers with a terminal illness who meet in a cancer support group is not recommended the week after your best friend has died from a terminal illness. But I did it anyway. Why? Well, firstly because I’m an idiot. I had a masochistic desire to reopen the wounds caused by grief and see how much they bled (a lot). But mainly I read this book because books have always been how I cope. As a child stuck in a small town they showed me how limitless the world inside my head could be. As a lonely teen they were constant companions. I chart moments in my life by what I was reading when it happened, those books forever fixed in amber so evocative of a particular time and place.

The Fault in our Stars will forever remind me of the dark days after Lianne died and no matter how much the sun shone it did not touch me. But I shall be forever glad I read it.

Here’s the blurb:

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 13, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs… for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

The book follows Augustus and Hazel as they try to track down the reclusive author of Hazel’s favourite book which ended mid sentence and find out the fates of the characters. I don’t want to say much more about the plot because I don’t want to spoil how the story unfolds. But you need to read this book.

This book is bitter and joyous, angry and so true about death and the reality of watching people we love die. It is the first book I have read in a long time which does not gloss over the reality of dying as beautiful instead its painful, ugly and. I loved it so much that I find it so hard to pin point the magic of why. Why is it easier to talk about things we hate than things we love?

The title is a play on a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves”

The book takes exception with this idea that fault rests with the individual as opposed to fate. Far too often bad things happen to good people like Hazel, like Augustus, like Lianne. The fault is not in the individual  but in the stars that good people die in agony and the world keeps turning all the same.

This book is filled with so many good quotes, I felt like I was scribbling down something every other page. Here are just a few of my favourite quotes and why:

“That’s the thing about pain…it demands to be felt.”

I have always been very good at functioning through pain. When I was 16 I walked until the soles of my foot peeled off. I was so distracted I only noticed because my shoes started filling up with blood. So when bad things happened I would shut them away in a box until I felt able to deal with them. Compartmentalise, baby. Grief does not work like that. In the days and months after her death grief has flattened me like a tidal wave and I have no choice but to sink. Feelings demand to be felt.

“The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we’d done were less real and important than they had been hours before.”

When Lianne wasn’t sure about the course her tumours might take and whether it would effect her memories she asked all her close friends to write a history of our friendship with her. I tried but I only got as far as 18. There were too many memories, I kept forgetting the order and it made me realise that one day I’d be the only one that remembered some of these stories. And I’m no good at remembering. She was the memory keeper with her diaries and mementos. The memories already seemed faded, who will remind me what age we were, what were wearing. What’s the point of saying ‘Do you remember when?’ when there is nobody to finish those thoughts off.

“The voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.”

After Lianne was diagnosed they told her that with the type of the tumour she would be extremely lucky if she lived two years. In the end she lasted five. She fought tooth and claw for that time to say goodbye, to settle her affairs, to us she loved us over and over again. But it wasn’t enough. If she’d lived ten, fifteen, 30, years it wouldn’t be enough. When you love somebody it never is.

“The only person I really wanted to talk to about X’s death with was X.”

After I heard I just kept thinking uselessly I need to talk to Lianne but there was a void where she should be. I was 14 when we met but I already knew how rare it was to have the kind of friend you could talk to about anything. I was already a proto-counsellor in the making but Lianne was the person who counselled me. All I wanted to do after she died was talk to her. I kept staring uselessly at the telephone number on the my phone as if somehow I’d be able to get through to her.

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”

I hate pain and will do anything to avoid it if I can. It says something about what type of person Lianne was that being her friend was worth the pain of saying goodbye to her.

This is the power of art that it takes an experience so deeply personal and expands it until you realise that you are not alone. Thank you, John Green

It’s my party, I can cry if I want to

All that lives, lives forever. Only the shell, the perishable passes away. The spirit is without end. Eternal. Deathless.

I turn 30 today. A little over a week ago my best friend died.

I’ve tried to write about Lianne dying a dozen times but the words won’t come. She was my best friend and I will miss her everyday. What more is there to say?

But it doesn’t feel enough, not for her, so I will try.

We met when we were 14 years old at a Boyzone concert. I had seen her around before but she had a way of carrying herself that made her seem aloof, unapproachable and tall. Years later we discovered that without her heels, she was only half and inch taller than me the shortass. ‘That half an inch makes all the difference’ She’d say looking witheringly down her nose at me. Even towards the end when she was very sick she would still give me that look and I would crack up. We met through my best friend Debs at a Boyzone concert. While the other girls burst into hysterical tears as the band came on stage Lianne and I exchanged sceptical glances. And that was it, we were friends. Lianne made friends like other people changes clothes while I watched on sceptical of these waifs and strays she picked up not realising I was one too. She was the glue holding our inner circle together.

