Holiday Variations

Evening Star, Issue 23189, 11 February 1939, Page 3

Holiday Variations

The vagabond life, I have always maintained, would be ideal but for two disadvantages—sunburn and mosquitoes ; every year when camping time comes 'round, I fight a losing battle with thorn, and seem likely to-continue to do so until I can claim the privileges of old age and stay at home. For it is ns the law of the Medes and Persians that every year as a family we leave the comparative civilisation of hearth and home and go forth into the open spaces and camp. As a matter of fact, no one enjoys it more than 1 do; yet I have my moments of passionate regrets, bf wistful longing for four stout walls, a shady verandah, mos-quito-proof gauze across the windows. These moments usually recur with monotonous regularity at midnight .and at midday; at midnight when I am pursuing a dozen intrusive mosquitoes round the walls of my tent, and at midday when the pleasant warmth of the sun has suddenly become a torment, and one is paying for that uncovered freedom on the warm sand with a burning skin and incipient blisters. Then, and then only, I dislike camping and vow to go no more a-ronming with my family but to sit peacefully at home. But of course L never carry out my threat. Let them go off without me? See them packing all those tents, rolling blankets, sorting out fishing gear, rifling the larder’s store of fresh eggs—and remain tamely at home? Never! I fling myself into the thick of it, knowing that, with all its disadvantages and its moments of disillusionment, 1 still find it essential for the soul’s welfare once a year.

But, being an experienced vagabond. [ make preparations that 11.L.5. would certainly have scorned but which I fancy Mrs Stevenson would have applauded. I buy four large bottles of oitronella and two of sunburn lotion; I pack a huge and unbecoming hat and a bathing wrap that would disgust the modern beach fan, but which at least ensures me a few patches of unburned skin when I return home. Having done this year as usual, I felt myself well armoured against the slings of fate; with those comforting little bottles I could enjoy camping with the veriest vagabond of them all. Well. I unpacked our camping gear a fortnight ago and with a bitter pang of regret I placed six unopened bottles upon the medicine shelf; four contained oitronella and two sunburn lotion. At least lam already supplied with remedies against next year’s vicissitudes. But this year has been a record in two respects; the coyness of the sun lias only been matched by that of the mosquitoes. Not once was one aware of that burning sensation on the bridge of the nose that foretells trouble: not one hardy little mosquito hummed around my lent. _ Indeed, had one done so. T don’t think I would have had the heart to age war upon it; any mosquito that dared to venture. out in the weather that blessed

Written by MARY SCOTT, for the * Evening Star,’

our camping holiday would have deserved all it could win from me. No mosquitoes and no sunburn! WJjat an ideal holiday! How often have £ felt that without the two disadvantages life in camp would be very heavenly! And was it heaven?. Did I feel any real satisfaction, any sense of triumph over fate as £ unpacked those bottles? Not a bit of it. I felt only a secret pang; I had been cheated; something was missing. When-is a camn not a, camp? When there is never a mosquito in it. For it is useless to deny that tha weather that proved so unattractive to mosquitoes was also unpleasing to campers.' The sun may devour you by day, but it is poor work camping when it remains coldly hidden or is so elusive that you have hardly caught it before it has vanished again. After all; one likes to have something to show for a holiday, some proof that you have not remained tamely and comfortably at home all summer—a good healthy patch of bronze here, some mosquito scars there; they are at least the signs of proper summer weather. No ono likes to return with all their bottles -ic. sunburn cure unopened. What is worse, one resents having had to v iro to town for supplies of ainmoniated quinine and aspirin, It is such a iarring note, so unsuited to the holiday spirit. But, analysing my discontent and my quarrel with this summer. I nave been brought to realise the sad,truth that all these years I have been failing iu that first duty of every holiday-maker. 1 have not been counting my blessings* I have not even recognised their worth. As I have crept murderously round my tent at ,3 a.m., armed ,with a flickering candle as a weapon of offence, and have counted corpses—numbering them in a hot summer even unto three score and ten—T have, thought thorn curses, not blessing. These, T have said viciously as I jabbed at an intrqs. ive minstrel on the ridge pole, are the sort of things you have to nut up with if you are such a fool as to go camping. Those blisters on my hack, that unattractive and unsuitable reddening of the nose caused by the sun’s enthusiastic caresses, were the penalties of camping by the sea. And all the time thev have been blessings conferred with perhaps too liberal a hand. Better a thousand times such illjudged largesse than the niggardliness of Nature this summer. One resents camping in weather that even the mosquitoes avoid. No sunburn, no scars; only this objectionable cold in my, head. Why, you may catch that any day of the year without troubling to go to the beach for it. . . And. after ail, if one’s nose must assume that particular shade of crimson, far better that it h« from sunburn than from catarrh. Catarrh and camping—there is something unnatural and horrid in the combination ! i