Just why...

Just spent 3 nights on a lovely site. With only one of those including any sleep.

It was like shitty pitch neighbour bingo.

The first being a group of retiree bikers who declared they 'wouldn't be any bother' - as if I somehow looked at them and thought they would be having a wild night doing donuts, or shots off their tank caps.

When in reality it was 8hrs of low level disruption and nuisance between 11pm and 7am. Including repeated inebriated toilet visits after too many pints of bitter, wrestling their tents and airbeds as if a wild badger had somehow snuck in - on the hour, every hour, snoring loud enough to wake the cows in the field half a mile away, in bloody unison, and 'whispered' conversations at 4am, 5am and 6am that were then repeated at full volume when invariably the other party was too asleep/deaf/unawares to hear them or their demands.

So essentially - eff you, Jim. And your arrogance about 'being a biker'. When the reality is that at only near 40, I've likely been riding motorbikes in some form longer than you have* (thanks lifetime biker-Dad!)

The second night was a glorious, star filled, bedtime at 9.30pm and wake at 7am noiseless heaven 🙌

And what followed was a genuinely peaceful and lovely morning, chilling out under the tarp porch listening to and watching the rain. Probably the first time in several months myself and my son have had proper mental downtime due to several unavoidable things happening with school, family and work.

As soon as the sun came out, so did the family with more swearwords than most have vocabulary, and horrid kids in tow. Who proceeded to pitch up with only half the stuff they needed (and other parts broken).

They then tried to borrow the following off everyone else at site -

.mallet

.pegs

.guy lines

.radio

.gas

.firepit

.bacon

.marshmallows

.milk

The pre/teenage fights and battle of parents were every 10-15 minutes, without fail, from 1pm throughout the afternoon, evening and night. Aggressive, loud and threatening each other constantly.

In the tent, outside the tent, outside other people's tents, around their borrowed firepit, at the toilet block, on the field, you name it. Throwing things at each other; one pair of Nike's being sacrificed to the hedgerow in a fit of rage (a metaphor of the whole afternoon, that. To be honest).

Eventually reaching a spectacular crescendo of swears, effs and c words at 4.30am when one of the pre-teens pitched a fit about not being able to find their phone - resulting in all merry hell breaking loose and a few other campers having to come out and say a few choice words.

This was accompanied by the loudest of loud German guests who rocked up at 8pm in their Autobot ELWB conversion. Adding their polite yet LOUD, conversations about the quality of their tent poles**.

Which they then proceeded to set up alongside their life size Optimus Prime - on their only 6m allocated pitch, at 1 effing A.M. Complimented by the most slapstick of all 'haw haw' deep booming laughs that just kept giving!

Oh, and don't forget the pissed up 'nice' just graduated students. Who were all having a whale of a time on one of the fields, which was genuinely lovely to see them just having fun and mucking about. Until it was midnight and one of them (my bet is the most polite and friendly young lad - who was decidedly sheepish at the toilet block in the morning) had one or 4 too many and decided to go full 'Burning Man' meets 'Rafiki' with some of the site chickens.

It was supposed to be a lovely, quiet, semi wild little pitch up site. It's run by a lovely family.

I know gobshites are everywhere, but can they not just bloody stay at home and leave the rest of us to it? And I know lockdown did a number on what was remaining of polite society and many people's 'people skills'...

But I think an 11yr old shouting "c*nt" at least 20 times in the space of a few hours would give many parents enough shame to give them a verbal take down, and drag them home by their charging cables.

I can, however, forgive the extra loud Baptism of the chicken, that was quite funny.

We're off to another site for a few nights next week. I'm hoping we meet similar to some of the other lovely families we did also meet, and we have met over the years. Just to restore a bit of my faith in humanity, maybe. God knows.

I might make some 'camping tw*t' bingo cards 🫠

(yes, I'm aware I should probably be on it too for this post 😂)

*since I was 7 🏍

**shoutout to my GCSE german teacher!