Nastiness? It’s a lifestyle choice

We can’t choose our housing status, but we can choose our leaders

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I have a lot of tent-related memories in my life. A surprising number in fact, now I come to think about it.

Wakening up with an inch of water around my bed on a Eurocamp holiday in France as a kid, sleeping in the garden for a laugh in summer, or watching my generally incredibly placid dad lose it every time he had to attach an awning to our touring caravan and rely on us bozos to hold a pole.

As I got a bit older, the memories became a bit more boozy – there’s no smell quite like the inside of a tent containing five still-inebriated adults the morning after day three of a festival – or just plain ridiculous – rain-sodden Scottish yoga and wild swimming retreat anyone? But unsavoury staleness and stiff joints aside, the recollections are still pretty positive. Which you’d expect, of course, given every tent-based escapade of my life has been optional.

You could call my tent-based experiences a lifestyle choice, then, and you’d be entirely accurate. No harm, no foul.

But pitching a tent on a city street night after night after night because you’ve nowhere else to go? Well, that’s quite different indeed.