I’m used to being woken up multiple times a night these days but on Saturday I was awoken three times and Jemima wasn’t the reason.

The first was in a shower of vomit.

The second was by an intruder.

The third was with an apology note from my son.

Tom was due to be away golfing with friends over the weekend so I thought I’d take Harry away for the night and treat Jemima to her first camping trip! I was a little dubious about how she’d cope and had visions of myself sweaty-browed, fighting with tent poles, juggling a baby and driving home the following morning muttering, ‘never ever again’ under my breath. The latter definitely happened but the initial part of our first camping excursion together went far better than expected.

We start this story in a field in deepest Somerset looking across towards the Glastonbury Tor surrounded by sheep fields on an off-grid campsite amidst the late afternoon sunshine. No electricity, no caravans, no motorhomes, no paths evens. Perfect. It was a ‘pitch up wherever you fancy, text us when you leave’ situation. I love an unfussy campsite, a place that relies on the vista and silence for good reviews. It’s a confident business plan and it usually works. This was no different.

The lady who runs it drove across the meadow to welcome me, we had a nice chat about the place and she offered me a campfire for £10 including a bag of logs and kindling. I said I’d love one but didn’t have a lighter so she shouted over to a gentleman who was working on the field to give us his and we were away. Left in peace, £27 spent it total on an idyllic campsite, a campfire and everything to make a blaze. Just before the owner left she said, as she probably did to everyone, ‘there are no rules here, have a lovely time, there’s just no loud music if that’s ok.’ Fine with me!

Our evening was perfect, we ate burgers, played I-spy and eventually I just watched my gorgeous kids enjoying the great outdoors. Harry went bug hunting, Jemima watched the birds on the fence, Gilbert ate some grass and threw up - dogs will be dogs!! It was so peaceful. I planted my toes firmly in the grass whilst feeding Jemima and read Raynor Winn’s latest novel feeling something like the earth mother I’ll never be but enjoying the novelty all the same. Jemima eventually fell asleep and I popped her down in her bassinet in the tent and sat with Harry chatting quietly over the campfire watching the sun set. Gilbert’s nose on my knee. All was right with the world, Tom sent me a photo of the steak he’d ordered which was cooked to his liking (a rare occurrence - he likes it basically raw and restaurants usually overcook it), I sent photos of the kids camping to grandparents and relaxed in a way I haven’t for a long time.

Roll on 10pm. Harry and I were just watching the embers of the fire die down to nothing, discussing birds we’ve caught on my Merlin app across the evening. When we hear shouting and a drunken couple fall into the campsite and pitch up 30 feet away. Goodness knows how they got there, it’s a mystery, this campsite was seriously remote and they were battered. But who am I to judge, they’re entitled to their fun. Or so I thought…

Now. For reference and any of my friends will tell you, if you get into a ‘bit of a pickle’ I’m the person that’ll tell you not to worry about it the next morning when you’re worried you might have been a bit drunk and made a fool of yourself. I’m the stranger to offer you a bottle of water and have a chat with you in the loo if your night didn’t go to plan. I really am. However. Me with my small children? On my own? My loyalties lie with them and this got very weird.

By 11pm, not only were they playing loud music (Kings of Leon, not a bad choice, just wasn’t my preference noise-wise given the timing), but the conversation became UNHINGED.

*Loudly*:

“You are still gonna f*ck me aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Course!”

“I’m on my period though?”

“Yeah I’ll f*ck you anyway.”

“We can throw away the sleeping bag after.”

“Yeah, f*ck it. You can do me up the *rse if you like?”

“Let’s do that. Burn the whole f*cking tent babe.”

….

I’m sat 30 feet away with my children. Hoping beyond hope that Harry hadn’t heard it but they were full on; loud music, shouting and swearing, keep the engine running, throw our rubbish on the floor - people. I hated them. I texted my mum, ‘should I approach these idiots?’ And she told me not to, best not get into ‘it’ with strangers. Fine. Undoubtedly sensible advice. But shortly followed all the adults acts they’d discussed, loudly. And I mean really, really loudly. It wasn’t erotic, it sounded horrible actually. I remember at university we had a fox that used to get into the garden and scream when it couldn’t get into our bins, it was genuinely cross and desperate for food so it cried like a child. THIS was similar, almost disturbing. The howling alone might have given me cause for concern but the frequent yells of ‘f*ck me harder’ coming from the female participant in this bizarre exchange left me feeling less worried and more annoyed with the pair.

Now you won’t believe this but it’s true. Halfway through ‘the act’, I hear a phone ring. His phone. And worst of all, he only blinking answers it!! And weirder still, it’s either on loud speaker or it’s a video call?! I know this because I can hear the other person talking.

The conversation is futile. Clearly a friend and it’s a ‘hey how are you? Yeah good you?’ chat about where the other is and whether they’re having a good Saturday night. It doesn’t last long but it’s followed, and not unreasonably in my opinion, with a ‘why the f*ck did the you answer the phone?!’ retort. Then comes the crying, screaming, shouting and general loud drunken argument that wouldn’t be out of place on an Eastenders Christmas Special. I really really hate these two by this point but eventually they stop fighting and fall asleep. Just after half midnight I hear a final, ‘f* k you’ and they go quiet. I can sleep and I do.

