This blog post has been written by my eldest, Tom! As you read the title for this, Tom would like you to be thinking of the song by The Kings of Leon!

Enjoy Tom’s story!

As I’m sure you know (or will find out) from other stories, we as a family love going camping, if you can call it that: caravan, deck chairs, windbreaks to block out everyone else there and hatred from those very people, and we go with one or two other families both lifelong friends of my parents and now all of us.

A key thing a person would note is that two of the three fathers in this collection have a significant lack of hair! My dad, the third of the trio is very proud of the fact that his hair has remained intact the longest (us kids would certainly tell you otherwise, the “McDonald’s” hairline is a staple comment that comes to mind).

One evening while we were “camping”, my dad, mum, Millie and I were sitting around a fire after dinner, while the army of kids, including the self-proclaimed “Starfish King” (a story for another time), were at the park and the other parents were washing dishes at the other end of the campsite.

We were having some usual parent-child chats about life and siblings who weren’t there, and of course, the condition of the fire dad had created, which was slowly losing its thunder as the evening went on.

As dad was fiddling with a stick that was trying to escape its fiery demise, it suddenly flamed up and, as chance would have it, the prominent tuft of hair that dad proudly holds to, did as well. As you can imagine, there was much shouting and after a second of panic and funny sounds, the fire was extinguished by many slaps and after that, his head continued to be slapped for a few more seconds.

We looked in shock as we saw a rather sizeable chunk of his hair had been singed and was still glowing a little. My first response was to run away in search of my dad’s bald friends, who also liked to mock his thinning hair.

When they got back, there was much laughter and speculation about whether my dad was going to have to shave it all off! Unfortunately, the next day, he woke up, and it was much harder to determine where the fire had got him (possibly due to the gallon of hair wax he puts on in the morning)