Family HolidaysBack in the 80s when my Dad got made redundant (hello Dad!), he spent all the redundancy money on one of those big motor caravans.
Us kids loved it, apart from when my sister threw up on my sleeping bag, but looking back I'm not so sure my mum did. There was a certain tension every time the big van was even mentioned, let alone driven around France for weeks on end with her still having to cook and do all the washing.
What went wrong, what went right, and how did you survive the shame of having your family with you as a teenager?
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chthonic, Thu 2 Aug 2007, 14:33)
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Caravan Tales Part IIThe Lake District 1979. My older brother tolerates my staying up late with him to watch, on the B&W telly, the B&W movie ‘Night of the Demon’. This is still just about my favourite horror film, mainly because you don’t actually see much of the demon, it’s all suspense and suggestion. My younger self though, was terrified, especially at the thought of something lurking…between the caravan and the toilet block. That’s right, no loo in the caravan.
I was too scared to own up to needing to visit the toilet block. Even when promised use of a torch. Frankly, you could have put a fucking tommy gun in my hand and not got me out there. God knows it wasn’t anything as mundane as peados and wierdos I was worried about (the kids back then on the caravan park were gargoyles, all scabs and snot – you’d have to be a sicko indeed to go after one), it was a sixty foot fucking fire demon. But my bladder kept me awake, giving me more time to get wound up, until I hit on a cunning solution.
What I learned was this – peeing into a plastic basin in the dead of night in a tiny bedroom in a silent caravan sounds like a fucking roll on a snare drum at the Last Night of the Proms. It almost drowned the noise of my brother laughing in the next room.
(, Tue 7 Aug 2007, 20:58, Reply)
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