1am: I hear a groan and suddenly I’m wet.

Another groan and everything around me is wet.

Another groan and someone is sitting on my knees vomiting on my actual face.

Harry.

The less said about this, the better. He has a strange neuroses about becoming dehydrated when we’re away from home (just ask his grandparents) and will drink water excessively before bed, then be horribly, dreadfully sick. I should have seen it coming but I didn’t. And now I am lying in a pool of vomit. I turn to Jemima who is drenched, Harry also covered and even the dog is coated. Horrific. If you’ve seen the last episode of the inbetweeners then that’s what happened but it was less comical, more awful and less brightly lit. I staggered out onto the grass in a daze after fighting with the zip and just thought, what on earth do I do here? I don’t know if it was the smell or the fact I had a baby with me - I decided we simply couldn’t stay.

I stripped Jemima (who was fast asleep), popped her in her car seat and began the process of taking down a tent, a bbq, disconnecting gas bottles, a camping table with storage underneath containing all our food, camping chairs, and all the other paraphernalia - with the help of Harry IN THE DARK, in relative silence. The dog ran off, obviously. I couldn’t call him back because I didn’t want to wake the nearby campers who had undoubtedly only just got to sleep themselves after the Only Fans duo had f*cked themselves to sleep. It was hell. My car was caked in sick, my kids and my dog were also caked in sick and everything was just rammed hopelessly into the back of my car.

It was nearly 1.30 in the morning by this point, I had no real idea of where we were, my phone had dead after using the torch to dissemble our sleeping arrangements and I figured we just needed to get somewhere with signal to take stock. I turned onto an A-road and immediately nearly died. 2 boy racers, I can only assume drunk-driving were playing cat and mouse having a side-by-side race at breakneck speed towards me. I pulled out onto a clear road, rounded the first corner and there they were. The one on the wrong side of the road got in front of the other within actual feet of me! I heard a squeal of tires, the roar of an engine and they were gone. It was a total blur and left me shell-shocked, dazed, having had to emergency stop and wondering whether we should have just spent the night snorkelling in vomit. What was I doing here?!

I carried on, slightly tearful and drove at 40mph along the lanes until we hit the M5. It was deserted and I finally relaxed. I knew where I was going, I knew we’d all be home soon so I sat in the slow lane at 75mph and took some deep breaths (of sick-stenched air). Suddenly out of nowhere I see some headlights on full-beam coming up behind me so fast, it was almost biblical. A white van. This person, at 2am, chose to drive behind me so close that I could no longer see his headlights because they’d disappeared under my bumper. Now, I have recently upgraded my car from a 3 door Fiat 500 to a black 4x4. I don’t know if this guy wanted ‘to play’ in Tom’s words or what but he suddenly undertook me on the HARD SHOULDER! An odd move on a deserted motorway and certainly one which would catch the attention of an unmarked police car had one witnessed it but sadly, I was the only other car on the road. He then attempted to play cat and mouse with me. For 27 miles. This lunatic was trying to drive me off the road, I’m not kidding and I don’t exaggerate for effect, our wing mirrors touched at 80mph. I tried my best to slow down, to let the nutter past, or speed up and get ahead of them - nothing worked, he was hellbent on ‘playing’. Whatever that means. I have no idea if it was driven by a man, I’m perhaps wrongly assuming but I couldn’t see the driver and they couldn’t have seen me. Little did he know, I wasn’t some cool young guy in a black 4x4 with nothing better to do, he was frightening a frazzled mother covered in sick with 2 young children in the car. I tried my best to put some distance between myself and Colin McRae by breaking quite suddenly and I hear a crash, slide, a scream and a suffocating sound. Something in my hastily packed car, had fallen onto Jemima and she couldn’t breathe. It was the ground sheet of the tent and we think - the cool bag on top. Nutcase in a van also breaks and I look on the sat nav to see it’s 3 miles until the next turning… I was genuinely frightened that if I pulled into the hard shoulder, this person would reverse into us and who would be there to help us? We hadn’t seen another car for miles except the odd lorry and none were about.

This might have been a panicked and terrible decision but I had seconds to make it so I told Harry to unbuckle his seatbelt and help Jemima. Unsafe? Sure. Desperate? Definitely. He pulled whatever it was that was obstructing her breathing into the front and away from her face giving me even less visibility, an even stronger stench to deal with but this was nothing because Jemima was fine and we didn’t have far to go. A few minutes later, I saw that we had less than a mile until our turn off the motorway so I ignored all Highway Code recommendations and drove as fast as I could before sharply turning without indicating across the hashed lines and ducking off the M5 to give ‘our friend in the white van’ absolutely no chance of following. It worked. He’d gone ahead and to where I don’t care.

Frazzled and frayed I drove slowly home and pulled up outside our house, thank goodness. After wretching into the flowerpot on the way inside (the smell of the car), I told Harry to get straight to bed and took Jemima upstairs into our room, home at last.

