Campingninja Blog

The daffodils in the garden bravely lifting their heads towards the first twinkling of sunshine meant that at last, spring was on its way.  It was time to dust off the cobwebs and prepare the caravan for the upcoming camping trips I’d eagerly been planning for this year’s camping season.

There was a long, slow creak as I opened the door of the caravan, which had become stiff from not being in use over the winter months.  An overbearing musty smell hit me as I climbed up through the doorway, but despite having to hold my nose to overcome it, surprisingly everything looked pretty much in ship shape condition at first glance, looking at the inside.  There would probably be some moth-eaten furnishings and the odd ball of tumbleweed, but I’d come prepared, armed with a broomstick and a spray can of Febreze, and within a few ninja flashes, I expected to be able to get it all ready, spick and span, and fit for a Camping Ninja. 

I was making ninja-quick cleaning progress, until I pulled down the top section of the sofa seat to check that the bed hadn’t been nibbled at by any mice.  Urrrrrrrgh!!!  I jumped back startled, unsure of what it was that I’d seen, and gazed with my eyes wide open at what looked like a large tuft of Yeti fur on the bed.    

Who had been in my caravan?  What’s more, who had been sleeping in my bed?!

It was beginning to feel like the tale of Goldilocks and the three bears, except I wouldn’t describe my hair as being gold locks, and if there had been Yeti’s in here; I really hoped that it had only been one and not three of them.  That would be really bad news. 

I started the process of Yeti tracking through the caravan.  There was so much fur that it did cross my mind that perhaps it wasn’t a Yeti after all, and that maybe there had been a Bigfoot taking over my bed instead.  Oh great, a squatter, I thought.  Whatever it was, I’d probably never be able to get rid of them now, I pondered solemnly, as I walked around the caravan picking up the odd, random pieces of fur lying around. 

I was almost ready to accept fate and go back into the house, leaving my dusty old caravan for the mysterious, molting furry creature to live in in peace.  When, with a handful of fur, I opened up one of the caravan cupboards hoping to find a rubbish bag, and instead found a pair of my old fur-lined ninja Ugg boots.  Oh, I gasped, as I put two and two together in my mind.  All those suspicious pieces of fur were from me, from my boots when I wore them in the caravan last camping season.  I was the phantom Yeti! 

Oh well.  All’s well that ends well, as they say.  But I did feel a bit embarrassed about blaming the imaginary Yeti.  Oops.

With all the different tents you can see at campsites, there really is something for everyone.  From trailer tents and camper vans, to caravans, little pop up tents and 8 man palaces, big tents, small tents, and of course ninja tents too, there are many different styles of camping homes to choose from.  Now that's diversity.  And I don't mean as in the dance troupe (they're cool and everything but I'm much more of a Peridot fan myself).  

If it's true what they say about dogs looking like their owners, I wonder if the same applies to tents?  (That's tents that look like their owners, not tents that look like dogs!)...  Looking around our campsite, it does seem to be the case.

Proud owner of a tent that looks like you or not, as every camper knows, no matter how much you love your own tent, there's always another one at the campsite that catches your eye and admiration too.     

In amongst a field of tents encompassing decades of style – 70s cool and simplicity, tents with a little bit of an 80s flavour, and tents from the early 90s that can't help but remind you of a pair of Bermuda shorts – this one here would be my favourite today (as per ninja cam photo). 

To the tent of the day - a retro gem of a tent, and the tent to steal a ninja's heart away.

For our final day of fun before we headed back home from our camping and caravanning trip, we'd booked a ride out to sea on a boat. We'd been given a check list by the boat company of all the things we needed to take on board - deck shoes, gloves, a camera and sea legs, to mention a few. I had nearly all of my kit ready but the one thing I was missing was a pair of sea legs.

To begin with, I didn't have the faintest idea what sea legs actually were, and secondly, after spending a long time searching the internet trying to find some to order online before we came away, I hadn't had any luck and was still sea leg less. I was a wee bit worried about it and in fact I didn't sleep at all because of it last night. So when I got up in the morning the first thing I did was to ask my Ninja Papa if he had any sea legs. 'Of course I have sea legs', he told me, going off on one about how he got them from my Ninja Grand Papa when he was a junior ninja, but I didn't have time to listen to the details. I needed to find out about the sea legs from the ancient ninja himself and pronto, as our boat was set to sail in less than 2 hours!

