Jonathan Freedland begins his piece on camping thus:
If I promise not to show you my holiday snaps, could I be allowed to mention one moment from my vacation, just completed? It was late evening, already dark, on a camp site in the Cevennes national park in France. I had joined a queue of fellow campers, when I caught the eye of one man, Dutch I think, clutching his roll of toilet paper, waiting to use one of the site's two non-flush lavatories (a sign urged us to put paper in the accompanying box, rather than risk blocking the septic tank). His expression, part amused, part plaintive, part weary member of the international fraternity of dads said: "I have a BMW parked just down the hill. I'm not short of money. I could have afforded a hotel. Why am I here?"
If I'd been there - an impossible concept, since almost nothing on earth would drag me anywhere near a camp site again - I like to think I would have gone up to him and said, simply: God alone knows why.
