How anal are you about your tent and were you a guide?

[WhereTheWildThingsWere]

Have realised am hopelessly anal while camping which is odd as house is a tip very lived in.

When pitching all guys must be in a perfect line, when striking all guys must be tied 'just so'.

Inside the tent it's very much 'a place for everything and eveything in its place'.

Tent is swept constantly.

The beds are made with millitary precision as soon as we are all out of them.

Everything is generally folded/squared/clean.

At the end of this weekends camping I watched a couple saying 'sod it' and just stuffing their unbagged tent into the boot and throwing clothes/pots/toys/boxes on top.

It wasn't even raining.

I looked like this -->

I was a guide, I had discipline whist under canvas literally hammered into me, on arrival at a camp site we had to spend a good amost of times fashioning thinds from poles with plenty of square lashing before there was any chance of rest of refreshment.

Is Baden-Powell to blame? How do you run your tent?

Ohh I fondly remember my guide camping days and spending hours building things with wood and string and sitting on a plastic bag to eat my meals but I have to confess I managed to 'forget' my camp dress everytime .

Then I got invited on a boys brigade camp and they had proper electric ovens, tables and benches and hot showers. Think that turned my head as I'm a campervan owner now

Anal........Yes

Guide.......Yes, (and many years as a Guider to boot)

Mind you if you think the guides are bad you should meet the Air cadets!

Ha, I got the Auntie Monica reference straight away, it was my favourite song in Brownies.

I'm a bit up on the safeguarding stuff, been on recent training, it's one of those things I wouldn't have thought about previously, advertising times and locations.

i'm a queen's guide and i'm pretty strict about some stuff when camping.. am always saying to DH 'when we come back in the dark you'll thank me' or 'if it's raining in the morning you'll be glad we did the fireshelter tonight' and other similar things...

but i will chuck the went tent in an ikea bag at the end of the weekend.. cause no point in folding it if you're going to get it out and dry it at home anyway..

and am ing about the guy ropes.. i always insist ours are tied but the people next to us at a festival accused us of having a brand new tent because they were tied... DH who has only ever camped with me was bemused as he thought everybody tied their guy ropes up at the end of a weekend (or maybe i told him that)

This thread has made me realise how I should really be stripped of my Queen's guide. Ever since I left the guides I have taken pleasure in not making a bedding roll, or having to have everything off the floor of the tent daily, wrapped in groundsheets precariously balanced on a home-hewn bedding rack. I was quite jealous as a guide visiting my brother at scout camp, it was the afternoon and they were all mooching around in sleeping bags in tents with THE GROUNDSHEETS STILL DOWN. (how would the grass breathe? would the tent disintegrate? And they didn't have to wear everything in the same borying colour either). I also love lightweight easy tents that don't need a whole patrol to put up and down. And you don't actually need to put up your guy ropes the normal way, and then go back and storm lash them, just in case. Etc.
It's just not important....

[Sneaks off the anal ex-guide thread, never to return]

i get very at DH (TAs not scouting stock) who calls guy ropes guide ropes aarrrggghghgh!

Just having a giggle to myself about Auntie Monica, our guides love that song but we have ditched the muff swinging bit.

And as for camp dresses, we used to call them rent-a-tents!!
I was about the lankiest skinniest kid around and by the time I had my belt on with dangling pen knife and whistle I just looked worse than dreadful.

Fortunatly my mother was crap at remembering to take photos of us when we were kids .

Some bits of guiding are gone and best forgotten, I can't imagine GGuk would have survivied if we had tried to cram todays teens into camp dresses!!

Cross posted with auntie, YES that makes me really mad too.

Sadly my DP now does it on purpose cos he knows it winds me up, one day he will be found strangled by a sodding "guide rope"

dontcallmebaby I can see that it might not be wise to put days and times down now you come to mention it. But there isn't even a contact number to find out more.

Maybe it's an initiative test...

...which I've failed!

Funny thing is I have an Auntie, an Auntie Monica...

God I could amuse myself with you talkname for quite some time

and.....i've just been out shopping.

Anal: very

Guide: yes, and a St Johsn Cadet (they sued to hold awards at their annual camp for best kept tent with most gadgets etc- still remember the eyar we finally beat our main rivals LMAO)

And let me tell you welly sticks were nowt on us Cadets! We got more points for more gadgets so we had mug sticks, plate racks, dishtowel dryers, sponge holders......... the area outside the tent was such a H&S risk due to prominentb sticky spikes that we also carried bright coloured tape to fence it off PMAAO! (PissingMyAnalArseOff- now that'd be a good user name hmmmm)

Brownie leader and occasional camper here. I no longer bother to lash together a draining board out of sticks, but I Know That I Could.

guide - no.
camping-generated need for extreme tidiness? hell yes. its the small space and potential for mud to spread...

DH drives me crackers by not being a tidy camper. i almost fell out with a friend i went to Glastonbury with for leaving mess around the tents.

MNers I've had a tough day and this has made me smile so thank you. YES i am one of you! Yes I was a guide and loved the whole camping thing. Had forgotton about welly boot sticks but shall instigate this new camping protocol en famille next week. Feel that world peace is achieveable once one's tent is in order. X

silly thing is DH was a scout, and he is the messy camp person and i constantly pick up after him. it's like going through nesting all over again...

PMSL at this thread! I thought it was me just being anal when camping I never thought it could be down to my long gone GG days!!

I am particulary anal about the guy ropes and everything having its place in the tent. However if you came into my house that is an entirely different matter!

DD2 will be taking her Brownie promise in a couple of weeks. It takes me back..........

Rainbow and Brownie Guider here, I also go and help local guide unit on international camp, and we did make washing stands!

very anal when camping with my family, but I am at home anyway.

DD was in my Rainbow unit and is now in my Brownie unit, and we are going on Brownie Pack holiday in September! We can't wait!

In didn't realise so many MNers where guiders!

I'm a Woodie and I can assure you that the tautness and straightness of my guyropes are SECOND TO NONE!

Mind when you've spent as many anarchic weekends wildcamping in the Peak District as I have you soon learn to appreciate the value of pegging the flimsy canvas structure you intend to sleep in quite firmly to the ground.