Camping stories Pt 1

I’m going Camping on Friday. In Scotland. In the middle of nowhere.Wwith no facilities other than some grass and a beach. For 7 days.

Hmm.

Let me set the scene. My childhood is filled with memories of going camping on Scotland with my sisters and parents, sometimes with sisters friends coming along too. We used to go two or three times a year. In all weathers.

We used to pack the car (which was a stress in itself as my dad is a stickler for packing the car in a certain way) and pile ourselves into the car for the 4 hour drive up. I always remember being in the middle as I’m the little sister. Sometimes sat on sleeping bags….! We never had a massive car either, normally a hatchback so it was always cosy. With the dog too, mustn’t forget the dog.

So we’d drive up, we’d always stop at Tebay services on the way, let the dog out for a wee in the foresty bit there. In the lobby of the services there was a big flat, polished rock, I’m fairly sure it was from an underground cave and I think it was a big crystal that had been halved and polished. It’s not there anymore but I remember it vividly as a child. Partly because I thought it was from War of the Worlds…!

The rest of the drive up would be fairly uneventful, ‘cept for asking Dad if we were nearly there yet. Although because we went so often we all knew the proximity of our location, I think we just did it to wind him up. We’d generally have Abba, Leo Sayer or War of the Worlds on as music. There’s a family anecdote of Dad asking us kids what music we wanted on, and my response being ‘Dooper Dooper Dad’, indicating I wanted Super Trouper…! Oh and there was the eating of travel sweets, always travel sweets. Old school travel sweets, in the round tins with the icing sugar.

On the way up we’d sometimes stop at a place in Annan for fried chicken and chips from the same chip stop. I remember this being the best thing ever, and am sure it’s a contributor to my love of chicken!

Arriving at our location (Newton Farm, just outside Gatehouse of Fleet, Dumfries & Galloway) we’d go straight to the farmhouse to say hi to the Hamilton Family who live there. Now you have to bear in mind that my dad has been going to this place and camping here since about 1973, so he knows the family who own the land very well. So we always used to nip in and say hi. They’ve known all 3 of us girls since we were young. Me since I was born. Elsie used to make us tea, we’d put our freezer blocks in her freezer and I used to go and have an explore in the barn and the bales of straw. Sometimes there’d be kittens in the barn, but not often. Used to say hi to the cows in the shed too if they were in.

Hello’s and updates done, we’d drive down the track through the farmland to the camping field. Past the old combine harvester that was rusting away in the corner of one field, that had been there as long as I could remember, then down the hill to our camping spot. As we turned down the hill we’d have a look to see who else was there camping. Having been coming here for years we got to know families who’d come the same time as us. Sometimes we’d be alone, sometimes there’d be others we knew, sometimes there’d be other people we didn’t know, but it’d be guaranteed we’d know them by the time we left.

Then there was the putting up of the tent. We had a big 6 berth tent so it took some effort to put up. I remember helping put the poles together and helping out a bit, but being the smallest I’m not sure how much help I was! I think I helped tighten the guy ropes and peg those in. Always making sure the pegs were angled into the ground right to ensure they weren’t pulled out by the wind tugging on the ropes.

We always camped in the field rather than on the beach, not really sure why, we just did. The grassy bit at the top of the beach was generally busy with caravans though, so that maybe why we stayed in the field. I remember being in awe of caravans as I thought they were so much cooler than tents!

Tents up, and stuff sorted out we could go wandering, least that’s the way I remember it. Through the gate and onto the beach. The beach I haven’t seen in 15 years, but the beach I have very very vivid memories of. I remember the placement of all the rocks, how it looks when the tide is out, where the quicksand bits are in the bay, the best places to go crabbing and just how quick the tide comes in once it’s past the rocky outcrop about 200yards out.

We used to fill our days mucking about on the beach, walking out to the salmon nets if the tide was out, walking as far as we could sometimes. Spending what seemed like hours crabbing on the rocks, but always being very very watchful of the tide. I have a great respect for the sea and the tides and I’m fairly sure it’s down to my childhood holidays in Scotland. Dad always had a tidetable so we knew when to go crabbing and how high or low the tide would be. We never got caught out in the bay by the tide and knew our limits. I don’t ever remember being bored on these holidays. I used to walk up the mountains with Dad and the dog too. Ben John and Cairnharrow, Cairnharow being the biggest of the two. I have no idea of the scale of these now, they seemed huge to me back then.

The dog used to have a whale of a time too, clambering over the rocks with us as we went to go crabbing. The only time I ever saw her swim was in the sea. She used to attack the seaweed too, shaking the sand off it before attempting to eat it.

I have vivid memories of playing pool in the pub in the local town too, the Masonic. Or playing in the park across the road from it.

There were BBQ’s on the beach, a free for all re invites, getting to know people we’d not met before. Dad running the cooking of the food, as is his forte..! Listening to the tide coming in and seeing it glisten in the moonlight as we sat there eating chocolate banana’s

Helping dad empty the portaloo..not a nice job! Getting washed in the little toilet tent with a bowl of water and some soap. Really back to basics.

