Family camping holidays

The seven-day count down begins today. In one week we are taking the children camping. Two weeks in a tent which is not quite the size of our kitchen. It is a two-roomed tent – phew, that nylon partition should keep three children under six calm, quiet and in their beds until breakfast. (Who am I kidding? The only way I can keep the four-year-old in her bed right now is if I sleep in it with her. And that is with brick walls, solid doors and a staircase to separate us.)

But all that aside, what I am most worried about is the neighbours. From a distance we may look like one of those lovely family on the back of cereal boxes – three angelic children, two doting parents), but pitch your tent near us and all you’ll learn that we are not so much grinning as gritting out teeth, that we are less doting and more despotic. The dawn chorus in our corner of the national park will sound something like: ‘don’t eat with your hands’, ‘keep your feet out of your spaghetti’, ‘food in your mouth, not up your nose’. ‘Say please’, ‘don’t swing on your chair’, ‘don’t pick his nose’, ‘give that back’, ‘put that down’, ‘pick that up’, ‘ and the crowning ‘right, that’s it. Your last warning or no presents from Santa this year/next year/any future year!’.

Talk about bringing out ‘the fish wife within’. No offence to fishwives.

We have done the positive parenting course and plastered our children’s walls with star charts and rewards like train rides and ‘mummy time’. But when do I get to send my three on a ‘positive preschoolers’ course, where they learn to reward us with treats for good behaviour – a bottle of wine, a weekend away – and yes - ‘mummy time’.

If you find yourself camping this holiday season next to our family or to one that looks like, or worse, sounds like ours, do what I do when I need tranquillity – have a set of ear plugs handy. The ones they sell at the airport to drown out the sound of jumbo jets taking off are great.