30 August 2010 (Monday) - Coming Home

I had a very good sleep, and woke up bright eyed and raring to go. The only problem was that it was just after 1am. Too dark to go fishing, I tried to get back to sleep, but the wind was picking up. In fact I got out of bed a couple of times to check the toilet tent and gazebo hadn’t blown away in what sounded like hurricanes.

Last night I received orders that people wanted to come early morning fishing, and I was to rouse people. So following my morning’s ablutions I wandered round the tents, shouting the code-word “HADDOCK!” For some reason I didn’t get much response. Over the years I’ve found that people are far keener on the concept of early morning activities at 6pm than they are at 6am. Undeterred I fished alone for half an hour until the Bat joined me. But my heart wasn’t in it this morning; it was cold and very windy. After an hour or so we packed up and went back to camp to do the previous night’s washing up. Or that was the plan. We got there to find Martin had done it all. So we fed the guinea pigs instead. We’ve never had the piggles at a camp before. I must admit that I’d had reservations about the idea, but in the event they were as good as gold.

And then we realised that the wind which was so strong this morning wasn’t entirely a bad thing; it had blown the tents dry. So whilst the breakfast team cracked on, the rest of us started to get our bits and bobs packed and our tents down. A late brekkie – omelettes with cheese mushrooms and bacon. Very nice! And then we continued packing. But I’m not quite sure what went wrong. The time was racing away. At Brighton Kite Festival earlier in the year three of us had the campsite packed away by 11am, and it was raining then. Eight of us were on the case today (in ideal packing away weather) and we took till 2pm to do the job. But that’s Bat-Camp; and that’s the way we love it (!)

And so home where I’ve stashed most of what I’ll need for the forthcoming camping trip into one of the lock-ups. And then I had a shower. Heaven. Much as I like camping, I like a shower too. We need to camp in places with shower blocks. I shall smile sweetly at the farm management…

29 August 2010 (Saturday) - More Camping

The trouble with drinking ale by the gallon is that it has to go somewhere, and so at 6am I was forming a queue for the tiddle tent. I chatted for a bit with Molly’s Mum who was also up, and then I decided that since I was up anyway, I might as well go fishing; sleep is for those in bed. The fish were biting this morning; I was catching loads, but I was getting peckish. I kept fishing until I’d had fifty, and then I wandered back to camp at 8.30am. It would seem that I was unusual in being up and about after having had far too much to drink. I gathered up those other brave souls who were up and about and we all (me and the “Rear Admiral”) went back to the pond for a bit more fishing whilst everyone else slept it off.

We wound up having brekkie at about 11am – and a good old-fashioned fry-up seemed to do most people a world of good. We washed up, drank coffee, lazed around for a bit, and all too soon it was time to say goodbye to those of our number who had to go. So we loaded up all their bits onto the tractor trailer, and rode down to the road where we loaded their cars and said our goodbyes.

The piscatorial amongst us went to the pond to fish for a bit. By 2pm we were all feeling a bit hungry, so I was dispatched to get lunch for my fellow haddock hunters. And after lunch, ‘er indoors ^TM came up to the pond and had a go at fishing, even going so far as to catch a tiddler. Not unhooking it, or even touching it. Just catching it, and then catching herself.

As the afternoon wore on Chris had to depart, taking the Folkestone contingent with him, and then there were eight of us. As the weather took a turn for the worse, we all sat in our communal cookhouse and resorted to the emergency fall-back plan used whenever events conspire against us: have a crafty pint. There are those who will say that I spent this time fast asleep. And I will admit that to the uninitiated it probably looked like that. But it was most odd. I could hear every word of the conversation, and also my own snoring too.

