St Andrew's Church, Preston Dorset

It felt like a magnificent moment, driving off. Boys sandwiched in the back between cool boxes and sleeping bags. Roof rack high (admittedly packed by exexdh). Bee Gees greatest hits on the car stereo. Children lulled yet fascinated by the high voices and their mum singing full tilt. The start of our annual camping holiday to a beautiful farm in Dorset. But less than a mile away from home, in one of the smartest cut throughs in London, the car just quietly failed.

I had joined the AA (the breakdown service, not the other one) just days before ( it had felt at the time like part of the spree but suddenly the best money I had ever spent) and a man, like the older Robert De Niro, wise with a heavy accent and just a hint of courtly male menace, came and worked on the car for hours. Talking on the phone he said he was in mourning, a very recent bereavement 'I'm just not myself' he said in a drawl. I felt like I was in a film. The dead-end woman played ludicrously by Michelle Pfeiffer.
Exexdh came on his bike, like an audience. Not feeling well he sat on a bench and watched.

Initial optimism from all gave way. It became increasingly obvious the car wasn't going to make it. Frantic phone calls to our friends, nearing the camp site in their camper van said we could get towed to their house and borrow their car. Robert de Niro towed me down to South London. 'She can do it.' He said a pronouncement of faith when Exexdh said he should steer the car. I felt stupidly proud of his belief and I did it.

But something happened. Exexdh stepped up. Volunteered when insurance on the friend's car seemed unlikely, to drive us down in their car and then drive himself back that night. He always joins us later in the week for our youngest's birthday but the total journey down that day ( towing etc ) took nine hours in total, and we did it, all of us with patience and good humour and he still had to drive back. Our funny, damaged family suddenly working together. Putting a tent up in the dark.

That week camping I thought, you can choose very easily how you would like to live in a field. It is just you and your children with others. It is a simple life, keeping yourself above the level of mud and dry under shelter, not burnt from the sun and you can choose the best you can. I chose, and I realise I can be irritating: to laugh, muck about, cook pancakes, have a fabulous birthday party (remember those light up balloons!), swim, wash up, wash up wash up wash up. I was happy. So happy.
I thought about belief. I don't believe. I didn't think I believed anything. But I realise I believe you should be kind. That you should be kind to all. That you should always do unto others as you would do for yourself. That you should live with joy. I would run for miles to catch a plastic bag blowing in the wind. I think I realised with some doubt that central to the core of me was inherited Christian beliefs.

There were many families camping together. Each showed their beliefs in their actions. I'm just trying this out:
The medieval family ( I was thinking of calling them feudal but I think medieval works, somehow it seems kinder and I don't want to be unkind) believe in themselves above and beyond all others. Their family is a fortress wall. Their commitment is only to themselves, they don't care how others work on their behalf, they feed themselves, make arrangements for themselves but eat greedily from what others provide. Others do not exist as they do and they would fight them if they did. ' I don't react well to being told what to do, and don't do it.' The breath of that sentence still warm as a pan of sausages is indicated, 'could you turn those while I ............'
The Capitalist Family. Buy and negotiate their position. They work for the camp in payment for or in lieu of benefit. There is sometimes little enjoyment to their contribution but it is done to keep the currency of effort going.

from there the combinations are varied:
capitalist/christian possibly the most succesful combination of self and selfless. After all Christianity has a strong tradition of martyrs.

All of this is just an attempt to explain something, and I feel I could be foolish, or arrogant or plain stupid to try but it seemed really simple at the time. The more you do with joy and enjoyment and love the more you enjoy.
Blimey! I am writing this but I never expected it, I might not agree with it later even, but I think it is worth a try. Something needs to be said. How we live doesn't seem quite right.

And exexhdh got it that week and turned up ready and present to take part. He didn't have a back pocket of doubt or two fingered meaness behind my back he just took part with love and joy.

I am not explaining a happy ending exactly just an observation of how that time was lived.

At the end. Packing up. Oh, oh a slow and labourious process, folding a natty kitchen unit into a flat bag, cleaning out tents of mud and grass fluff, unravelling kites, packing and packing. I kept going all day in the heat. The arranged deal with two young sons and exexhdh was that we would pack up, swim in the sea, eat pizza and play cricket and walk to the nearby old church. Something for everybody and guess which one I chose. But all of it was shortened and snipped at the edges and eldest son suggested in his unswerving and sometimes unnerving logic that if he and youngest went and got the pizza ( there is a van in the farm yard) then there would be more time for cricket) and I gave them the money to go. When the eldest came back shouting 'come come' saying the youngest had hurt himself jumping off a hay bale I said fucking hell ( so rare my swearing of any sort these days and this was extreme by fear and guilt that I had let them go) and ran top speed terrified that my keeness to shave time had worn thin my own normal stingent son safety rules and caused catastophe, the new (and I overheard them to be christian or certainly they went to Greenbelt, so I imagine you would have to be christian) families moving into the plot we were leaving looked horrified, their young babies crawling in the earth. When I returned carrying the youngest, his graze more a whisper of white dragged skin not even pinked with blood, I felt their disapproval of this lax, swearing mum. I said, relentlessly cheerful, relentlessly friendly, I expect you will cheer when we have finally gone.

Finally, a dip in the sea, pizza eaten, cricket played, car packed, we drove off, no time for the church for it was nearly dark. There was no cheer, just a watery wave, but the church bells rang out, unexpectedly, beautifully, across the fields.