Everybody has their favourite Lianne story, most of them too rude to print here. I remember bunking off school to go to London, using all of our money on the train, and then realising we had none left to actually do anything. Endlessly walking around Rowledge stalking her latest man obsession. Lianne was the spymaster general and stalker extraordinaire. Each crush had to have a codename. She wasn’t perfect. She grossed me out as nobody else could with endless scatological descriptions. I spent what felt like years waiting for her, outside school, Elphicks and at her house.We only fought once over a boy whose name I have long forgotten. Lianne would have remembered. She was our memory keeper, an archivist writing in her journals and collecting endless detritus. But there are some stories that only I will remember. Like the time we got so wasted on a Thursday night that we ran around the rec in just our bras. Not being able to say ‘do you remember when’ feels  lonely. Out of our group of friends she gave the best advice and was always the one I could rely to understand whether it was when I puked in a sink at a party or man trouble. This week I keep reaching for my phone to text her knowing she find the right words to comfort me, only to remember: she’s really gone. And the world seems a little darker, a little duller and a hell of lot less lewd without her.

Who will call me a dappy hippie now?

I read a quote somewhere that there are some forms of knowledge one does not pray for. Grief is a knowledge nobody would pray for. They didn’t tell me it would feel like this. And even if they had I wouldn’t have believed them. Watching somebody you love die even from afar is an agony I would not wish on my worst enemy. But I would not wish the pain away. Grief is the price we pay for love. And it was worth it. Lianne was worth it.

I’m glad I knew her even if it was only for a short time. Even if all those plans we made will never happen. We will never go travelling together. I will never meet her children, and she will not play with mine. We won’t end our days with our other friends at the same nursing home: chasing each other down the corridors, bickering over bridge and flirting with the male nurses. Every pleasure brings with it the paper cut of grief like losing her over again. I burst into tears yesterday realising she will never taste a strawberry ever again. A strawberry, but I felt so sad. Tenses hurt as I have to remember it’s not Lianne likes but Lianne liked. I worry that over time I will begin to forget her and then it will be like she died anew.

It’s my 30th birthday and I am not in the mood for celebrating. In fact, all I want to do is hibernate somewhere til the pain goes away. Before, I had planned an amazing big kids birthday party for tomorrow. But all week I’ve been wrestling with whether I should go ahead.

Lianne taught me many things. The double bra trick: one to lift and one to seperate. The fine art of stalking. But the most valuable thing my friend taught me as she died was how to live. I watched Wrath of Khan for the first time this week in honor of Lianne who was a lifelong trekkie. (Although, I wish somebody would have warned me *SPOILER* that Spock dies at the end *ENDSPOILER* wibble. ‘I have been and always shall be your friend.’) In Wrath of Khan, Kirk says: ‘how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.’

Lianne lived with brain tumours for almost five years, outliving her prognosis and two support groups. Even when she was so sick from the chemo she could barely move she never gave up. She celebrated her 30th in jaunty party hat, a friend’s baby on her knee. After her diagnosis she made a list of goals to keep going. And a fortnight ago she achieved the last item on the list: watching the Olympics. The end when it came seemed sudden. I knew she was deteriorating but on Thursday Debs started forwarding the texts. Lianne wasn’t eating or drinking and she was slipping out of consciousness. I sat outside in the sunshine imagining her surrounded by white light. That afternoon unable to work I spent hours flicking through photos not as she was at the end but of her healthy and well. Unable to sleep at midnight I went on facebook and there were the others. The inner circle. We emailed keeping up a silent vigil. She would be OK we told each other. But by this point she was already dead. She died as she would have wanted: at home, listening to music, and holding her mum’s hand. With a distinctive Lianne twist that made me laugh even through the tears.

Friends and family have been so supportive. But the one thing that puts my teeth on edge is when they say it must be a relief for her. They are just trying to be kind, but they don’t understand. Lianne wanted to live more than anything. The week before she died she went to the hospital to talk through her treatment options. She had been rapidly deteriorating as first her mobility and then her speech began to desert her. But she wanted chemo even though the chemo would kill her weak as she was. Lianne fought to live til the last.

So for her, as long as I can, I will live. I will feel the kiss of the sun on my face. I will search for shooting stars in the night sky and imagine she is sending me a message. And on Saturday, I will celebrate my birthday through the tears. I’ll raise a glass to her and pray that wherever she is Cher is playing, the Smirnoff mules are plentiful and the angels are medittaranean.

