And I don’t sleep in tents, were the words of my ex when I suggested, many years ago, that we take the kids camping.  So, though I camped some when I was a child, and a lot when I was a young woman, I didn’t at all while I was married.  After my ex and I separated I bought a couple of tents and for a few years took my youngest, with half a dozen or so other little girls, to a campground about five miles from home where we made makeshift somemores out of chocolate digestive biscuits and raspberry flavoured (because that’s all I could find) marshmallows. 

My daughter lost interest when she was about 11 and I hadn’t been in a tent since then when I got a call late morning on Saturday from the hippies on the Extremely Small Island.  There would be transport for me if I was waiting by the “marina” at noon.  I rummaged about until I found my mother’s tent, bedroll and sleeping bag, and threw together a few clothes.  I also grabbed a random, and largely inappropriate, stash of food.

The marina is really just a narrow rocky beach with a boat ramp, right before the spot where an ugly seawall inadequately protects a partially washed away road.  As I stood by the roadside with all my stuff – which the Americans elevated to “gear” and which I finally remembered the Brits would have called “kit” – a pick up cruised by, stopped, and reversed back to me.  Dancing Man leaned out of the window and chatted me up while I scanned the horizon for my ship coming in.

Meanwhile several teenagers and a couple of engaging eleven year olds, who I realised were to be my fellow travellers, arrived with their gear.  We all watched as finally the boat pulled in and tied off on the mooring 50 yards or so offshore.

It took a couple of journeys rowing back and forth to the sail boat before we were all loaded and headed for the Extremely Small Island under power of a put put motor, since we were too many to sail. 

Twenty minutes later we rowed ashore to find an impressive camp already set on the beach, with a large, communal kitchen tent draped over the picnic table next to the fire pit.  Strung along the beach was a row of other tents, and finding a vacant spot I pitched mine.

My orientation consisted of the question, Did you bring wine? (yes) and a guided tour to the pit toilets.  

The children (all boys) wandered off and the grownups drank and ate guacamole (good call my bringing that).  After awhile the four womenfolk set off in search of the kids.  Just one of us was mother to any of them, but we all understood her anxiety.  At high tide only part of the shore is accessible, and we quickly covered it.  Back at camp the mother became really worried.  Two years earlier, apparently, the kids, clinging to cliffs as the tide came in, had to be rescued by boat.  None of the rest of us thought they would do it twice, but the mother was insistent and a search boat went out. 

Not long afterwards, a group of very wet children, rescued for the second time, shivered by the fire and slowly burnt the rubber of their drying shoes.  The teenagers sullenly blamed it on the overweight eleven year old who had been found clinging to a particularly precarious spot on the cliff side.  If it hadn’t been for him, they said, they would have made it.  There were minor skirmishes between the teenagers and the drunker grownups.  I had never met most of the men and noted that they, and the children, had curious first names: Kent, Solomon, Titus, Keenan, Egerton. 

After awhile I worked out that a communal kitchen didn’t mean there would be any communal dinner or anyone taking charge of the fire, except to keep it topped with driftwood.  I monitored smouldering shoes, drank wine and ate tortilla chips.  I felt alone, but this time I didn’t feel strange and I didn’t feel sorry for myself. 

The tide continued to rise and one by one we drifted off to our tents, except for a young man who stretched out on the picnic bench and tried to sleep until dozens of field mice, waiting for quiet, ran all over him.

The next morning the party began to break up.  Guys remembered they had to be somewhere that day and teenagers had work to go to.  By late afternoon it was only the mother, her eleven year old son, a friend of his, and I who were left.  As he departed, her husband promised to come back to fetch us the next day. 

The kids paddled about in a canoe, and the mother and I walked and panicked when, briefly, we lost my little dog.  We watched eagles watching us from the top of tall pines and hoped they didn’t fancy poodle for dinner.

The four of us (and the dog, phew) ate together beside the fire and the kids made somemores of the genuine variety.  We competed for the perfect toasted marshmallow while the fire slowly burned low.  As the tide came in a tug boat with lighted mast pulled an enormous tanker through the strait.  One of the kids said, sticking his marshmallow into the embers, It’s so nice to be here, with no one getting drunk.

I woke before dawn to the sound of another tug.  We breakfasted on what food was still left, rationed our water a little, and lolled in the sunshine.  I had forgotten the two things I love most about camping – the sheer grubbiness of it and the sitting around doing nothing, getting just enough too much sun to make you sleepy.  Along with my standards of cleanliness, my literary tastes plummet.  I happily read a really lousy thriller – it might be the first thriller I have read since a camping trip in the Sierra Nevada in the seventies when The Onion Field (a good thriller, as I recall) gripped me.

We broke camp sadly, watching our pick up boat slowly drawing closer.  The kids rowed back and forth with the gear, and as they returned for a final trip were swamped by the wake of yet another tanker.  We baled the canoe with plastic food tubs leftover from camping feasts, climbed in with the wet children, and paddled one last time to the boat that sailed us to the world of running water, real beds and email.

I want to go back!