John was an explorer, a pioneer, a pusher of boundaries who played fast and loose with convention. Although he wasn’t without wisdom and skill, he could be a dreamer, possessing a naively innocent perception of his prowess at certain tasks; a perception that significantly outweighed the results that were ultimately produced. But what he lacked in prowess he made up for in quiet confidence and enthusiasm (he had that in bucket loads), and it was exactly this enthusiasm that had led him to this moment.
The summer of 1976 was a scorcher, marked by extremely high temperatures and drought. While there were some that subsequently referred to it as an inferno, John viewed it more as an opportunity, an excuse to put the wheels in motion to convince his family to engage in that most primal of pastimes...camping. The good weather had furnished him with a sterling excuse to acquire a tent, which would, by all accounts facilitate unfettered access to unspoiled nature and untethered freedoms.
And if he was going to buy a tent...he was going to buy a tent; the biggest, grandest, most bad-ass tent he could find (and for that there was good reason). For, whilst dwelling under canvas as a concept seemed solid (particularly if only for a week), there was the not-so-minor matter of convincing Mrs. John that it was something that could be even remotely enjoyable. Mrs. John, you see, had the good judgement to realise that, to all intents and purposes, camping was shit.
John was undeterred despite her protestations. Confronted with an almost inexhaustible list of options for outdoor cloth-based shelter, he plumped for a tent that packed inside a trailer and that had to be towed (rather dangerously) by a trailer-hook fixed to the back of the car. His first mistake...for in doing so, what he had actually bought was neither really a tent nor a caravan, but something in-between; a very light, two-wheeled box that bounced around on the motorway in a way that suggested it might break loose at any moment. And in being neither a tent nor a caravan in the conventional sense, it was therefore merely just a confusing hybrid that possessed none of the benefits of either medium, divided opinion in the camping community, and instilled outright fear into the hearts of trailing motorists.
It’s inaugural outing, sometime in the summer of 1978, was when John would subject his wife and two, probably excited (and definitely misguided) children to their first taste of what camping truly meant. Sure, he had been diligent, he had carried out a couple of trial runs on the drive at home, however, nothing could quite prepare any of them for what was to ensue. This was, after all, in the heady days prior to the impact of climate change when the great British weather was still relatively uniform in its delivery of consistent and persistent abject misery. As it turned out, and after the initial euphoria had subsided, the summer of 1976 had been...well, just a blip.
So there they found themselves, in the depths of Wales. Snowdonia in fact, tentatively perched on a relatively narrow, yet flat, grassy strip-of-a-campsite half way up a hill with a suitably robust gradient either side; one side sloping up, the other sloping down. The sun was out...pure Cymryan utopia. What’s more, erecting the tent had been a dream, the children hadn’t moaned once, and Mrs. John had skilfully unpacked a volume of plastic kitchenware so immense that it would make future sea life wince had they laid eyes on it.
Yes, the journey there had been a challenge (despite the uplifting Simon and Garfunkel accompaniment) what with the requirement to navigate using road signs labelled in Welsh...light on vowels, liberally smattered with consonants. But they had arrived nonetheless and, as the sun dipped behind the hill and they all laid their heads down for some well-deserved rest, John knew this adventure was just at its infancy. He lay there for a while immersed in a canvassy dreamland, off-grid and living off the land. And then sleep...
Dawn broke early morning as did his realisation that camping was altogether real. He opened his left eye, inadvertently exposing his retina to the light coming through the canvas, the sun filtering through the fly sheet like an opaque retina-searing orb. The opposite side of his face was swollen, his right eye practically welded shut and encased in the cushioned bosom of the pillow. His tongue felt rough and pitted, like the withered arse cheek of a seventy year old spinster. He was sweating. Outside was a cacophony of sound; chit-chat, birdsong, bleating sheep and so forth. Six o’clock. Fuck.
And the heat. The heat was intense. In fact, it was on; like if Glenn Fry really meant it. Burning...sizzling even. He felt lethargic and the rudimentary nature of the fold out bed had rendered his muscles numb; unable to move as though his spine had been removed. The twix he had misplaced in his sleeping bag at some point in the night, was gone. The wrapper was still there but what was inside lacked structure. It was essentially a chocolate ghost; malleable, liquid, encased in a sealed bag. A chocolatey metaphor for himself. He knew the family was already up; his kids’ muffled voices permeating the fabric. He briefly considered drifting off again but it was no use, he was awake. He unzipped his sleeping bag and ventured out into the crisp Welsh morning. In his pants.
It was only in retrospect that he would realise quite how glorious that morning was, especially considering how the following twenty four hours was about to go down. There were of course, the usual issues to contend with...dodgy shower blocks, other people’s children and the challenge of attempting to cook lunch in an oversized frying pan on a tiny three-pronged gas stove; a feat somewhat akin to landing a DC10 on top of the Post Office tower. But in the whole scheme of things, these were mere trivialities. The real problems would raise their head much later...in the middle of the night in fact...
At approximately 2am, long after the kids were asleep and approximately two hours past his own bedtime, John was suddenly awoken. A sound, not dissimilar to a speeding fighter jet shot past his head from left to right, accompanied by a ferocious, trailing wind. He was wide-eyed, attempting to focus whilst simultaneously reaching to wake up Mrs. John. Whatever that sound was he knew it was bad. He knew this because as soon as his eyes adjusted and he looked up he could see the sky. That wasn’t there before. The wind swirled around him, pulling the remnants of the tent this way and that, causing it to act like a huge sail, pulling and buffeting the trailer it was attached to, as if it were a tiny sailing dinghy on a treacherous sea.
He scrambled to his feet, pulled on his jeans and grappled with the ripped material billowing in the wind. Objects picked up by powerful gusts spun around as if at a poltergeist’s whim, speeding past his head at break-neck speeds. Mrs. John was now fully awake and in a state of mild distress, her hair fully vertical which made her look like a frightened goth. John hurriedly grabbed the kids from the adjacent compartment, lifting them, one in each arm, and carried them to the car, enclosing them within its protective metal shield.
As the children watched through the back windows, they could just make out their parents, wrestling and coercing the remnants of the tent back into the trailer, pummelled relentlessly by the wind and rain. Everything that had been brought with them was being haphazardly thrown in; bedding, cutlery, cups, towels, the lot. As Mrs. John climbed into the passenger seat of the car, like an astronaut attempting to gain re-entry to the international space station after a challenging space walk, John pushed the top of the trailer down into place and sealed it shut. He then hooked it to the back of the car before jumping into the driver’s seat and turning the key.
And that was the end of that. An abrupt end to an unfortunately truncated stay. The gale force winds had destroyed John’s idyllic outdoor vision. His well intentioned adventure had come to a premature end and they left the campsite in silence, bewildered and emotionally scarred. The trip had been a disaster, a washout, a tragedy of epic proportions. Never to be repeated. The trailer tent was subsequently disposed of and camping as a holiday medium was not something that would ever be suggested again.
John had taken his family camping, and in doing so had subjected them to a wild experience at the mercy of nature’s extreme forces. In the face of adversity he had stood up to be counted, grappled against a powerful foe, and saved his kids in the process. Yes, it had turned out that John was no wildwood camper after all but what he had proved was that he was more than that. John was an explorer, a pioneer, a pusher of boundaries who played fast and loose with convention. John was fucking awesome. John was my dad.
