James Hannah

So I sup­pose we’d bet­ter start learn­ing quickly about this caravan-ownership thing. Where are we going to put it? We don’t have a dri­ve­way. Our house is not next to the road. It’s packed in amongst a bunch of other houses, and you can only get to it via a steep path, which nar­rows to maybe 80cm in places. No place for tow­ing caravans.

There’s a car park down the hill — but the annual rent for a park­ing space is around £100, and, erm, the car­a­van is cov­ered in chintzy yel­low wall­pa­per. Given past expe­ri­ences, the amount of grumbles-cum-complaints-cum-lawsuits we would have to endure in the first week make this com­pletely unfeasible.

So, per­haps we could fall back on some kind friends to help us out.

Whichever way you carve this, we’re ask­ing for some­one to semi-permanently set aside 10 sq m of real-estate for a gar­ish and quickly mildew­ing car­a­van that (his­tory indi­cates) we’ll quickly for­get all about. What we need here is some landed, gen­er­ous friends who we don’t mind falling out with.

Which brings me to: family.

When Jols excit­edly rang her dad to tell him the won­der­ful news, he said, ‘Oh, love, that’s great news! You’re not putting it on my driveway’.

I toyed with the idea of load­ing it with my child­hood detri­tus and park­ing it across the road from my mum’s house, or maybe ask­ing my dad to host it in the vast tracts of Ire­land that cur­rently sur­round him, but man­ners preclude.

So the answer to this ques­tion is still run­ning wild. We’ll catch it in the end. Or it’ll catch us in the end.

Mean­while, there are some other ques­tions. For exam­ple, How make fit car­a­van on brum brum?

We’re going to have to get a tow­bar, and then — what — brake­lights and all that? And a num­ber­plate? Well, I’ve booked my poor car in to get a tow­bar fit­ted this com­ing Mon­day. The man at Copthorne Ser­vices was very understanding.

‘Do you want a sin­gle or a twin sup­ply?‘
’Urrr…‘
’A single’s for if you want the bat­tery charg­ing and the fridge run­ning while you’re dri­ving.‘
(Has it got a bat­tery? Or a fridge?)
’Urrr…‘
‘Do you want a bag on your head?‘
’Urrr…‘
’We’ll see you on Mon­day’ [click]

Jols received an answer to another ques­tion we hadn’t yet asked: an insur­ance man phoned up and told her we’ve a year’s free insur­ance on the car­a­van. Who knew you had to get these things insured? Makes sense, I sup­pose. How­ever, his friendly, uncom­pre­hen­sive inves­ti­ga­tions turned up a few truths.

He: ‘So, where will the car­a­van be kept?‘
She: ‘Urrr…‘
He: ‘Ahh.’

The good thing about his phonecall is that he wants to bor­row the Princess off us for a few days for the upcom­ing Camp­ing & Car­a­van­ning Show at the NEC in Birmingham.

It’s like: sure thing! Give us a chance to find out what on earth we’re sup­posed to do with it…

Lat­ers

jx