Just back from our camping trip to beautiful Wicklow in the South of Ireland. An uneventful journey down, we arrived in the glow of evening sunshine and were able to get the tent pitched in the dry. Hooray! First hurdle successfully negotiated.
Got the kids settled for the night and sat down at the OPEN (there's a novelty!) door of the tent for a cuppa. As I phoned home to let them know we had arrived safely, I suddenly noticed that although there were a good 40 other tents in the site, there was no sign of life at any of them, everyone else had hit the sack!
So I'm whispering to mum on the phone because you can hear everything when you're in your tent and I didn't want to wake the entire campsite with tales of our uneventful journey and unexciting tent pitching experience. Mum asks why I'm whispering, and I explain that there are 40 odd tents all round me full of sleeping campers. But it's only 9.15pm she says. Camping etiquette I explain, with more conviction than I could actually justify.
And so by 9.30 I have retired to my blow-up campbed with the latest selection from the library for company, which I get stuck into whilst trying to ignore the sound of snoring coming from all around me.
I eventually settled down for sleep, well prepared this time as in Fermanagh I had been a touch cold, so I had my best thermal reinforced PJs and an extra drawstring mummy-style sleeping bag with me. Unfortunately, although this all guaranteed my warmth, because the outer fabric of the sleeping bag stuck like velcro to the fuzzy cover on the airbed it also meant I was rendered incapable of even the slightest movement. However, it offered the best chance of a good nights sleep in a tent yet - warm, dry and add to that the bonus of no noisy rain beating down.
Next thing I know I wake with a start. If I could have sat bolt upright I probably would have, instead I lay absolutely still waiting to hear the noise again ...
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Somewhere down the campsite a rooster has unilaterally decided it is time to start the day. But it's still dark, and when I check my watch it's only 2.45am! However it's a persistent bird and it cock-a-doodle-fecking-doos on average every minute for 45 minutes.
And then it's mate from up our end of the site starts to answer it back. Only it can't even do the cock-a-doodle-doo bit right, and it's screeching back cock-a-doo! I'm not sure what frustrated me most; the noise or the fact the second stupid bird couldn't even get the words right!
And so their conversation goes on, for hours, while I lie there thinking of 101 ways to cook a chicken on a camping stove.
And suddenly I realise, as I lie anticipating the next cock-a-doodle-doo, that the snoring all around me has stopped.
They knew, and they never warned us.
No comments:
Post a Comment