Now I’m 29, and haven’t been to this place since I was about 14. My sisters have been back individually with their families and Dad’s been on his own, but I’ve not.

So earlier this year, an idea was hatched that we’d all go back together. Me, Dad, two sisters, their husbands..and the 5 kids (Ages 10, 6, 4, 4 and 2). We’re heading up without my Stepmum as she’s not a camping fan, wouldn’t enjoy it and so has opted out! I like to think of it as taking the next generation up there. Three of the kids have been, not sure about the other two. I don’t think they have been. But, they’ve definitely not all been together.

I’m excited for a number of reasons.

1: I’ve not been in 15 years and it will be massive nostalgia trip.

2: It’ll be a great family bonding session

3: It’ll be great to have all the kids together and do all the things we used to do together as kids.

4: As weird as it’ll be to be totally back to basics for a week, no tv, no facebook, probably no phone reception, no electricity….I’m oddly looking forward to getting away from it all. It might break my facebook addiction!

5: Although the original childhood dog is no longer with us, my parents have a new dog, and he’s very puppyish so will hopefully love it as much as Jenny did.

There are bits I’m slightly apprehensive about, mainly because I’m terrified of the dark, and my sisters may well be a nightmare with their teasing of me! But I’m kind of looking forward to that too. I’m incredibly close to my sisters and I love it when we’re all together, we revert back to being kids and have a right laugh. There will be some merciless teasing of me and my phobia of trees and rabbits and night…..but hey, what are sisters for?!

So I have an idea of how we’ll all get on and what we’ll do….lets see how that pans out. I’ll do a ‘post camping’ blog too, for anyone who’s remotely interested in what I have to say! It’s been very therapeutic writing this though!

Much love!

Dating Politics

I’m not a naturally shy girl, I tend to say what I think and do what I want. That’s me, you either like it or you don’t. So, why can I not be the same in the dating game? If I want to text someone to say hi and to suggest a meet up, why can’t I? Why are there ‘rules’ that say it’s the guy who suggests the second date, or that if the girl texts she’s being too keen and the guy will run a mile?

I’m nearly 30, I’m not 16 anymore. Surely there’s an age limit on dating game play? Or is it all just a myth?

Let me set the scene. I’m a 29 year old woman, very independent, fairly easy going and relaxed in my attitudes to life. Been single for 4 years and so a bit out of practice on the whole dating thing. Actually, that’s a lie, I’ve never really done dating. My relationship history has been a series of relationships of varying length, but with no real dating. Don’t ask me how, that’s just how it happened. In fact, I can count the amount of dates I’ve had on one hand and two of those were when I was 16.

So, after a good few years on my own with a few smatterings of stuff here and there, I decided it might be time to ‘get back out there’. Didn’t really have a set agenda, just thought I’d see how things panned out. I’m still in the ‘thick’ of things but one thing I can’t stand is the whole politics of dating!

If you don’t have a real connection with the other person then fine, no one contacts one another, bish bash bosh. But if you have a connection and both express an interest of seeing one another again....what’s the right thing to do? Depending on who you speak to you get a number of different views;

A male friend told me that if you’re both interested and have both said you are then it doesn’t matter who makes the contact or when. Both adults, just sort yourselves out.

A female friend said that the girl shouldn’t contact too soon after a date, leave it 3-4 days then contact him, men scare easily and a girl shouldn’t be too keen

Another female friend agreed with the male friend.

Finally, another female friend said there is a certain amount of game playing and it was ok for me to make contact after a few days but I should be cool and rather nonchalant in what I said...i.e make it clear you’re not hanging around waiting for him and you have your own stuff going on too, make him think that maybe he’d like to be part of that stuff.

I have a number of opinions on all of the above!

Male Friend & 3^rd Female Friend: Agree completely, I’m nearly 30 for crying out loud!

1^st Female friend: If he’s not contacted me by 3-4 days, I’m not contacting him as it’s clear he’s not interested and it’s just awkward. And as for men scaring easily, well I don’t want a guy who scares easily!

4^th Female Friend: Agree to a certain extent, although I don’t really like the game playing...but I do agree it happens, although why it happens past the age of about 19 I have NO idea.

The way I see it, if there’s too much game playing going on then you’ll never get anywhere. If he plays it cool and I play it cool, then we both end up out in the cold. He should know from spending time with me on the date that I’m not exactly the shy and retiring type. It shouldn’t be a great shock to him if I make contact. What it comes down to I suppose is finding someone who’s happy with that, with me, and the way I am. I can’t be bothered playing games, life is too short to be worrying about what people think about my actions.

As for finding a person who’s happy with me and how I am....well, that’s a whole other world!

My quest continues.....!

