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The campsite was on the western edge of Beadnell, separated from the coastline by the village. Set on flat ground, it was open to the elements and penned in by nothing more substantial than a flimsy wire fence. My father, Tony, having signed us in and paid the camping fee, drove to the farthest corner of the site.

Having tipped a fabric sock full of disparate metal pipes on to the grass, Dad, who had been practising assembling the mainframe in our back garden, had the roofed section together in moments.

Soon, we had a tent. Flicking out a large, creamy brown groundsheet into the tent's interior, Dad then polished off our living arrangements by hanging the inner tent from hooks in the roof. “Done,” he announced, opening the boot of the car. “Is it five yet?”

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What we didn't know was that he wasn't done. He was far from done. He'd forgotten to put down the separate, smaller groundsheet for the inner tent, which was sitting, scrunched up and forgotten, at the bottom of a bag.

We would be sleeping on the grass with nothing but a flimsy piece of cotton to protect us. Dad's efficiency meant that we had more than three hours to kill before he could set foot in a pub. He decided we would fill the pointless hours with a short drive to nearby Ross, where a gentle cakewalk of sand and grass tipped us on to Ross Back Sands, a flat and wide stretch of beach. In finer weather,

it would have verged on idyllic: on a grey day, with a drenching mist rolling in off the North Sea, however, it was a chore, a time-filler, a trudge towards a damp horizon.

Eventually, my mother declared it was five to five. We stopped at every pub between Ross and Beadnell, but every response was the same. Dad would ask for a drink and the landlords would point at me, shake their heads and refuse him service. By the time we got back to Beadnell, Dad, who was almost on the verge of tears, was actually contemplating tying me to a tree with a piece of string. “We can't tie Emma up with a piece of string,” argued my mother, pointing at me. “She's not a stray dog.”

Not only that, but we were still to find anything substantial to eat. We had managed to locate a small pot of cockles and a loaf of bread and, forced to retreat back to our corner of the campsite, we sat sucking vinegar off crusts . With the weather settling in, my parents, who had valiantly tried to make the best of a bad lot, admitted defeat. There was nothing to do but go to bed.

To stretch the elastic of our evening to breaking point, my mother decided to get all of our clothes out of our suitcase and arrange them in small, convenient piles around the edges of the inner tent while Dad set about inflating the airbeds that would bear us floating into the Land of Nod. Lying tucked into a sleeping bag, the smell of wet grass in my nostrils, I was in raptures. My parents were not. They lay clutching the tops of their sleeping bags, eyes darting to every sudden billow of the tent walls. The wind, while not quite howling, was certainly cantankerous, and the rain, while not quite lashing, was hefty and persistent.

Given the surfeit of fresh air that I'd been exposed to and the soporific beating of the rain, I drifted into a quick sleep that slipped so deep I was passed out till morning. “What the...?” my dad shouted out suddenly. He'd got out of bed and grabbed at the pile of clothes designated as his. “Everything's soaking! There's water everywhere. I don't believe this.”

“Oh God,” said my mother, leaping up to check the rest of our clothes. “Everything's wet. How can this be? How?” “The f****** groundsheet!” Dad squealed. “I forgot to put down the groundsheet!”

“Tony,” said my mother, setting her jaw to a place that meant business, “I've had enough. I don't know why I stay with you. Just one nice holiday. That's all I want. I'm an attractive woman! I should be sitting on a sun-lounger in the South of France! Instead I'm standing in a half-made tent and all my clothes are soaking wet !”

With everything we owned saturated with rainwater and the weather set in for the long haul, we had no hope of getting anything dry. As we drove home, my mother, who had refused to speak to my father from the moment we left, announced that we would “never go on holiday in this country again”.

To date, our experiences of campsites had been unimpressive but the site at Carnac, a small coastal town near Brittany, was like an outdoor five-star hotel. Fields sloped down to our left, and up to our right and in front of us, about 300 yards from the entrance, there was a small, picturesque lake surrounded by woodland.“Look at that,” said Dad, in an almost reverential hush. “They've got rows of stones marking out the pitches. That's amazing.”

“And some are marked out with hedges!” pointed Mum. “Imagine that! Hedges!

"Now then,” she said. “Do you want to help me set up the table and chairs?”

Arranging outdoor furniture was something we'd never been able to do before and Mum was in her element. Despite the fact she had very little to work with, she was convinced that this holiday was going to be the pinnacle of her life to date. She had made it. We were on continental soil. The early-evening sun was casting a warm, pink glow and it wasn't raining.

All about us French families were smiling and enjoying evening meals, their tables heaving with wine, barbecued fish, quiches and salads. This was where Mum wanted to be. “I think,” she began, one hand on hip, “that we'll have the table over here, in the shade. Just under the tree. And if we put the chairs here then we can all enjoy the view. Of the other tents. So that's what we'll do. Tony.”

In no time at all, the three of us were sitting, staring at our temporary home. “Look at that family over there,” said my mother with a nudge. “They're eating mussels. On a campsite. And they've got an apple tart. Incredible.” The smells that were wafting from every direction were heavenly: thick, meaty odours of herby-roasted chickens and charcoal-grilled steaks saturated the air. “All these smells are making me hungry,” said Mum, nose aloft. “What are we having for dinner, Tony?”

“Tin of Spam,” said Dad, trying to make that sound as exciting as possible. “And piccalilli!”

“Is that it?” asked Mum, turning to look at him. “Do you not think we deserve a treat?”

“Spam is a treat,” said Dad, folding his arms. “Em loves Spam. Don't you?”

“Not really,” I said, scuffing at the brown grass beneath my feet.

“Well, all right then, we'll have corned beef instead,” Dad suggested. “Everyone likes corned beef.”

“I don't,” said Mum, taking off her sunglasses to give my father a proper once-over. “Haven't we got anything a bit, you know, less 1950s?”

My father, who had assumed a slightly pallid hue, sighed a little and ran a hand across his forehead. “The thing is,” he mumbled, “Dave Cox told me that in France food is really expensive, and you never know what you're getting because some of them eat horses. And he told me to stock up on tins and bring them with us. So that's what I've done.So we've got all the food we need for the holiday. And it's in that box. And it's mostly corned beef. And Spam. And that's that.”

“Well,” said my mother, shooting my father a glance. “We're in France, the gastronomic centre of the world, where everyone is eating shellfish and things in sauces. And what have we got to look forward to? Corned beef and pickled onions.”

“And a tin of tomatoes!” Dad protested. “There's a tin of tomatoes in there.”

“So sorry,” said Mum. “And a tin of tomatoes. I can barely wait for that. I must send Dave Cox a thank-you note when we get home. Don't let me forget.” And so we sat, with our three metal camping dinner plates languishing before us on the table. The plates had been picked up by Dad from an army surplus store and were made of aluminium and divided into three triangular compartments. In one compartment we each had two pickled onions.

In another we had a dollop of piccalilli. And sitting in front of us, in the centre of the table in pride of place, was a plastic side plate in the middle of which sat a jelly- covered, fat-mottled rectangle of good corned beef. We sat and stared at it. A Frenchman, carrying some bread and a bottle of wine, strode past. He looked at us, waved and shouted, “Bon appétit!”

A gesture that was greeted with the weakest of smiles.

© Emma Kennedy 2009. Extracted from The Tent, The Bucket and Me, to be published by Ebury Press, £10.99, April 2. It is available at £9.89, incl p&p, from Times Books First (0845 2712134; timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst)

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