I WENT camping a while ago.

It wasn’t deliberate camping, you understand – it was just that there weren’t any hotels handy where we were.

Anyway, the experience reminded me that I am an expert on the subject, and I feel it’s my duty to pass on that expertise.

These nuggets of information are not intended for those who go camping often or voluntarily. Instead they are intended for civilians who are tempted to give it a shot or don’t fancy sleeping in a public park should no conventional accommodation be available.

You must begin by purchasing some camping magazines and/or visiting some camping websites.

These are filled with images of happy families in and around pristine tents on pristine campsites. Some will be carrying towels over their forearms as they head to or from gleaming bathroom and shower blocks. There will be enticing maps of campsites nationwide, showing you the endless possibilities that await.

You must study these images carefully, as they will anaesthetise you – the civilian camper – to realities which might otherwise tempt you not to proceed to the tent shop.

On arriving at the tent shop, you must choose your tent. This can be done according to the size of your family, to your aesthetic tastes or to your preference as to internal layout. However, the main concern of the civilian camper should be that the tent, when disassembled, can be folded away into its own relatively small holdall. After all, you don’t want it getting in the way during the 15 years or so it’s going to sit, unused, in the cupboard under the stairs after its first outing.

On the way back home, stop off at the off-licence for some booze and at the chemist’s for some heavy duty pain medication – the heaviest you can get without a prescription should do the trick, and you might want to throw in some anti-inflammatories, too. You’re not going to be using them at the same time, obviously, but I’ll get to the specifics presently.

Having selected your tent and got it home, locate the instruction book in the holdall and chuck it in the recycling, as it’s about as much use as a mineral water franchise during a rabies epidemic.

Do not be tempted to practice putting up your tent in the back garden prior to setting out. You’re going to have a row with your nearest and dearest at the camping venue whatever happens, so there’s no point in having a warm-up row at home first.

Ensure that before leaving the house you have a young person with you, as it is they who will end up erecting the tent. Try to avoid selecting a person in their teens, as they may turn out to be annoyingly smug and exasperated.

You should aim instead to recruit a slightly older young person, perhaps in their twenties, as by this age any smugness or exasperation will have gone. Instead there will be kindliness and affectionate pity when they see you peering in bewilderment at a tangle of pegs and poles like a baboon in the cockpit of an F-16.

When it comes to sleeping surfaces for your camping trip, you might wish to purchase an inflatable mattress or the best foam one you can afford, perhaps something that can be rolled up tightly for ease of transportation.

Alternatively, you might want to buy a hessian sack of builder’s rubble and sleep on that, for all the good either of the above will do you.

This is where the booze you bought on the way back from getting your tent comes in handy, as if you drink it fast enough before retiring you should be out for the count until you wake and curse the dawn chorus at 5am or so.

Then it’s time to take your painkillers and anti-inflammatories.

  • WITH yet another stuck lorry having been hauled out from under the Wootton Bassett Road Bridge, I think it’s time to be more creative with the warning system.

I thought at first of a big frame about 500 feet before the bridge, strung at the appropriate height with the sort of cables you see on the decks of aircraft carriers.

Unfortunately such a solution, although having the potential to become a comedy tourist attraction, might be a wee bit dangerous.

Maybe we could use a great big iron bell on a similar frame instead, hung so as to be out of the way of trucks’ cabs but just right for putting expensive dents in trailers, making an amusing noise and preventing the public from suffering for other people’s mistakes.

  • THE superb Museum of Computing in Theatre Square, one of Swindon’s less well-known gems, has staged a few live video game re-enactments in its time.

Usually held in the town centre’s pedestrianised areas, they’ve included Pacman with real people dressed as the title character and villainous ghosts.

One classic game I don’t think they’ve ever tried to replicate, though, is Frogger, in which an intrepid amphibian attempts to cross a road as traffic whizzes by.

I’m glad about that, as trying to re-enact it might be not only frightening for all concerned but also positively dangerous.

And besides, whoever came up with the current traffic arrangements at Regent Circus has already beaten ’em to it...

  • I SEE Christopher ‘Mr Woodz’ Baines faces deportation to serve his five years for scamming customers at his Swindon furniture shop.

You’ll recall that he was given bail in this country in spite of being a serial crook, and promptly fled across the Atlantic to spread more misery in the US and Canada.

If anybody tasked with returning him to Britain happens to be reading this, perhaps they could do us all the favour of not letting him go this time – not even if he promises, cross his heart and hope to die, never to run away again.