Aren't We Done With the Camping Yet? Part 3

It wouldn't be a proper camping trip without rain.  The rain arrived on cue the next morning after a hearty breakfast of berocca and fried things.  The sky was a wall of grey, the rain pelted down.  Glumly but with a sense of the intrinsic rightness of the situation we broke the camp in the pouring rain and packed away all of the tents to moulder damply in their bags.  We had a large number of umbrellas which did a sterling job of not keeping us dry as we pulled our makeshift settlement apart.

With everything packed away there was the option of standing in the rain or leaving, so we left.  We went back to reception for the worst cup of coffee I have ever drunk in my life.  The poor girl at the combined coffee, food, icecream, snack stand was besieged with customers so one of the other employees came to give her a hand.  Sadly this woman was obviously more at home dealing with horses and since she didn't know how to operate a coffee machine things slowed down even more as her overworked colleague attempted to give her a crash course in coffee making while also serving customers.  This worked out about as well as you might expect and I sat down to enjoy a cup of hot milk and water with coffee grounds floating in it.  For the only time in my life I took a two thirds full cup of coffee and threw it in the bin.

Now that we were wet, our things were wet, the children were irritated and we were committed to leaving the sky cleared up and it turned into a beautiful day.  Putting a brave face on things we posed for a group photograph which will probably become a crucial piece of evidence in any future trial.  Everyone looks happy except me.  I look slightly depraved and definitely untrustworthy.  They say the camera never lies but does it have to be quite so obvious?

This was the farewell as we were going our separate ways.  Natali was going to a retreat for her South East Asian studies group.  They were discussing coal seam gas although whether they were discussing how to find it, extract it or market it I didn't discover.  Idette took her children and a lot of soggy camping equipment back to her place which left Jason with the pleasant task of driving Tony, Jasmyn and me home.  Tony and Jasmyn were easy enough but driving me home turned out to be a little problematic as half the streets in Sydney seemed to be closed for some reason or other.  At some point during these proceedings I pointed out that there was a light rail stop two minutes walk from Tony's house that I could have used to get home.  Jason was very kind and didn't hurl me from a moving vehicle.

I arrived home to discover that in my haste to leave on Friday I had inadvertently left my freezer door open with the result of which that the contents were on the point of crawling out and making a valiant bid for freedom.  I rounded up the runaways, threw everything in the bin and went out for coffee.  Just to emphasise the point I bought a bag of coffee to take home with me.

I would like to stress to Natali that we did not stop at KFC (or any other similarly inappropriate fast food joint) for lunch on the way home but the very mention of it was sufficient to trigger something in my mind so I went there for dinner instead.  I had very little choice, all the food that was in my house was currently banging on the inside of a garbage bin demanding to be released.  I think we're going to Treachery for our next camping trip although whether they're mad enough to invite me again is very much open for debate.  If they do invite me I should at least try and remember that I own an air mattress.