English: Camber Sands (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“I think I’ve found it!” she cried exultantly. When my wife looks for kind of trip or holiday, it becomes an all consuming quest. She sits with the laptop for hours searching for exactly the right deal.

The object of this particular quest was a long weekend break in order to get away from it all after sustaining a nasty injury at work.

“Great! Where are we going?”

“Camber Sands.”

My heart sank. I’d been to Camber Sands a few times. The first was on a family holiday. Just before the halfway point in the holiday, myself and my brother nagged mum and dad so much, they allowed us to go home early on the train.

Subsequent visits were for a games convention. The South coast of England in January is not a very hospitable place, particularly if your accommodation is made of a material flimsier than cardboard. One year, I slept in my car. At least it had a heater that worked.

So I didn’t have high hopes for the upcoming trip. Julie’s disabled mother came with us so we put in a special request to be on the ground floor close to the main centre. When we arrived, our chalet allocation was on the other side of the park and on the first floor.

We complained and were given a different chalet, still on the other side of the park, but at least it was on the ground floor. We opened the door, to be hit by a waft of stench and a sea of filth. Back we went and swapped again. The third chalet had an ant infestation.

We agreed that I should go back to the centre this time. Julie had a murderous look in her eye, so if she went, our new accommodation would probably be at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Part of me thought the comfort level might improve.

After explaining the problem, the lady behind the counter told me with a smile on her face that I was in the wrong place. I needed to report the problem to the estates hut on the other side of the camp. Off I trudged and joined the long queue outside the aforementioned hut.

As we got closer to the front of the queue, I leaned over to see what was happening. There was a man behind the desk with an enormous ledger. There was a big list of chalet numbers and against every single one appeared the word “ants”. I looked behind me. About 50 people were in the queue

Eventually, someone turned up with a canister of ant powder. We had to laugh. There was probably one grain of ant powder for every ant in the chalet!

We still had a good time, but I am never, ever going there again!

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