We had a late dinner – fajitas are always popular, and always good. And then it was suggested that the leftover mushrooms from brekkie might go well in fajitas, so we all had seconds. And we all sat there feeling very stuffed. As the weather was clearing up we walked down to the farmhouse to help put the baby ducklings to bed. The ducklings seem to lead a pampered existence, and had to be tucked into bed. Or that is tucked into bed once caught and cuddled. I would have thought they would have put up a fuss, but they seemed quite happy to have been held and stroked.

Back to camp where the “Wounded Archer’s Cookery Club” had prepared a treat. Those who had sustained bruises from yesterday’s archery session had spent some time gathering fruit from around the farm’s hedgerows and had prepared a blackberry fool for everyone. Oh, that was soooooo good!! And by this time it was dark: trying to wash up in the dark is a daft thing to do, so we decided to leave it and have a camp fire instead. Compared to the previous evening’s revelry, tonight’s camp fire was a modest affair, but none the less enjoyable. We spent a very pleasant hour or so drinking beer (and assorted fluids) whilst spotting shooting stars and satellites, before going to bed before midnight (for once).

28 August 2010 (Saturday) - Camping

Early morning fishing is traditional (for me) at Bat-Camp, and I was at the pond doing my thing by 6am. But (like a twit) I’d forgotten to bring either my camera or my phone, so I have no record of the first fish I caught today – the biggest fish I’ve ever caught out of the Bat-Pond – a carp weighing three pounds. As carp go, that’s only small stuff, but when you bear in mind that all the carp in that pond are either those that I put in the pond as tiddlers over the last few years, or fish bred from those tiddlers, I think that a three pound carp is quite respectable. After a while the “Rear Admiral” joined me, and we fished for a couple of hours, catching nearly a hundred fish between us.

Back to camp for brekkie, and then we moved the toilet tent. We’d put “Green and Smelly” close to our communal cookhouse tent because the bigger tent acted as a windbreak. However because the toilet tent was so close, there was little in the way of privacy; and some very odd noises were emerging. So for the sake of everyone’s nerves (and decorum) we moved the loo a little way away. And then we did something we’ve not done for ages - we got the bow snarrows out. Having spent a small fortune on archery over the last few years, it’s become something we rarely seem to do any more; which is a shame. So with the arrival of Chippy we spent a couple of hours taking pot shots at assorted targets, and “Yours Truly” came second in the knock-out round. I didn’t gloat much (!) We were reminded of the need for bracers as both Irene and the “Rear Admiral” received quite nasty bruises on their forearms from the bow strings. I didn’t point and laugh much (!)

“Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” then did the bread and cheese for her dad (good girl). Washed down with a bottle of old peculiar it was lovely. Tina and Jason then arrived and came fishing with us for a bit, before leaving us to fish whilst they took pot-shots with bow snarrows. And then Molly, Trudy and Steve arrived. Molly seemed to enjoy all the amazing smells of the farmyard, and even found a new doggy treat. Before long fifteen of us (fourteen hoo-mans and one fellow blogger) sat down to dinner. A new addition to the camping menu – pork and apple braise. Very good, and much appreciated.

Whilst the washing up was done, the pyromaniac contingent made the camp fire and the rain started. I watched the camp fire from the comfort of our cookhouse tent, and occasionally shouted sage advice whilst listening to the sound of the rain thundering on the tent’s roof. But the rain came and went as quickly as it was heavy. Within half an hour the clouds were parting, and we all adjourned to the camp fire where we saw off a few gallons of ale. Another Bat-Camp tradition is that port is passed round the campfire circle so everyone gets some. But sometimes the bottle is slow to move round the circle. To remedy this, we opened another bottle. At one point there were three bottles of port on the go, and once we’d cheered the International Space Station as it came over we had a quick rendition of my party piece: “Foo-Foo the Bunny Rabbit”. If any of my loyal readers have not yet experienced “Foo-Foo the Bunny Rabbit”, in all its glory, they should consider themselves fortunate. And then we chatted, told knob jokes, and generally stayed up far too late drinking far too much; eventually falling into bed at 2.30am.

