See this. Here is a photo of two of the most ungrateful campers in the known world (ie. child standing on bedding with sandy feet in the foreground and man-boy reading a book from the comfort of his sleeping bag in the near background), and outside the tent in the far background is my partner (yeah, I know he looks like a tiny bunch of pixels in this size photo). He is working like a dog, boiling the billy for tea for his daughter and his brother. And there he is again in the picture below swinging our daughter around and trying to distract her from the fact that at the beach sometimes sand will blow in your face. Mother Earth would like to apologise for that. Sheesh.
And what – a beautiful island paradise with wrecks to snorkel not enough for you two? Nup. We love that brother (in-law)and that daughter of ours, but those two are easily bored and hard work in combination.
The time before this was a more successful camping experience. On this occasion we camped with my very good friend and her children, and Lauca definitely prefers the company of happy go lucky children to the company of you-can’t-have-your-noodles-instantly-even-if-they-are-called-instant-noodles-because-when-you’re-camping-you-have-to-make-a-fire-first-and-get-the-billy-to-boil-before-you-can-have-instant-anything parents. Our kids were utterly charmed by rainforest camping and there was lots of spotlighting wildlife and playing with sticks, and exploring one another’s tents.. and as parents we were congratulating ourselves – look at our healthy family lifestyle – until at a certain point they all became quite ratty.
Where upon all three children found their way to my parked car and they climbed about inside and calmed the fuck down by absorbing artificial light and listening to CDs.. and I figured it out. They were earthing themselves, they were getting all meditative – on technology. Despite our hopes for a simpler and more sustainable future this generation finds plastic very relaxing.
blue milk 
She might be ungrateful but she sure is a cutie!
We realised with Fred that the trick to camping is letting her spend some time hanging out by herself (or with her imaginary friend Bedda) in the car and for us, we need to have lattes somewhere close by). We have dithered back and forth so many times on buying her some kind of handheld portable device (games or a dvd player or a MP3 player) to give her that technology-induced ‘alone’ time when camping, only I don’t really know how to do it without it entering other parts of her life and there’s something so WRONG about portable dvd players (I reckon if we did any of these it would be music or book tapes). As she gets older I am hoping it will become less necessary – I am HANGING OUT for her to learn how to read (and hoping that novels will be her saviour – in other ways she’s very camping compatible, she just doesn’t like the intense proximity of us very much!).
When we went to the Prom last year there was this 9ish year old girl who we kept seeing sitting in trees reading. I love her. I want Fred to be her when she grows up. Actually, I want to be her.
Holidays aren’t quite as relaxing as they used to be, huh?