Monthly archives: October 2009

We recently won a car­a­van in a com­pe­ti­tion. I have never owned a car­a­van before. I have never sought to own a car­a­van. I never expected we would win the competition.

There fol­lows an account of what hap­pened on our first out­ing in the caravan.

We are both wiser.

I shall not elaborate.

After set­ting off, funny engine noises led me to stop and check the oil.

No oil.
Put in oil.
All well.

Trip to Bar­mouth, includ­ing dri­ving up a moun­tain, which could be com­pleted only in first gear.

Arrival and set-up in tor­ren­tial rain.
Tor­ren­tially leak­ing win­dow.
Dis­cov­ery, pur­chase and appli­ca­tion of bizarre vaseline-covered tape.
Unwash­able vase­line hands for Jols.

I dis­cov­ered I needed to rewire a non-standard plug to gain elec­tric­ity.
Needed to pur­chase tools.
Needed expla­na­tion of how to rewire.
I was still unable to get the elec­tric­ity work­ing.
No heat­ing.
No fridge.
Ruin­ing of bacon and milk.

We drove off to a local eatery, which served the crappest microwave meal I could have imag­ined.
We decamped to another eatery for dessert, which was frac­tion­ally better.

We sum­moned up the courage to return to the cold car­a­van.
A leak­ing sky­light had directed rain into the bin­bag con­tain­ing our duvet.

It was at this point > < that I snapped, and Jols and I fell out over her ever more futile attempts to keep a cheery out­look, and my ref­er­ence to a ‘ludi­crous sit­u­a­tion’ and a ‘piece of shit caravan’.

We went for a walk in abject silence, and entirely failed to find a path through to the sea, so had to turn on our heels and walk back.

Shortly before depar­ture the owner of the site came over and explained how to con­nect the elec­tric­ity, which required the pre­tence of cheer­i­ness and gratitude.

We had to leave at 10am to get back to the car­a­van stor­age place, which closed at 1.

We had had no break­fast, and had no time to stop for anything.

Part-way home the right indi­ca­tor stopped work­ing on the back of the van.

We arrived at the car­a­van depot five min­utes before 1, to find it shut.

We bumped into the owner, who opened it for us to quickly drop off the caravan.

Upon return­ing home, wearily unpack­ing the uneaten bacon, and undrunk pink cham­pagne, I dis­cov­ered the already warm milk had leaked on to the back seat of my car.

Agree­ment has been reached that a sec­ond out­ing will take place only after cer­tain con­di­tions have been met.