Farewell my friend and thanks for everything.

Carry on camping

Against my better judgement, I went camping this weekend. I am not the ‘outdoorsy’ type. I am more the sit on a sofa reading type. Which isn’t very snappy. It’s not that I have anything against the outdoors; it’s fine in small doses. But it does lack the things I live for like libraries and cake or even better cake in libraries. Luckily HWSNBN was in charge of packing minor items like wellies, anoraks, sleeping blanket and the tent. While I spent two hours happily mentally debating which books I would take camping with me. Priorities, I have them.

We went camping with the curry night crew which in a month or two will be sadly depleted as one couple are moving to Jersey, the other to Australia. Before setting off I took a look at the weather forecast for the weekend. In my head I have relabelled this camping trip as ten reasons why you are immigrating. Namely rain, drizzle and downpour. But actually it was the hottest camping trip I’ve ever been on which bought it’s own host of problems namely: sunburn, mosquito bites, and being unable to lie in after 8am.

Despite all my bitching I do actually enjoy camping. It always reminds me of being a kid again, when you would beg your mum and dad to let you camp in your background with your friends. Stay up really, really late until 11.30 talking. Then realise camping is cold and uncomfortable and sneak inside. Except when you camp, there is no escape indoors just a long freezing night on cold ground. Just me then? But seriously I do actually enjoy the buzz of sleeping seperated from the outdoors by a thin plastic sheet. The lack of light in the evenings mean that some people (translation: me) are forced to put down their book and talk to other people. For the length of the camping trip, outside distractions fade away. The triumph/struggle of cooking your own food from scratch: 1 hour twenty minutes later I have made pasta using a bunsen burner and sheer ingenuity. Obviously I am a culinary genius.

But all of these don’t compare to the main reason I go camping those blissful two hours after you arrive home: mud splattered, wet and exhausted. And  wander around marvelling at everyday things you take for granted like flushing toilets, lights, kettles that boil after a minute and not twenty and soft, clean, dry comfortable beds. Then you forget but for those first two hours everything is new and wonderful.

In the past we’ve had some memorable camping trips, but here are my camping highlights:

The Potty Incident

Although one of my first time camping was to Glastonbury festival twice, yes at 2 and 3 years old I was v cool. My first memory of camping is of playing with my big sister hearing the rain pattering off the tent canvas. Until the peace was broken by my dad f-ing and blinding. My little sister had deliberately emptied her full potty over the sleeping bags. Even now she still has a reputation as the one that peed in the tent.

Design Feature

Friend of the blog H has as much natural affinity for camping as I do. He once turned up for a camping trip with a football and a cricket bat and had to borrow a tent off a friend, which he put up in the dark. When he first got into the tent, he fell asleep staring up the stars: a nice little ‘design feature’ he thought. In the morning he emerged ranting away, the tent leaked, the design feature was crap! Only then did he realise he’d left the square of fabric he needed to cover the top of the tent off. Heh.

Fireman Sam envy

One of HWSNBN best friends and ex flatmate has a rather unique ‘sense of style’: think clashing 80′s acid brights. One year at Buddhafield he turned up with a pair of bright yellow waterproof Fireman’s trousers he had found by the side of the road. We mocked him mercilessly singing the Fireman Sam theme song. That was before the rain. By day four, when we practically had to push out the car out of the mud, we coveted those Fireman Sam trousers. We coveted them so badly.

Fairyfest

A girls weekend dressing up like fairies with my besties was just what the Dr ordered. It turned into Episode of Girls Gone Wild but with more glitter. First we leched at St Johns Ambulance man, a couple of tents over. Not realising because of how the wind carried he could hear every single word. Then we got very drunk and danced like Kate Bush to the warbly disco harp music. As it began to get cold Ros ditched us claiming we were ‘cramping my style’ so Debs and I stumbled back through the dark wood to our campsite. ‘I’ll go and get her in a minute’ I promised as we slumped into the tent. Then out of the darkness came the sound of a parrot cawing ‘Hello’ a sound imitated and echoed by the others campers. Ros had arrived home.

Hasselhoff

I was 18. It was my first year attending Reading with all my Uni friends. This was going to be the best festival ever. The boys at the next campsite over had bought a Fisher Price tape recorder and only one tape. David Hasselhoff’s greatest hits. At first it was amusing and ironic, yeah. By day three I wanted to kill them all. A situation not helped by my tent mate noisy getting off with one of them at three in the morning to the backdrop of Hasselhoff’s lecherous crooning. Ears burning!

Any outdoor adventures, tell me your best in the comments