And finally, for dessert....

And just when you thought a girl has had enough holidays, she takes off for another couple of days. I like to think of it as a pudding holiday, if you will.

I joined the family of four-boys-aged-six-and-under for a spot of camping. Or, I should say, as they terrorised the camping ground. It was quite magnificent. The boys are six, four, three and then there's the Miniature Drunk. He's just over a year old and has only recently discovered what his legs can do, so kept us entertained stumbling about the place like a giggling buffoon while we did our best to stop him from eating things with the equivalent nutritional value to a cigarette butt. He also came in handy when we were playing beach cricket. We had one wicket and the other wicket was where ever Miniature Drunk was. It was a great addition to the game. I think NZ Cricket should adopt it, it would make test matches a hell of a lot more fun to watch.

When you think about it, camping is a strange thing to do. It's like devolving (is that the opposite to evolving?). What would our great-great-great-great-great grandparents' think of the fact that we have got to a point when we would actively chose to make life a lot more difficult for ourselves and then call it a holiday.

'Why would anyone go camping?' Laughed Mother-of as we lugged an enormous plastic bin full of dirty dishes to the kitchen facility on the other side of the camping ground to stand in line to wait for a sink to become free so we could then wash our arsenal of dishes.

Thinking seems to be back to front when camping. I'm more likely to fly to the moon than walk down the street in my jim jams, yet I will happily trek about five hundred metres passed total strangers in my jammies to get to the shower block (to stand in line to wait to pay $2 for four minutes worth of shower).

Yesterday morning I stumbled out of my tent, bleary eyed, looking like the wreck of the Hesperus (you could have probably found a bird nesting in my hair) to discover the three-year-old was standing outside my tent. He looked up me and with a very serious face said, 'You're bootifwul, Katelastnamewithalisp.'

My wee heart melted.

Oh, how I love camping.