There was no time for 'Good morning' or 'Hello Ninja Grand Papa, how are you?', which rudely goes against all ninja etiquette if I'm honest, but all I could think about was the sea legs. So I launched straight into it, burst into the caravan, woke my Ninja Grand Papa with an almost ferocious poke on his forehead and demanded to know where I could get some sea legs from.

He laughed hysterically at my predicament for a good 15 minutes and then after telling me to calm down, explained that sea legs just grow on you. And apparently sea legs were that simple. Well I wasn't worried any more. Happy days were here and we clambered up on board the sailing boat for our nautical adventure.

… Choppy.

… Choppy.

… Choppy waters.

… Rough sea.

I started to feel a little bit queezy and looked down at my legs to see if any miraculous changes had occurred. Had I grown any sea legs yet? No. They were still ninja legs.

The almost inevitable was about to happen. And before I threw up, I vowed never to go sailing on rough seas again without making sure I'd got my sea legs on first! And that was something I meant so sincerely, from the very bottom of my heart.

… BLEUK!

After a conversation my Ninja Papa had with some other people staying at the campsite while brushing his teeth in the morning, we'd all been invited over to a party at the caravans by the lake.
As dusk fell, we wandered over to the party to find everyone sitting outside, gathered around a camp fire with one man playing the guitar. It was just like the other nights dream of the guitar dancing around a camp fire. Freaky. We joined the circle and sat down. Bobble hatted and blanketed, and clutching a cup of hot toddy, the big sing song began.

A couple of songs later and the guitar was passed on to our family. I really hoped it wasn't for what I thought it was for, but most unfortunately it was. I gulped down the rest of my hot toddy but still I wasn't drunk enough to loose all my ninja credibility and sing with a guitar in front of a load of camping strangers. My Ninja Papa however didn't have an issue with that.

He picked up the guitar and began strumming his way through a few verses of Kumbaya. Oh crumbs, I thought to myself. He wasn't?... Was he really singing that song? So embarrassing!!!

'Oh no, he is' I muttered angrily as the realisation set in. The one time I wanted our family to make a good impression and my Dad had chosen to sing Kumbaya! Of all the songs to choose. I was mortified. And to make matters worse, my tone deaf Ninja Grand Papa sang along out of tune in the ancient ninja language of Ninjaaa, like very bad karaoke. I bowed my head in shame and watched on, as all the following campers sang cool songs.

It was the night that seemed to drag on forever...

When I woke up the next morning, I shook my head and once again asked 'of all the songs to sing, why did you choose that one? Why Kumbaya?... What was wrong with Billie Jean … or Voodoo Chile … or something really cool like the Locomotion?'...

Bring, bring. Bring, bring. My ninjabile rang. It was a call from my Ninja Papa. Worried that I might be feeling a bit glum after the Carol van Klubbe disaster the other day, he'd perhaps ironically, clubbed together with my Ninja Grand Papa and bought a ninja family caravan and was inviting me away on a caravanning trip with him and my Ninja Grand Papa too. Funkiest of all was that I got to choose the campsite! It was the best news I'd had all day. So I got booking online at campingninja.com and selected a campsite.

The caravan was perfect for winter. We packed in our belongings, ambitiously including the sun umbrella and took a little piece of our home away with us, like a snail. It was a home from home. But not a sweet home from home once the evening came. Partly because despite being 83, my Ninja Grand Papa still insists on sleeping on the top bunk - one of the charms of old age, refusing to accept that he's much more than a grown up these days and reverting to acting like a child.

It was so painful watching him slowly climb up the ladder, with one step every seven minutes and then getting stuck for a long time half way up, and it was impossible to sleep with the distraction of him hovering mid way, dangling in the air.

Finally he made it up to the top. I closed my eyes ready to sleep. Then my Ninja Papa started snoring! That was it. I'd had enough of it all. I picked up my ninjabile and went online to book another pitch at the campsite. One all to myself.

A few ninja seconds later, my pop up tent was pitched and I was about to snuggle down to sleep. A next door neighbour to my silenced by the walls of the caravan, snoring Ninja Papa. Result! The perfect solution for a happy family.

And then to the land of nod, dreaming of, in the random way that dreams are, of peanuts, a tent floating on top of a swimming pool and a guitar dancing around a camp fire. Bizarre. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Instead of constantly buying lottery tickets, hoping to live the dream of leaving work and spending my entire life camping, I thought why not try something with better odds, like switching jobs to something more along those lines? So there I was, arriving at a rather impressive looking door for my interview. Not at all how I'd imagined it to look, I wondered what kind of people worked in an office like this?

