Hard-core grandma-core, solo wild camping with a 20 month year old, the isolation of having different opinions and thoughts on the near assassination of Trump

Karens care about kids

I realised my daughter needed a break. She’s a political journalist and we’ve just had the election. Not only that but the largest amount of new MPs ever in one go, so she had to write bios for all of them for The House magazine, which is sort of an in-house mag for parliament.

An old friend Nicky was having her 50th at a camping site in Sussex. So I offered to take Ophelia away, picking her up at midday from nursery on the Friday and returning on the Sunday. So two nights in a tent.

Firstly, I didn’t have an adequate tent. My old one, picked up from a field post-Glasto, was no longer water-proof, plus it was tiny, for one person.

I tried to get a tent from PRs, posting everywhere. Good tents are expensive. This request attracted nasty comment from an ex-journalist who publicly ridiculed me. ‘This is the weirdest request ever’, he lashed out, ‘What else do you want? Your toothpaste provided?’. You can tell he’s not in the field anymore because this is how journalism/influencing/whatever you wanna call it, works nowadays. You barely get paid, so you are constantly broke. You resort to freebies for a link or a post or a mention. (But obviously only products you actually like, I do have some integrity). He replied to my private message asking why he was being so unkind. Funnily enough you never hear male journos being spoken to like this. He said: ‘I’m not a mysogynist because I’m a gay man going out with a trans woman’. Which to me reads like the ultimate ‘I have a problem with women.’ The very definition of it in fact.

No luck. I ordered a wigwam, I mean a tipi tent, from Asda. I suppose wigwam is no longer the term. It didn’t arrive in time. Asda has no discernible customer service. They cosplay customer service, with a twitter account and all the mod cons, but they never respond. (Eventually they did, days later)

So I set off on Friday: I’d packed a two ring stove, a bag of cooking pots from the Middle of Lidl, 2 enamel cups and 2 bowls, a sleeping bag for me, a small sleeping bag for her (which wasn’t really adequate for if it got cold), 2 very old thermarest sleeping mats, a cast iron tripod with a cast iron Netherton hanging pot if I wanted to go a bit ‘re-enactment’. A tiny backpack for her, so cute. I don’t really have a good weekend bag right now, only hard suitcases which wouldn’t have fitted into the Fiat 500 so stuffed my stuff into a shopping bag. A few foodie basics such as olive oil, salt, garlic, and a cooler. I also took the buggy.

The car was heaving. I picked up Ophelia at midday from nursery. because that’s when her day-time nap starts. It takes about 2.5 hours to get to Sussex so I thought she’d sleep through the journey. Plus I wanted to avoid the Friday afternoon traffic in London for weekend escapees.

It took almost that long to get to the outskirts of London. I saw a giant Asda and stopped. Maybe they have the tent?

Naughty granny moment: I was starving so I took her to Macdonalds. The chips and the banana milkshake were a hit. I sent a video to her parents. Oops!

Asda did have the tent £89 and also a trolley £60 which I’ve seen people use at festivals. The latter turned out to be a great buy.

Onwards.

The last few miles in Sussex were wending through gorgeous villages, floral displays, spotting expensive sports cars. Finally I found Wild Combe Camping. I was the second person to arrive, according to the one bloke that knew which part of the field was for Nicky’s birthday party.

I left Ophelia to run around in the field while I tried to put up the tent by myself. It was huge and very tall. Ophelia kept jumping on the tent while I was trying to put it up. I tried to get her to hold the central pole while I pegged it out, but she is too young. It will come.

Eventually I managed to get it up and unfurled the various bags containing the mats, the sleeping bags, the pillow, inside.

This was fun for her. A little house with zips! She’s going through the stage where a zip is one of the most fascinating things you can play with.

I set up the camping stove and made tea and then ‘stapa’ which is Ophelia-ese for pasta.

Others started to arrive.

Wild Combe Camping sell firewood and rent out firebowls. The bowls are a bargain at £2, but the wood was incredibly expensive, at almost a £1 a piece. ‘We grow it ourselves and season it.’ Fine. I bought 20 quids worth and frankly never managed to get it going the entire weekend. It needed a lot of firelighters and kindling, which I didn’t have. I’m pretty good at fire building normally.

Because of neighbours and music, we were only allowed to camp at the end of the field, meaning the water taps were very far away. Not ideal with a young child. I hadn’t realised just how wild this camping trip would be. No toilets or water nearby.

