Mum and dad bought a massive tent to enable us to have affordable holidays.  A huge tent with poles airbeds sleeping bags folding table and chairs cooking equipment etc, but we didnt have a car. Dad was impulsive.  
We tried the tent out on the banks of loch lomond with aunty May uncle Duke and cousins John & Martin.  We were all rammed into the back of uncle Dukes small van, sitting on the tent and tent poles etc.   It was only a weekend but one that we’ll never forget. 

The weather couldnt have been worse and the tent was hastily erected on a slope sloping the wrong way with some water flowing into the tent.  Mum and aunty may dug a trench around the tent (using spoons) to stop the water going inside.  It didnt work and everything inside was still getting wet, so then all four adults did what they’d been trying to avoid doing, literally lifted the whole tent whilst under it poles and all.  We could hear them screeching and laughing from where we were playing.  
Meanwhile us children were playing by the edge of the loch sailing sticks or something, one of us turned round to discover that the grass area that  we were standing on had broken away from the land!  We were floating out into the loch and none of us could swim!  Fortunately John and Martin were wearing plastic sandals and waded through the water giving us piggy backs onto dry land.  
This was the holiday that earned Gerard the nickname ‘Rusty feet’.  We all went for a walk with the adults, and Gerard had no dry clothes left except his shorts.  He looked a sight wearing mums cardigan that came down past his shorts and he wore shoes with no socks.  His shoes got so wet that the brown dye came out of them and stained his feet, hence rusty feet. 
We had many fun holidays in that tent with the McFudges. Mum and dad laughed alot about those holidays later in life, there were many stories to tell.  
Like the time I was being particularly unruley and mum said if I din’t be quiet she’d tie me up amd gag me.  I didnt believe her and carried on loudly misbehaving.  She tied me to a chair and gagged me!  
‘Puss in boots’ from the tent next door crept round with his mum to see the din I was creating.  Imagine the scene, a child gagged and tied to a chair screeching and yelling (albeit muffled) whilst the mother just quietly ignored the comotion and carried on cleaning the table as if nothing was going on.  I was shortly released on the promise that Id behave myself.

As an adult myself I thought it couldnt have been much of a holiday for mum, trading one set of household duties for another more difficult set with no sink to wash toweling nappies let alone a washing machine, or toilet etc.  Hats off to her, Id never go camping, but it was how mum and dad managed to take us on holiday for quite a few years.