What an interesting chat we had this weekend. It was about where you draw the line with this glamping malarky between camping and hotels.
We’ve said it a million times. This is not a hotel but it is quite boutique. Nor is it a campsite but there’s a lot of camping in it.
And you have to have a camper’s mentality to get it.
It all boils down to kettles – if you’ll pardon the pun – Storm kettles to be precise. The ones you put dry sticks in to make hot water. And that’s when it got interesting…
“We just didn’t get it on the first night,” said our guest, “We couldn’t work out why boiling water couldn’t just be done with an electric kettle. Why did everything have to be so different to how it is at home?
“Then on the second day we thought we’d got it. It all seemed to work ok so we thought it was fine. We were managing. Fine.
“But today was different. Today We really got it. Today it was like all these things we had started to do were a bit more normal. Not only did the dome heated more easily, but the hot water for the showers was simplicity itself and boiling water in the storm kettle was effortless. It had all become, well, normal. Instead of rushing around and comparing everything to how we ‘normally’ did everything at home we sat down and just enjoyed it.
“And then, in the middle of all our chatter, a single bird on a tree, way above us, started chirruping. It sang so loudly we couldn’t hear ourselves speak. So we stopped. And we listened. That has never happened to me before in my life. Ever. To be drowned out by a single bird.
“And that’s when we got it. That was the whole point. We’d stopped. Stopped comparing things to how we thought they should be, to our version of normality, and we were comfortable again. But in a different way to before. Not so controlling and not so demanding. We were working with something rather than having it work for us. And that ‘something’ was a deeply human feeling that in our busy lives we keep buried and don’t ever let out. Above all we realised we soooo hadn’t got it before. It was extraordinary. A complete revelation.
“But we nearly didn’t get there. We nearly missed it. I wonder if some people come here and go home before it hits them. Maybe they get it in the car on the way home.
“I suddenly realised that you have to go through this process of de-familiarising yourself with your normal life so that you can stop. Even if only for a few hours. Or even minutes.
“Now I see myself slightly differently. I can look a bit at the people around me slightly differently. And now I’m going home.
Slightly different.”