The buggy wouldn’t work on the furrowed field. This is when the trolley came in handy. Absolutely brilliant. Also it worked like a tiny choo choo train for Ophelia, who lounged in the back like Boudicca on a chariot while I dragged her across the field to get water.

Older kids started to play with Ophelia, which delighted her.

A tip from a fellow camping mum: ‘Don’t even bother to try to put them to bed while it’s light’. That first night I was very tired so crawled into the tent at 10pm, way past Ophelia’s bedtime. I got very cold in the night so I was concerned about her, partly because she kept wriggling off the sleeping mat and slept on the ground sheet. When camping, cold comes up from the ground. I kept touching her head and hands for body temperature, and listening to check she was still breathing. The responsibility for another person’s child is so much more than for your own.

The first camping night achieved, the next morning, having slept quite badly, we woke around 7am, which is late considering she normally wakes at 6am.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs and a ‘nana’ (banana), in her little red enamel bowl. She sat on the cooler and I used a box as a table.

I made tea. With Ophelia I stick to rooibos, which has no caffeine. You can also brew it for hours and it never gets that horrible tannin taste.

Saturday we tried to visit the reservoir for a swim, but couldn’t find a path, it wasn’t signposted, so ploughed a route through long grass. Ophelia enjoyed the butterflies.

The reservoir was muddy and Ophelia was too scared to go in. I’d bought her a floaty swimsuit, which are now not recommended, but I used one with Sienna and as long as you keep an eye, don’t assume that they can take care of themselves, I think they are a good idea.

It’s for situations where you take your eye off them for 30 secs and they’ve done something dangerous. This happened - in fact I literally just turned my head for 10 seconds- and Ophelia sat on a smoking fire bowl. Fortunately she was wearing a damp nappy and the fire was from the night before. You have to be so vigilant.

The weather was insane, alternating between scorching sunshine and heavy rainfall. During a storm I tried to run back to the tent to close it but she was screaming and panicking so I could only close one door.

When the storm was over, the tent was full of water. I mopped it up as best I could.

I met some of my old bandmates from Rythms of Resistance. They were always about 10 to 15 years younger than me. None of them have had children. I told them I was a terf, but they are all signed up to the whole trans thing. In fact I was chucked out of a feminist samba band, Samba Sisters, because of my gender scepticism. I assume they are also pro-Hamas/Palestine and anti-Brexit. The full trifecta. Which is weird because the proper Left has always been anti-EU.

I felt a mixture of defiant and defensive, and went to bed early, at the same time as Ophelia, at 8pm. I suddenly realised how lonely I’ve been feeling for about a decade, feeling like a horrible evil person. The weight of all that hate on social media, losing friends and work for not having the ‘correct’ opinions. No wonder it’s finally got to me and I have high blood pressure. You aren’t allowed to have your own thoughts anymore. You can’t just disagree with each other but remain polite. Any deviation from the official ‘good person’ narrative means you are cancelled and othered.

I woke up in the night, the music and dancing was still going on outside. I checked my phone, Twitter/X and saw that Trump had a near miss assassination attempt. This had happened 30 minutes ago. I checked all the mainstream news sites and there was nothing. On the Times app- no news, just yesterday’s news. No wonder nobody is buying newspapers anymore - they are too slow. I got it all, the instant reactions, the interviews, the theories, for free, on Twitter.

My immediate thought on hearing that the shooter was a 20 year old man, who had his head blown off in retaliation, was - that poor bloody kid. At twenty years old you aren’t neurologically mature (hence the concern of terfs, mostly middle-aged mums and grans, re child transitioning). His life has ended and his family’s life ruined. He was swept away by all the hate (or Trump derangement syndrome) and probably believed he was doing a good thing. The agree to disagree harmony of previous decades has disappeared. You can’t be different. You MUST conform. It’s very sad and very unhealthy.

One of the guys in the camp made some food on the fire. Ophelia doesn’t like smoke from a fire, it made her cry. I then slowly started to pack up. I got her to sit on the mats to let out the air and made it all into a big game. She packed up her little backpack and we were ready to go, again just before her midday nap.

I think it was a great success in terms of letting her be outdoors all day, getting properly tired, playing with other kids, and learning new skills.

Ideally I’d have a campervan. If anyone knows a good and reasonably priced runner for sale, Ulez compliant, please contact me.