COLUMN

Can you have a stormy relationship with inanimate objects – like a tent? Without a doubt, says Jan Taljaard.

Isuspect my love-hate relationship with tents began when my dad bought a fold-up caravan. Besides its many other flaws, the caravan was saddled with the name “Skipper”. I can’t and won’t elaborate too much on old Skippertjie, mainly because it dredges up really unpleasant memories. I do, however, vaguely remember snippets of a windy holiday in East London’s municipal caravan park. There are flashes of ProNutro mixed with sand crunching between my teeth and poles losing their battle against the wind and crashing down on us. It must have been 1971 because there are also flashes of Three Dog Night’s “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog” playing over the tinny speakers of the putt-putt course. “Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea” it bellowed, but here on land things were going pretty poorly, thank you very much. Mercifully soon thereafter our family bought a permanent holiday dwelling on the Wild Coast. Of those years I remember nearly everything because it was so fantastic by comparison.

THEN I WAS conscripted for national service and ended up on the “border” in a tent where it was hot, but not safe and secure – especially the night when the military police gave chase to a few of us after a fight in the munitions tent (there was food and alcohol involved). As I ran into my tent I realised I was cornered and I hid under the tarp. Whether the MPs with the orange armbands thought the tent was just standing on a seriously uneven piece of ground I don’t know, but they didn’t find me. Shortly thereafter that same tent and a few others went up in flames. Now look, there’s no sneakier creature than a conscript, and hidden inside the tents was an adult magazine from Holland and other contraband, such as canned food, undeclared ammunition and even a hand grenade or two. A few brave troops tried to put out the flames but those of us who knew better ran for cover. I imagined that the purple flare in the centre of the inferno was the sinful magazine being torched by hellfire. Luckily no one’s names appeared on the national broadcaster or on the military court martial list the following week. After this incident I swore that after my service I would never ever sleep in a tent again. But my resolution didn’t last long because a few months later I found myself travelling through Europe with a plastic tent buckled to my backpack. Luckily it was more for show because I spent most nights in youth hostels and other dives. One of the exceptions was when I, delirious due to fever and without a cent in my pocket and 10 000 km from home, slept in the soggy Black Forest in Germany for a week, waiting for the grim reaper to come and get me. But a young person’s immune system is resilient, and when I eventually emerged from 40-odd feverish nightmares, my hatred for tents was entrenched. Especially for those where the inside is wetter than the outside.

THE INCIDENT THAT drove the final nail into nearly 30 years of tents – and which led to the end of the above-mentioned plastic one –

occurred a year later when a bunch of us decided to camp next to Buffelspoort Dam near Rustenburg. We were students, and to earn some extra cash one of us drove a school bus during the week. This bus would serve as transportation that weekend. However, the bus got stuck in the mud in front of the campsite’s entrance and we decided there and then to simply pitch camp right on the shore of the dam. But it wasn’t fun. The girl I had an eye on wasn’t interested and slept in the bus instead of with me in my wet tent. Some jerk played Queen’s Night at the Opera for two nights in a row, plus it was raining, so we decided to pack up. When it was time to wrestle my tent back into its bag, I gave it one look and decided that this nightmare would end now. I doused it with petrol and threw a match on it.

MANY YEARS LATER I met a good woman who was willing to share a tent with me. But by then I was reluctant to allow the misery to continue. The problem was that she had camped with her family since she was little and she regarded this kind of holiday as a delightful experience. She even owned her very own tent, but when I found out that she and a previous boyfriend bought the tent for a European trip, I took the opportunity to excuse myself from this fresh hell. “You can’t seriously expect me to sleep in the same tent that you shared with a former flame,” I said indignantly while hiding an impish smile. Meanwhile I bought a motorbike – the first one in many years – and if you want to look like a true adventurer, a tent is a necessity. But at least it was a 3-season tent and I slowly started to realise that tent technology improved with leaps and bounds over the last 30 years. Eventually the tent even got used on camping trips other than motorcycle adventures. But the truce wasn’t lasting and one day I put my foot down once more and exclaimed that no one could expect an old man to crawl in and out of a tent on all fours and to get dressed while sitting down. “That’s it, my camping days are over,” I made a final declaration. Or so I thought. At the end of last year my wife, our child and my budget and needs aligned and we bought a tent with an anteroom, double mattress, mosquito net, and even a weatherproof opening to run an extension lead through. The tent made its debut appearance in the Cederberg, and it was then, for the first time ever, that I sat back and relaxed in a fold-up chair underneath the awning of my comfortable home away from home with serene thoughts meandering through my mind like the bubbling brook in the background.

When I eventually emerged from 40-odd feverish nightmares, my hatred for tents was entrenched.