The apparent minefield of the English Language

You can call me a pedant, a stickler, an annoyingly anally retentive cow, but what the hell is going on with the use of the English language today?
I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and am prone to using the odd abbreviation and slang term, but I draw the line at the blatant misspelling and misuse of English that seems so prevalent today.
I'm a great lover of Facebook, which any one of my friends will tell you...in fact, most of them probably think I need rehab to wean me off it, but that's another story. But I do believe that the increased use of mobile phones, emails, the Internet and social networking has led to what seems to be the majority of people forgetting the basic principles of the language they learnt at school, one of which I've just broken by beginning this sentence with a 'but'! The publication of books such as "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" and "Accommodating Broccoli in the Cemetery" serve to suggest I'm not the only person annoyed by this recent trend.

We all did English at school, we didn't have any choice. Granted it's 13 years since I sat my GCSE's and I've no doubt that the way English is taught has changed, but I don't see it changing to omit the teaching of basic spelling, grammar and the correct placement of apostrophes.

You, Your, You're/There, They're, Their/Who's Whose/It's Its/We're Were, etc:

The misuse of these will never ever fail to annoy me. All of these have totally different meanings and it totally changes the sense of a sentence when they're used incorrectly. Am I being too flippant to expect people to know the correct one to use in a sentence? I don't think it's that difficult. One of the main principles I remember about apostrophes was that they're used to join words together and signify missing letters. So 'you are' becomes 'you're', 'they are' becomes 'they're', so on and so forth.
Now read back through that paragraph and replace the right words with the wrong ones, and see how much sense it makes. Yes, OK, so you'd still be able to fathom what I was talking about, but it wouldn't flow right would it?

'Could of' vs 'Could have':

Where on earth has this abomination come from?! I've noticed this more and more over the last year or so and it drives me mental every time I see it. I admit that in spoken context, the '-ve' part of 'would've', 'could've' and 'should've' can sound like 'of', but it's not. It never was, it never will be. 'Could of' just doesn't make any sense!
'I could of had a drink but I didn't'; come again? Is that 'of' supposed to be a possession? Stop using it now, please, for the love of god and for the sake of my own sanity.

Gawjuss and other violations of spelling:

Honestly? I mean come on, you can cannot be seriously spelling 'gorgeous' in that way. Can you? Apparently you are, and you really need to be thankful that I'm not anywhere near you to give you a slap for it.
There are far far far too many of these horrific misspellings for me to list them here, but I'm going to highlight a few of my favourites:

'I shunt of done that': Two for one there! So, please tell me what you shouldn't have done....I'm dying to know

I carnt see what you mean". Well, that makes two of us because I can't see what you mean either, given that the second word in that statement isn't a word.

'Happy dayz' (or any other replacement of 's' with 'z'. It doesn't look cool, it's just idiotic.

"Will you come to town wiv me". Will I do what now? I'll go into town with you yes, if that's what you meant.

'Am neva eva doin that agn, eva" I'm actually slightly lost for words here. I have to read it out loud to myself for it to make sense. (I pinched this from a Facebook status so someone genuinely used this as a 'legitimate' sentence.)

"off shoppin wi me boi, feel ruff tho". Right then, I think there's shopping involved there somewhere, but I'm not sure what the rest of it means. (I pinched this from Facebook too)

I could go on, but I think you get the gist of my meaning!

Question marks at the end of non questions:

I think this may be linked to the horribly American trend of raising the voice slightly at the end of a sentence to make everything sound like a question when 90% of the time it's not. It doesn't seem to be as common as some other violations, but it still crops up every now and then.
"Not doing much, just off into town?" Are you asking me whether you're going into town? Because to be honest I don't know what you're doing, it's your life and your actions

And last but not least....lol, lmao, omg, etc etc:

Before I start on this little rant, I must add that I use 'WTF?'. Call me a hypocrite, but there you go. I love the expression of 'What the fuck?' and given firewalls and language sensors on work email servers, it sometimes serves my purpose to use 'WTF?' instead of the full sentence.
'lol' is a real pet hate of mine, and I don't think I've ever used it once, along with lmao, rofl and omg, and any of the others that float around. I know these have stemmed from chat rooms and I do understand the use of them in a cyber chat space when it's easier to type a few letters rather than three words, but it still riles me. However, I do have to reign in my dislike of these abbreviations given their frequent use by friends on text and Facebook. They don't annoy me as much as the misspelling and grammatical errors I've outlined above, but I'm not their greatest fan by a long shot.

There are a couple of good friends of mine who I've had a debate about this with recently on Facebook and I was pleased to see I wasn't the only pedant in my midst!
I'm sure there are many arguments for people using incorrect grammar; school wasn't their strong point, they don't care a jot what anyone thinks about their spelling and grammar, who cares if it's right or wrong as long as it's readable....I'm sure there are many more.
Maybe it's because I deal with a lot of senior management in my job and clear and precise communication is vital, maybe it's because I did English at university, or maybe it's just because I'm an annoying so and so. Whatever it is, I felt the need to rant and get my annoyances off my chest.

So there you go, I've said my bit, and I'm sure that this piece has a few errors in it itself....like I said, I'm not perfect, but I try my best!

Much love,

Sandra
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