Unfortunately, dear reader, our torrid tale does not end there. I wish it did. Jemima, perhaps sensing the adrenaline coursing through my veins, decided quite reasonably, that this was not the time for sleep. She lay next to me attempting her best Irish dancing (I assume, the legs were thrashing) and what could have been a wonderful aria vocally (again, not sure, not my area but she was trying many interesting vocal experiments)… so it was nearly 4am before she finally latched on and thought about sleep.

Again, dear reader, sadly this still isn’t the end of an awful night. It should have been. I reckoned I’d been asleep for less than half an hour, my fitful dreams awash with violent naked people throwing pieces of burning quilt in my direction but I was stuck in wet mud and couldn’t move out the way and Jemima was sinking but I couldn’t reach her - when I heard the front door open. The dog didn’t bark and I thought I’d imagined it. I lay there, thinking what a silly goose I must be, of course no one was in the house! I was tired and being mad. But then I heard footsteps downstairs. Time does a very strange thing in these circumstances, what was probably 10 seconds, felt like half an hour. Was there someone in the house? Do I have a weapon? Is Harry going to get up? What if he does? What time is it? Did I lock the front door? Hopefully this is a chancer and not an armed burglar? What do I own that costs money? Are they after my car? They can have the bl**dy thing, it stinks of sick! And WHY THE F*CK isn’t the dog barking?

A sudden, sickening realisation came over me. Have I left the poor thing IN the car?! Is that why he’s not barking? I was in such a daze as I came through the front door, did I actually forget to pop the boot and let poor Gilbert out? I couldn’t remember. I tried but I couldn’t remember. I heard the person try a door downstairs and still no barking, so I KNOW at this point - that poor Labrador is still in the car. He woofs if Tom drops a pen in the office upstairs and we’re sat in the living room downstairs. Oh. My. Gosh. He IS my alarm. He makes me feel safe and he’s not even in the house! I must have left him in the car and forgotten to lock the front door.

This person very, very slowly ascends the stairs. I didn’t know what to do. My thought process, if you’re interested, was this; I don’t have a weapon, I have a baby with my actual nipple in her mouth! If I jump up, she’ll cry. And then what? It’s obvious we’re awake and this person might be armed and panic. If I play ‘dead’ then there’s a chance, this person might come in, see I’m no threat and just take whatever the heck they want and go. In the few seconds that lapsed between me hearing the front door and me hearing this person at the top of the stairs - I opted (against all prior instincts) to play dead. And of course, the bedroom door opened. Slowly. I knew this wasn’t Tom. Tom crashes around, bursts through doors, marches purposefully up stairs - I’ve lived with him for nearly 12 years. We’ve had approximately 20 days apart in that time (rough guess), I know every sound he makes without being able to describe it - it’s just something I know. I know the sun rises at 5ish and it’s still dark so this is before 5. This person is a stranger. I watch the door slowly open and being near enough clinically blind without my lenses in, I know I can’t really do anything. A head moves round the door and just stays there. Through the darkness, I can just about make out the shape of a person watching me and aware that they must be able to see myself and Jemima. What feels like minutes pass and then the door opens a little further. This person walks into the room really slowly and stands next to the bed. Then Tom whispers, ‘what the f*ck are you doing here?!’ I’m so relieved I just whimper and cry. Tom = confused. I babble something about the dog, Tom tells me he’s asleep on the sofa. I tell him about the sick. Tom says I stink of it. I ask what he’s doing. He says he woke up early and thought he’d drive back. He tells me he’s going to let me sleep and retreats to the sofa with Gilbert. I lie there in our bed with vomit soaked hair and a sleeping baby hoping I’ll sleep but cannot. What a night I’ve just had. I must have drifted off at some point because I next wake to a door bursting open (Tom’s usual style) and Harry silently handing me a piece of paper saying he’s very sorry he ruined the camping trip. I tell him I wasn’t cross with him, I was cross with the situation. We spent most of Sunday unpacking the night before and then made a start on unpacking the hellish jumble in my car. The inner lining of the tent had to be thrown away, there was sick in the zips and in my haste to heave the thing off the ground and get moving - I’d torn it. The sleeping bags had to be washed four times EACH (they’re huge) and my car, well let’s not talk about it.. It wasn’t the idyllic night under canvas I’d envisioned to put it mildly.

But on the positive side, Jemima was good as gold and I do think camping with a baby isn’t something to be frightened of trying again. The fresh air made her sleep so deeply she barely stirred throughout all the horrors of the night, of which there were plenty. I apologise for all the swearing in this account of our trip, it felt justified as I typed it up, it really did. I don’t know what the takeaway point here should be, it feels as though there ought to be one, that I’d have some wonderful piece of advice to save someone from going through a similar experience but I’ve racked my brains and I’m not sure there is. It was largely out of my control and unfortunate. I will try camping again (once I’ve purchased another tent) and I’m sure it’ll be better. Well, it can’t be much worse can it?!