Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

She convinced me that camping would be fun, away from the rat race of town and out in nature without a care in the world.

I was never one for roughing it, afraid of things biting me, crawling on me and generally being in my face when I’d prefer they weren’t.

She had the perfect place she said, away in the mountains, quiet and peaceful.

On that score she was right. It was certainly quiet, in fact at one stage I thought the silence would kill me and then it got dark and the night creatures starting doing what they do best, making a lot of noise.

She organised the tent, the sleeping bags and dinner and before long we were snuggled together reading to get some sleep. I wondered how I might sleep in conditions that were as foreign to me, as I could ever have imagined.

She told…