Well, there was only one way to find out. So in I went, feeling a mix of nervousness, excitement, trepidation and oddly, hunger too, which made me wonder why I hadn't prepared better and at least eaten something that morning. That's the thing with interviews you see. You're never really sure just quite how long they are going to go on for. An hour, a day or even a week. I'd bought my pop up tent along with me just in case.

I arrived at the same time as an overly punctual early bird candidate, who was being interviewed in the slot after me. He introduced himself to the receptionist as 'Mr Trond, James Trond'. Purely because his name slightly resembled James Bond, he seemed to think he was 007, moving about in a spy like manner as well. There was no need for me to start behaving all spy like, I mean I'm a ninja. But to keep a competitive edge, I too introduced myself in the style of the famed Mr Bond. 'The name's Ninja. The Camping Ninja' I told the receptionist. The receptionist rolled her eyes at me, clearly unimpressed by my espionage efforts. Oh no, I thought. It had all gone horribly wrong and that was only the beginning...

After a few moments waiting in regret, I was asked to take my ninja boots off and then escorted down tunnels of winding corridors and into a candle and incense filled interview room. 'How enchanting to meet you' a voice piped up, as a floaty clothed lady greeted me. 'Enchanting' I replied, unsure of quite what was meant by enchanting anyway.

It's advice universally acknowledged that when you're being interviewed it's a good idea to copy the actions of the interviewer, because that way they think you're like them and seeing themselves in you, in turn, can sometimes work favourably and lead to a job offer. So that's exactly what I did. I copied her every move and answered every question with a prefix of 'enchanting'.

She wore slippers and spoke with her eyes shut. Why was she shutting her eyes? I didn't understand it. I'd been to some mad interviews before but this was the creepiest by far. Then she started sitting in a very unconventional yoga position, and in a few ninja kicks of my legs, I was too. Yikes! It wasn't very comfortable at all! Not sure that I was managing to pull the yoga-ness off and worried that I might come across as an arrogant copy cat, I did the yoga hum for added authenticity. 'Ommmmm'.

The rest of the story is not to be continued as the lady was quite disillusioned by my knowledge of camping and caravanning and regrettably, no further contact was made by the company after the interview.

If only I'd known before I went for the interview that what I'd heard to be the Caravan Club, was actually Carol van Klubbe, of the Carol van Klubbe Yoga and Meditation Centre!

End of week summary after first week back at work after the Christmas break...

Number of hours spent in the office = 32

Number of hours spent daydreaming about camping = 24

Number of hours spent browsing campsites on Campingninja.com = 8

Number of close shaves, hiding computer screen from the boss = 7

Number of incidents when the boss saw me looking at campsite pictures online = 3

Number of new tents on the market meticulously analysed in true ninja style, for rain proof abilities, ease and speed of putting up, comfort and practicability properties = 9

Number of maps bought = 2

Number of new camping plates and mug sets bought in the online sales = 1

Number of packets of space raiders eaten = 5 (despite New Years resolution to try and cut down, in an attempt to try and stop myself from looking like a pickled onion by the end of 2011)

Number of ridiculously unbelievable excuses made up while trying to explain to the boss the reason why the Campingninja Outdoors Show Competition entry form appears on my computer screen every time they walk past = 4

Number of complete lies told to the boss when trying to hide how much I really want to go to the Outdoors Show, including a feeble attempt denying that I even like camping = ashamedly 4

Number of friends invited on camping trips = 3

Number of annoying work colleagues successfully and inoffensively uninvited from camping trips = 1

Number of lunch breaks spent frequenting the outdoors shops in the vicinity = 4

Number of holiday request forms filled out = 2

Number of caravans interior designed in my head during meetings = 2

Number of Campingninja t-shirts ordered online, just because = 1 (a new colour of my favourite 'map, hike, camp like a ninja' design)

Percentage increase of growth of inbox = a scary 400%

Number of emails ignored = all

Number of phone calls not answered = 14

Number of new camping gadgets invented in my head while on the phone to not very interesting people = 7

Productivity at work = 0%

Productivity of essential ninja camping planning = 100%

Productivity promise to myself for next week at work to make up for it = 200%

End of week analysis = a good week