Roundabout camping

Stain on the couch, black

Stain on the couch, red

Roundabout camping is an outdoor, easily accessible and affordable variety of camping, well away from the sea or even a shell with the sound of the sea inside of it.

Roundabout camping was popularized (inadvertently) by your parents and mine, predominantly to get us out of the house. We certainly wouldn't notice the stain on the couch then!

History

The Stain and the Demise of Non-Roundabout Camping

Was it even a stain, it may have always been there, a manufacturing blemish from the couch factory?

Can we camp at the oh so sandy beach for our holidays this year? Near a waterfall perhaps, or large hill without a waterfall even? There's even this flat, marshy field we could tent at, no geological features nearby of note, but there are many different interesting varieties of grass, sedges and rushes nearby!

Camp at the woods? The Woods? Are you serious? The Woods where they found the bones ... ?

Post Stain: Roundabout Camping

Lets do it — dust cobwebs off canvas and just do it! It's rather late, but it will be rainy and sunny tomorrow (just rainy tonight), and you know what that means — rainbowy (tomorrow only).

The trees in The Wood will offer some shelter but, admittedly, we won't be able to see the rainbows then.

Wow, look at that roundabout, it's much closer and more open. A little oasis in the middle of the traffic-like a belly-button and we're the fluff!

Don't forget to pack ...

Gloves

After your parents or mine drop us off near The Woods, we campers mostly equip ourselves with the stolen contents of the glove compartment and/or gloves, one per hand. If camping with one other family member or friend, then the glove-to-hand ratio is changed to half a glove per hand or two hands per glove, even if the gloves both belong to you.

Glove Compartment Stuff

The majority of glove compartment stuff will be used to deactivate coke cans so that the ring-pulls fall off and then check for coke fluid. Surplus, unlovable and grey glove compartment stuff is used to set-up base camp.

Was the stain kind of yellowish?; not so sure anymore.

Crumbs or ring-pulls can be used to tattoo a pathway onto Mother Earth which will forever guide the traveler from base camp to Ye Olde Pissing Tree (and vice versa).

The major constituent of roundabout flora is the prickle.

Demographics

You

If you just extend your legs, balance on your tippy-toes, pivot on the stablest of all the toe-nails, then you could maybe catch a glimpse at what The Good are up to in their houses, on the other side of the roundabout. They sure are making a lot of noise!

The Good could turn on their porch lights at a whim and take out their binoculars and wave to you and maybe beckon you forth. Even a welcome mat would be nice to sleep on. But they don't, the bastards.

Accommodation

Double-Sleeping Bagging and Double-Pillowing

Regardless of "the zip situation" or "the soggy cardboard situation", a single sleeping bag has room for only one.

If you are camping with one other family member or a friend, then take two single sleeping bags each (four in total), unzip the sleeping bags and then re-zip two of the singles together to make a double-sleeping bag each (two in total: one for you, one for your friend).

In addition, if you are camping with one other family member or a friend, then take four pillows in total (two each), and stuff one into your double-sleeping bag for warmth and to absorb raindrops. The second pillow can be used to rest your head and absorb additional raindrops.

Don't do this ...

1. Don't bring just cardboard.
2. Ensure zips are zippable, and not just metal lumps of liability.
3. Don't wear your sweet, faded jeans- you know, the ones with holes in the knees. Sweet, faded jeans without holes in the knees will suffice.

Things to See and Do

Marshmallow Eating

Removing one prickly branch from a prickly bush, the roundabout camper can prong and smoke an airy sugary treat, but only if marshmallows were in your glove compartment in the first place. It'll be too wet for fires, so best off removing the prickly (and possibly wet) branch and eating that marshmallow cold (and possibly soggy).

If you insist on imparting a smokey and/or herbicidey authenticity to your marshmallows, then this can be found on the margins of the roundabout, near the road. Yes, the Good tend to spray herbicide around the circumference of everything greenish, like a dog proclaiming ownership of a tree or trees.

Coke Can Inspections

There is plenty of evidence of coke can ingestion (empty coke cans, coke can ring-pulls). Some-one was drinking coke. Now prickle juice is all well and good if you have got a suitably large set of stones or boulders to juice the prickles with, a vessel for collecting raindrops and a bone or bones to pound the prickle raindrop mixture into a remotely drinkable emulsion, but wouldn't you prefer some coke?

Whilst checking coke cans for residual coke fluid, but be careful not to cut your tongue on the ring pull: the jagged piece of metal left behind when the ring-pull is removed, or any of the prickles from the prickly bushes.

Visit The Pissing Tree

With your bladder bulging from coke and your bowels ripely full of sugar and air (theoretically), it is now time to visit The Pissing Tree. You can't miss it, even if you try; it's the only tree on the roundabout.

When I said you can't miss it, it is surrounded by a dense patch of prickly bush. That is to say the prickles are dense throughout the entire roundabout, including over, under and through your cardboard bed, but its relatively denser and pricklier near The Pissing Tree, probably due to the historical dosing of expelled nitrogen urea.

Meditate on this

You have been afforded some rich "me" time to ponder the following topics:

• the Economical use of Money with respect to camping holidays
• the Convenience of Woods with respect to camping holidays
• Zips and/or Cardboard (but not in that order)
• Sweet, Faded Jeans (the ones with holes in the knees): do prickle holes/herbicide stains detract from sweetness?
• the Likelihood of Manufacturing Blemishes during Couch Manufacture

See also

• Stain removers
• Stain detectors
• Couches