This Is Why We Have Weekends

We spent this last weekend camping in Derbyshire with our friends from Leeds and it was completely glorious. I am still floating.

We drove up after school and work on Friday night, arriving at about 9.30pm with just - just! - enough daylight left to put the tent up. It was a mad rush and a nightmare journey which included us having to turn back due to a road closure and pull over on the hard shoulder because something was flapping out of the top box on the car roof. But Saturday morning dawned bright and warm, just as you'd want it too, and we ate breakfast outside. With our friends, all 28 of us embarked on a walk in the countryside surrounding the campsite. After a few hours some of us peeled off and went back for lunch, others stayed and walked longer. I spent the afternoon lazing around in a meadow with magazines and drinks, chatting about this and that. It was too hot to work on the crochet I'd brought with me. As the sun dropped, fires were lit and more bottles opened. Someone had the good sense to bring Pimms. The children who'd been largely absent and feral for most of the day, coming back only for food, returned filthy and suntanned, ready to toast marshmallows. 

There was a perfect moment when the sun was setting, when the atmosphere was convival and easy and warm, which I wanted to go on for ever.  One of those rare and magical moments where time is suspended. Happy children, happy adults. Food, drink, warmth, laughter, friendship. This is why we have weekends. And fire pits.

Of course it rained on Sunday morning and so we had to pack up a damp tent, and the journey home was long, and the washing mountain is huge, and we are all very tired. And all the jobs I would've done over the weekend didn't get done, so I'm playing catch up there as well. But was it worth it, just to sit in that meadow with our friends for a few hours? Absolutely.

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Doesn't my crocheted blanket look at home in that tent? I was glad of it's warmth this weekend for, while days were largely sunny, the nights were still cool. It's too nice to be folded on the back of a chair, it needs to go on my bed and so, as some of you suggested, I'm going to buy some more yarn and crochet some more rounds on the border. But not any time soon, because it looks like warm weather is coming. YAY!  (Shh, don't say it out loud, it'll get scared and run away and normal British Summer will resume.) It's time to get out the paddling pool.