{"id":23897,"date":"2015-01-04T01:00:22","date_gmt":"2015-01-04T06:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23897"},"modified":"2014-12-30T16:32:13","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T21:32:13","slug":"qotd-camping-in-the-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/01\/04\/qotd-camping-in-the-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Camping in the rain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camping out in rainy weather is not pleasant.<\/p>\n

It is evening. You are wet through, and there is a good two inches of water in the boat, and all the things are damp. You find a place on the banks that is not quite so puddly as other places you have seen, and you land and lug out the tent, and two of you proceed to fix it.<\/p>\n

It is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles down on you, and clings round your head and makes you mad. The rain is pouring steadily down all the time. It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather: in wet, the task becomes herculean. Instead of helping you, it seems to you that the other man is simply playing the fool. Just as you get your side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end, and spoils it all.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere! what are you up to?\u201d you call out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you up to?\u201d he retorts; \u201cleggo, can\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t pull it; you\u2019ve got it all wrong, you stupid ass!\u201d you shout.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I haven\u2019t,\u201d he yells back; \u201clet go your side!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell you you\u2019ve got it all wrong!\u201d you roar, wishing that you could get at him; and you give your ropes a lug that pulls all his pegs out.<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, the bally idiot!\u201d you hear him mutter to himself; and then comes a savage haul, and away goes your side. You lay down the mallet and start to go round and tell him what you think about the whole business, and, at the same time, he starts round in the same direction to come and explain his views to you. And you follow each other round and round, swearing at one another, until the tent tumbles down in a heap, and leaves you looking at each other across its ruins, when you both indignantly exclaim, in the same breath:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere you are! what did I tell you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the third man, who has been baling out the boat, and who has spilled the water down his sleeve, and has been cursing away to himself steadily for the last ten minutes, wants to know what the thundering blazes you\u2019re playing at, and why the blarmed tent isn\u2019t up yet.<\/p>\n

At last, somehow or other, it does get up, and you land the things. It is hopeless attempting to make a wood fire, so you light the methylated spirit stove, and crowd round that.<\/p>\n

Rainwater is the chief article of diet at supper. The bread is two-thirds rainwater, the beefsteak-pie is exceedingly rich in it, and the jam, and the butter, and the salt, and the coffee have all combined with it to make soup.<\/p>\n

After supper, you find your tobacco is damp, and you cannot smoke. Luckily you have a bottle of the stuff that cheers and inebriates, if taken in proper quantity, and this restores to you sufficient interest in life to induce you to go to bed.<\/p>\n

There you dream that an elephant has suddenly sat down on your chest, and that the volcano has exploded and thrown you down to the bottom of the sea \u2014 the elephant still sleeping peacefully on your bosom. You wake up and grasp the idea that something terrible really has happened. Your first impression is that the end of the world has come; and then you think that this cannot be, and that it is thieves and murderers, or else fire, and this opinion you express in the usual method. No help comes, however, and all you know is that thousands of people are kicking you, and you are being smothered.<\/p>\n

Somebody else seems in trouble, too. You can hear his faint cries coming from underneath your bed. Determining, at all events, to sell your life dearly, you struggle frantically, hitting out right and left with arms and legs, and yelling lustily the while, and at last something gives way, and you find your head in the fresh air. Two feet off, you dimly observe a half-dressed ruffian, waiting to kill you, and you are preparing for a life-and-death struggle with him, when it begins to dawn upon you that it\u2019s Jim.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, it\u2019s you, is it?\u201d he says, recognising you at the same moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d you answer, rubbing your eyes; \u201cwhat\u2019s happened?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBally tent\u2019s blown down, I think,\u201d he says. \u201cWhere\u2019s Bill?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then you both raise up your voices and shout for \u201cBill!\u201d and the ground beneath you heaves and rocks, and the muffled voice that you heard before replies from out the ruin:<\/p>\n

\u201cGet off my head, can\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

And Bill struggles out, a muddy, trampled wreck, and in an unnecessarily aggressive mood \u2014 he being under the evident belief that the whole thing has been done on purpose.<\/p>\n

In the morning you are all three speechless, owing to having caught severe colds in the night; you also feel very quarrelsome, and you swear at each other in hoarse whispers during the whole of breakfast time.<\/p>\n

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)<\/em><\/a>, 1889.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camping out in rainy weather is not pleasant. It is evening. You are wet through, and there is a good two inches of water in the boat, and all the things are damp. You find a place on the banks that is not quite so puddly as other places you have seen, and you land […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,41],"tags":[948,202],"class_list":["post-23897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-quotations","tag-jkjerome","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6dr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23897"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23915,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23897\/revisions\/23915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}