27 August 2010 (Friday) - Off to Camp

Yesterday I mentioned how disorganised we are at Bat-Camp compared to how slick we are when setting up for kite festivals. Despite having delivered a car full of stuff to the farm yesterday, this morning the car was overflowing with yet more stuff to go to the farm. Martin and “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” arrived at 9am with more luggage (and guinea pigs) and by the time we’d been to Asda for the makings of lunch there was hardly any space in the car at all. And we still had to fit Tony and his gear in. When we arrived to get Tony I was expecting to tell him there was no room at the inn, and he’d have to walk. But totally out of the blue a wasp appeared from nowhere and stung me in the neck. Tony applied Savlon, and so we made space for him (somehow).

We arrived at the farm (with a throbbing neck) and having excavated the passengers out from underneath all the luggage, we loaded a tractor trailer with said luggage and made our way to camp. We got the guinea pigs into their hme for the weekend and then a few minutes were spent fiddling about laying out sleeping bags, finding jim-jams and torches and sundry boring but necessary tasks. It’s so easy not to do these jobs but do “fun” instead, and then find yourself trying to find a sleeping bag whilst rather drunk and in pitch blackness at 1am. (Been there, done that!). Having set up “Green and Smelly” (the toilet) we washed our hands at the tap (running water at camp – how posh!), and settled down for lunch.

I looked around: “where’s the plates?” A quick search revealed they weren’t on the camp site. A quick trip to the farm house revealed they weren’t on the farm at all. And then I remembered looking at the box of plates and cups in our shed and thinking that I needed to pack it. So I drove home quickly to get it whilst dinner was got ready. Whilst shopping yesterday Batty had described what he wanted to do for our mid day scoff, and I must admit I don’t think I was paying much attention at the time. But it was great – Halloumi is a kind of cheese, and when it’s fried it goes really well in a sandwich with bacon and tomatoes. And even better when you’ve a plate to eat it off (!)

And then to the pond for a couple of hours fishing before Terry and Irene arrived. Or that was the plan. With no fixed arrival time, I had this vague idea that they would phone on arrival, and then we’d come down with the tractor to load up their kit. And in the meantime we’d do fishing whilst waiting. We cast out, and started getting tiddlers. The father and daughter competition got quite intense, and a good time was had by all; especially when the Bat caught a whopper that didn’t get away. But all the time I was rather conscious that my phone hadn’t rung, and that time was getting on. We came back to camp to find Terry and Irene had arrived to find the camp all set up, but no one home. With no phone signal and no idea where anyone was they decided to make a start on cooking tea. An idea which was heartily supported by all.

With the arrival of ‘er indoors ^TM , the “Rear Admiral” and the landlord, dinner was served: a truly wonderful curry. Eleven of us had a treat. I was very happy to do the washing up after a bit of tea that good. And then we sat around chatting and drinking too much till too late….

26 August 2010 (Thursday) - Preparing for Camping

Regular readers may recall we had a very dubious experience in a pub recently – the Woolpack in Warehorne served the most awful food I think I’ve ever seen in a pub. This morning I heard through the grape vine that this pub will be under new management in a month’s time. So a return visit may be on the cards sometime during the autumn.

And then with the arrival of the Folkestone contingent and enough camping tackle to equip a small army we loaded the car. It amazes me that when we go to Bat-Camp it’s always the same. Far less luggage than we take to a kite festival, and it takes up far more space. We popped into B&Q to buy wellies, collected Martin and went to Sainsbury’s for beer. And then came straight back out again. Asda does three beers for four quid. Sainsbury’s were nigh on two quid a bottle – two bottles for four quid. It doesn’t take my degree in mathematics to work that one out.

