SQUARE PEG
WHY CAMPING’S NOT FOR US
ICOME ACROSS many horrific concepts as editor of the JC. But the single most worrying that I have encountered is taking place next week. It’s called Limmud in the Woods. That’s Limmud, but with camping. There appears to be some kind of madness within our community. Otherwise sane and intelligent people talk about camping as if it is something that other sane and intelligent people should contemplate.
Take the Limmud site: “Put off by camping?…with hot showers, proper toilets and no schlepping involved we make it really easy!”
I’m here to tell you: don’t fall for it.
It’s all baloney. Nothing should persuade you to go camping. Ever. If I do one useful thing with my life, let it be that I put my experience to good use and stop you.
For the past few years Mrs Pollard has been saying how keen she was to go camping — or glamping, as she put it. The kids would love it, you see. The kids would also love daubing the living room with jam, but we wouldn’t entertain such a possibility. So why contemplate camping?
She’s quite good at spin, Mrs P, so her sales pitch focused on glamping as being somehow different to camping — there are floorboards, a hot shower and a semi-permanent tent that someone else has already erected.
“And you get freshly laid eggs,” she trumpeted as the clincher.
I thought the point of human progress is that we no longer have to sit staring at chickens’ private parts waiting for them to drop an egg. We’ve come up with a system that allows one simply to drive to Waitrose and come back with half a dozen.
But apparently there is some sort of attraction to uninventing progress.
Finally, Mrs P tried to persuade me that our friends were also keen. I didn’t believe her: both couples are highly intelligent, discerning people. There was no way they would do such a thing.
I vetoed the idea. Camping is the same as DIY for Jews: verboten — despite this week’s extremely unbelievable poll findings that 46 per cent of us have built furniture in the past year. It’s a little known fact that the Torah forbids Jews from camping (let’s pass over Succot) just, of course, as we are banned from owning screwdrivers.
And besides, it’s a basic rule of life, surely, that on holiday you should not make yourself less comfortable than at home.
Veto, shmeto. I might be able to dictate what appears in the JC, but you can judge how influential I am at home from the fact that Mrs P went ahead and booked it.
The entry appeared in my diary for 5-8 August: “Glamping”. And yes, the other two families were also coming.
I have to confess that this was not my first time camping, although in mitigation I was 13 at the time and I was a cub (9th Pin-
The Torah forbids Jews from camping
ner, since you asked). Along with twenty or so other packs we had a weekend away in Reading. In 1977 — when the non-stop rain was so severe that the Thames burst its banks. Flooded out, we had to be rescued.
Not, though, before the Friday night general knowledge quiz, in which I came joint top. The tie breaker: where is Mecca? I answered “Northwood Hills”. Quite right, too: I had spent most Saturday mornings waiting outside Mecca Bookmakers while my dad put his bets on.
There were no floods this time. The weather was glorious, in fact — although when you’re staying in a large tent with plastic windows and a wood-fired oven all that means is that you schvitz.
You want my review of the experience? I’m sorry, you’re not going to get that. This is a warning, not a review. Not least because a prerequisite of any review is a modicum of understanding of the purpose of the activity. After four days’ camping, I am even more at a loss to understand the answer to the basic question: why?
First off, let’s put this “glamping” con to bed. Call it The Ritz if you like, but it’s still camping. We slept in a tent in a field in the middle of nowhere with no electricity, one sporadic bar of phone signal and no dishwasher. We washed up with cold water. Cooking was via a hob heated with a wood fire. If you wanted a cup of coffee you had to get wood burning.
The toilet, in a closed off area, did have a flush. But — how to put this politely? — the sewage path underneath meant that others present in the tent were often able to detect with their nose what form of toilet operation was being performed.
And although there was a hot shower — which worked most of the time — there was no other running hot water. So washing was with cold water, as was washing up in the kitchen sink.
“But were there beds?” friends have asked since we got back, as if this was some kind of litmus test for acceptability. Yes, there were beds — as if that changes anything. When did you last not sleep in a bed? Having a bed at night is sup- posed to be some sort of plus?
Clearly there are some people for whom deliberate discomfort is relaxing. Each to their own.
Certainly, the kids loved being able to run around in a field — and playing on the hay bales, feeding the sheep and grooming the horses. And I didn’t demand that we return home — although that was thanks to the company, with whom it’s always wonderful to spend time.
But would I do it again? I don’t think you need me to answer that. And since one should be grateful for small triumphs, I can reveal that Mrs P now says that “once is enough”.
Our site, College Farm in Norfolk, is one of the most popular in the country. The owners could not have been nicer, and they clearly love what they offer. Good on them.
But at £240 a night for the privilege of sleeping in a tent in a field, who’s the mug? With nine tents, that’s quite a return.
I’m clearly in the wrong business. So if you fancy a night in a tent, I have a garden in Finchley
Call it The Ritz if you like, it’s still camping