Camping weekend: Part one

I’ll fill you in on the details later. Like maybe when I’m not at work and not sweating about the visit to the knee specialist this afternoon. Maybe when I get back from the specialist at 9pm after yet another ridiculous wait. Then again I’ll probably have to sell my laptop and most of my furniture and clothes to pay for further medical assistance, which means that I won’t have the means to update you and who wants to write naked anyway? Not me. I like to be fully clad. So enjoy part one and I’ll fill you in on the details later.

Like every good camping trip, ours began with a list. Usually I’m the list maker in our partnership, but seeing as I’d had a rather busy week, Mark decided to take over responsibility and write out every item we would need for our two-day getaway.

I think the list speaks for itself:

Mark’s camping list:
- 2 sleeping bags, pillows, blanket
- Tent
- Foam matts

- Toilet paper
- Candles and stand for candles (so that they don’t set anything, like for example Mark’s pillow, on fire)

- Lighter, matches
- Torches
- Towels (this also implied: toothpaste, toothbrushes and soap)

- Mosquito spray
- Sun cream

- Drinking water (we got six litres)
- Apple juice
- Orange juice
- Ice
- Alcohol, wine – vodka
(He’d be damned if we came out this experience thirsty!)

- Food
- Biscuits, chips, lollies for Agnes (because Agnes can turn into a cranky bitch without her intake of sugar).
- Plates and cutlery, can be plastic, cups
(If not plastic, they could be titanium. We’re lenient like that. But the cutlery and cups were plastic. We forgot plates. )

Things that weren’t on the list but Mark prepared earlier:
- 1 giant, don’t-mess-with-me knife (which, he explained, was just in case we needed to stab a psychotic killer. There’s no phone reception in the bush, you know.)
- A series of maps printed from Google. (Printed on such a scale that only a couple of roads had names and the rest was guess work. Needless to say, we saw quite a bit of Kandos, which is a lovely mid-western NSW town which surprisingly has its own Wikipedia page. This leads me to believe that either people are really impressed with its cement production or more than one soul has gotten lost on its streets.)

Things that weren’t on the list (but for the most part were supplied by my parents, who we visited on the way):
- Chairs (yes, I know that’s not rough-n-tough-ing it, but both my knee and I are grateful that we didn’t have to stand the whole time).
- Paper towels and other things needed to clean the tent once we had packed it up.
- Sausages (who goes camping with the sole mission of building a fire, gets that fire going and then has nothing to roast on it? Mark and I, that’s who. But, for anyone who’s interested, smoked and charred baguette doesn’t taste half bad).
- Plates.

Overall I think we did well. Watch this space for part two.