We eventually got to the farm to set up. Another difference between kite festivals and Bat-Camps is that at kite festivals we get on with the setting up. With a few hours hard work at a kite festival, camp is ready. Not so today. We arrived, and had a cuppa. And then another. Then we went to look at the ducklings. After an hour we thought we’d get the camping gear out, and even then we still fiddled about with tow-bars on tractors and getting grease everywhere. We’d been at the farm for a couple of hours before we started putting a tent up; and even then it took ages. Once the main tent was up, we loaded in as much as we could. But we couldn’t get it *that* ready as the cookers were still back at the farm. So we concentrated on tents. We got ten tents up; admittedly some of them still have inners to be put in, but that can be a job for later. There’s only so much that can be done.

In fact that was all that could be done; with important phone calls due at the farm our tractor driver was forced to absent himself, and so me, Martin and “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” went for an hour’s fishing; if only to check the pond out for the weekend. We decided the pond would do: between us in an hour we’d had over forty fish, including a rather massive one that got away.

And then home, and having dropped Martin off at the town centre we found the “Rear Admiral” and went to Asda, where Tesco were doing a price comparison. I’ve often wondered how supermarkets keep tabs on each other. It would seem they do it in a manner best described as “rather blatantly”. There was a bloke in a bright yellow Tesco tabard walking round shouting the prices of various articles into his mobile phone. I asked the Asda staff what they thought of it; none of them seemed too fussed. We came home with some more beer, quietly confident that we had enough, and then the phone rang. Martin had also been beer shopping for the weekend, and wondered if he could drop the beer off with us to save mucking about in the morning. We’ve now (probably) got enough to be getting on with. We shall see. But just in case we had a rummage round the cupboards. There’s some old cider that the cider drinkers amongst us can guzzle, and two half empty bottles of port from the last trip to Teston. We’ll take those too…

And so in the morning I shall be off on the fourth camping trip of the year. “My Boy ^TM ” remains in charge at home. Let’s hope he does the washing up. See you all on Monday…

25 August 2010 (Wednesday) - Rain!

Over brekkie I checked my emails – ten separate invites to Friday’s astro club meeting. The software’s clearly gone doo-lally. Software does that – it’s a feature. I’ve given it some thought and decided to give the astro club a miss this time. I’ve other plans for Friday night, and whilst the astro club is usually the thing for which other plans get cancelled, the August Bank Holiday camping trip is something I don’t want to miss; especially as Friday night is to be curry night. I *could* go to astro club from the campsite – I did that last year and came back to the farm after sunset. Making my way back to the tents in the dark through the rutted field wasn’t easy. In over three years of astro club this will only be the second one I’ve ever missed, so I’m not doing badly.

It’s been suggested that we let the kiting website domain name go – the website will remain but the http://www.e-l-f.org.uk bit won’t be there. After all it costs to have it, and we’ve done nothing with the website for over a year. The current caption competition on that website hasn’t attracted any interest in over three years.

And then it was on with the ironing. Perhaps a waste of holiday time, but the job needed doing, and it was raining. I watched the latest remake of “Brideshead Revisited” whilst ironing. I’ve blogged about that film in the past. I wasn’t impressed when I first saw it, and wasn’t keen on it this time round. It’s not very true to the original story, but then I suppose this merely confirms my prejudice that films of books never actually work, and are merely a sop for people who are too lazy to read the book.

With ironing done and telly watched, and a break appearing in the clouds, I then loaded some bits and bobs into the car for the weekend. Another weekend away; this time with fishing and archery as well as excessive drinking. Hic! And then to the fishing shop for one or two bits for the weekend. There was a dodgy five minutes whilst fishing yesterday when a gust of wind took several packets of hooks across the field. I had this plan to buy a magnet to hold the hooks in place and stop them blowing away. Someone had already had this idea, and I got a magnetic hook holder. So much for my scheme to economise this month. I came home via the chip shop for a slab of cod for dinner. After all I am on holiday this week. And then all plans for the afternoon went on hold as the rain returned, so I put some DVDs on the telly, and slept through them.

