Glamping, it ain't.

I arrived home from work on Friday evening to discover one of those little red cards from the postman to let me know he's had problems delivering a 'package' to my house. Since the sorting office had closed, on Saturday morning, dutifully armed with some ID, I nipped down to the post office to pick up the package.

Oooh. Packages!

Firstly, the post office and I have a different idea of what constitutes a package. I think of it being something a little larger or thicker than a letterbox, the post office considers it to be something roughly half the size of me and wrapped in a bin bag. Still, I can't deny the relief I felt when I realised it was the tent, and I could officially stop panicking.

Walking back from the post office to my car, the heavens opened and I got drenched. Proper drenched. I've been dryer coming out of the shower. Still, gritting my teeth and trying to balance the tent on top of my head I trudged back to the car, threw the tent in the boot and headed off home.


Deciding I needed to ensure I was capable of putting the damn thing up, it was time for a test run. All well and good, but it was still pelting down outside, and even if it wasn't, my garden is on a slight angle of around 70 degrees, and wouldn't make a suitable pretend campsite.

Ah-hah! Apparently I'm not the only person who does this!

One quick reshuffle of the front room later, and the tent was spread out all over the living room floor and ready to be put together. Looking at the instructions threw me into a mild panic, and Mr Glastonbury Festival Blog was summoned to assist.

It's funny the effect tents have on people. Within a few moments we were arguing and a few moments after that we were barely speaking, after I became hysterical about which pole needed to be installed first. Snapping and sniping at each other, we carried on, deciding against pegging the thing into the floor, and trying not to shove poles through the TV/sofa/each other. The tent eventually took shape in the front room - and honestly, easily enough that all the huffing, puffing and snapping at each other really wasn't worthwhile.

I sat in the tent for a few moments, feeling slightly ridiculous, poking at things and trying to sound knowledgeable by talking about ropes, tent pegs and flysheets, and then crawling back out again (mind out for the coffee table, don't step on the console...) and then deconstructed it once more, feeling rather pleased with myself.

Tent comes down easily, which is is super, and I set about rolling things up, which is less super, as the inner and outer tent have all miraculously expanded and no longer fit in the bag. Cue lots of huffing and putting as I unroll it all, fold it into tiny squares, re-roll it, wedge it back in, and then realise I've left out the pegs and the poles. Take everything out, put it all back in again, turn the air blue while I try and get the bag done up and then collapse on the sofa too exhausted to move for the next hour or so.

What could possibly go wrong?

Packing is now entirely complete, mostly. Almost. Unless I change my mind about what I'm wearing, which I almost-definitely-probably will do. Have given up looking at the weather forecast, which changes every three minutes anyway, and have adopted a 'will just open the tent door and see what's happening' approach, which is far more reliable.


This Weather Widget is provided by the Met Office


It is, unfortunately, currently raining so hard that it's like being on the set of Se7en (although, sadly, without Brad Pitt walking around being intense about everything). I'd like to slap whoever it was that was talking about droughts, the summer of 1976 and all the rest of it earlier in the year. Even Ollie's given up trying to convince me that it's going to bake.

There's been an obvious increase in the number of portable toilets, burger vans and vans with 'such and such productions' written all over them all over the place, and I've been trying to plot my route into work on Wednesday without much hope of success - there seems to be something 'interesting' happening with the traffic control this year, and my usual route looks sets to be jam-packed with festival-goers and I've got a horrible feeling I'm going to have to take the mother of all re-routes to get to the office before the paper goes to press.

Two days to go, bad news: it's going to rain. Good news: No-one's going to care.