The plan for the evening was to visit the arky-ologee club’s dig site. Someone with more money than sense had invited the club to dig up the garden of their mansion in the hope of finding Roman remains. This evening those who enjoy scrubbling in the dirt were going to do “show and tell”, and we mere mortals were expected to go into raptures of delight over the discovery of a few broken bits of manky pots. I can’t see the attraction myself. If the manky pot was broken two thousand years ago, it’s still going to be broken now. And you can buy a new pot from B&Q for only a few pence. Surely the historical artefacts worth having are the ones that they’ve saved over the years; not the ones that got broke and thrown away. But it turned out that rain stopped play. Which was probably for the best.

We adjourned to Chip’s house for a cuppa, and then came home via Tesco for a take-out curry, which we devoured whilst watching “Man vs Food”. I hope this torrential rain stops soon…

24 August 2010 (Tuesday) - Another Day Off

Another day off work, but still I was up before 7am. A quick bit of brekkie, then I wasted an hour in NeverWinter. I’ve now finished a game that’s kept me out of mischief for a month – I need to look for another one now. There’s three thousand up at the NeverWinter Vault; that should keep me going for a while.

The phone rang - plumbers would seem to be akin to buses; not a sniff for ages, then two call back at once. I’ve arranged for the one who got back to me the quickest to service my boiler. And by an amazing co-incidence he knows me – he’s the boyfriend of one of the girls at work.

With washing out on the line, together with “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” I set off for Beaver Water World near Westerham. When the brats were small, this place was a regular haunt, despite the fact that neither of them could remember it. You’d think they’d remember – “Lewis” the Burmese python came from there a long time ago. Mind you we’ve not been there for ten years or more. It was a good place to visit, outside there were terrapins, lemurs, and all sorts of birds. A novelty was that many of the bird enclosures had rabbits and guinea pigs on the floors. Inside was what we’d gone to see; snakes and lizards, turtles and tortoises, and even a caiman. There were three albino Burmese pythons (just like my “Buffy” was) and the most adorable monitor lizard; who would want a dog when you could have a monitor lizard?

If any of my loyal readers fancy a day out, I can thoroughly recommend the place but (there’s always a but, isn’t there!) I’ve always been a reptile kind of guy. To be honest you’ll see all the place has to offer in less than an hour. If you don’t like reptiles, I really wouldn’t bother (after all, I wouldn’t’ visit a spider zoo). There was a silly old bat there today who was looking into every enclosure, and then screaming in terror. What was that all about? If you know you don’t like this sort of animal, why go?

On the way back we did our best to upset the sat-nav, and as I parked the car I saw an ex-cub walking down the road. I recognised the surly little git. I remembered him distinctly - he was a particularly nasty child. When playing ball games he would make a point of throwing the ball over a fence just to spoil things. If some other child was (for whatever reason) the centre of attention, this horrible oik would do anything (including assaulting other children) to draw attention back to himself. The brat recognised me. His evil expression changed into one of “butter-wouldn’t-melt” and he said hello. Before I could say anything his mother started a tirade at me about why he hadn’t been to cubs for a few weeks, he just won’t go, she tries to make him, but he won’t go. I asked the mother if she’d realised I’d not been there myself for nearly two years, and I told her that from what I remembered of her foul child that cubs would be far better without him being there. I added that it was because of brats like him that after thirteen years of being a leader I packed up. She clearly wasn’t listening to a word I said, and she carried on blathering inanely about her little darling. I walked away. Like I did two years ago.

A quick sandwich and then me and the most recent fruit of my loin went fishing. I’ve been fishing on three consecutive days now. We had a minor problem with the weather. Rather than taking my fishing gear I should have taken the kites; it was that windy. My apprentice caught twice as many fish as I did, including one that needed the landing net: her first bream. For those of my loyal readers who aren’t of a piscatorial bent, bream are slimy. Very slimy. We had words to say on the subject of bream….