Category: Camper van

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Decisions

Today I have a decision to make.

It’s not earth-shattering – it’s this: should I take my camper van to the country park, have a walk through the trees and a picnic? Should I go to B&Q, buy some compost and plants, come home and do some gardening? Should I do both, drive the camper van to B&Q en route to the country park and hope to find a parking place not too far from home when I get back, so it’s not too much of an effort to carry the compost etc home? Should I take the car (camper van too tricky to park) and go to the garden centre that’s en route to the country park (if I can remember where it is, I’ve only been a couple of times, and that was years ago), and if I do, does my parking season ticket for the country park cover the car as well?

Yesterday I bought rolls and individually wrapped flap jacks in preparation for this picnic that I was planning. But – isn’t the country park getting a bit boring? I don’t want to drive the other way, to the New Forest, because that is a full day out, and does mean driving along the M27, which can be stressful. And putting the van back into the garage is always stressful. It’s only a couple of weeks since I moved the van, so it shouldn’t have seized up yet – though I did leave the battery connected up in the expectation that I’d be taking it out again in the near future. I won’t be taking it out next week, though, because I’m going up to Bedford – on the train, because hopefully my daughter will be bringing me back to stay a few days and help with sorting out the study.

I was going to go to B&Q because I have a coupon, and Wednesday is Diamond Card day, but of course you can’t combine the offers, and anyway if you read the small print the coupon only applies if you spend £30 on full price items, so it’s not great if you want to combine lots of small things, when some of them are likely to be on multi-buys anyway, so I’d spend all my time trying to work out what to spend it on.

I like the idea of going to the garden centre, but from what I remember the parking is pretty awful, so as I said, I wouldn’t want to take the van.

I’m just trying to give examples here of what my mind is like all the time. I think I’ll give myself a treat, but it takes so long to think through all the options, implications, ramifications and potential consequences that I start to dread it, even when the object is something I know I would enjoy – unless, of course, I don’t enjoy it at all and end up wondering what on earth I’m doing there, wherever it is. Which is quite likely.

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Shoulds

I can see from my window that it must have been a glorious sunrise, but even though I was awake in time – even though I was up in time – I didn’t go to the sea to watch it, and now I wish I had. Wait, didn’t I say a while back that I didn’t do regret? I think you’ll find I said that the only things I regret are the ones I don’t do, and I didn’t go to see the sunrise.

Yesterday was such a nice sunny day that I thought, I should really have taken my van out – I thought that at about half past eleven, when it was really too late, so I told myself that today I’d plan to go out and take a picnic, because if I tell myself in advance there’s a better chance that I’ll do it. But then yesterday evening and first thing this morning I looked at the weather forecast, and it said it was going to be cloudy, so I more or less convinced myself that that was a good enough excuse not to do anything about it, to stay home again listening to the radio and sorting out my weather blanket. Now I can see sunshine on the roofs opposite and a clear sky behind and I’m not so sure that that excuse is valid.

Taking the van out always feels like it’s going to be a chore, to make sure the battery doesn’t pack up and avoid getting a telling off from the guys at the garage. It’s taking up time that I could be spending sitting in the armchair crocheting. Because yesterday I finished the Christmas jumper – apart from annoying tasks like sewing in the ends, and I’m not seeing my daughter till Friday week, so there’s plenty of time to sort those out.

Now that shaft of bright sun has disappeared, and I can see that what looked like a ‘clear’ sky is actually a solid sheet of high, light cloud – but it still doesn’t look bad enough to use as an excuse. And it’s a month since I took it out – once a month over winter should be enough to keep it ticking over. Do I have to go all the way to the country park? My parking season ticket is still valid. I can go into Sainsbury’s on the way and buy a picnic, drive there and park under the trees, make a cuppa and sit inside the van if it’s raining.

I know that’s what I should do. Here we go again, about the ‘shoulds’. This is not just what some voice from childhood is muttering into my inner ear. It’s something that I know will make me feel better once I’ve done it, and that I also know won’t be as bad as it seems once I get started – but I still don’t want to do it. Which is the story of my life – so really, I know I have to go.

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Here We Go Round Again

So far this week: last yoga class before lockdown; last tai chi class before lockdown; last trip out in the van before lockdown. I mentioned last week about my yoga teacher being homeless and having to cancel classes – the next day she sent a text to say that someone had offered her a lift, then came the lockdown announcement, so there was a class on Monday evening, and ditto the tai chi yesterday morning, after which I picked up my camper van from the garage and drove to Queen Elizabeth Country Park on the A3 near Petersfield, and had a walk among the trees and a picnic. I love taking the van there, because there are car parks spread among the trees, often empty (on weekdays when I usually go), so although you can’t actually camp, you can get some of the feeling for a few hours.

The weather has turned dry and sunny but noticeably colder than it was, and today looks to be about the same, with a clear blue sky. I really should get out and do some tidying up in the garden, I tried cutting the hedge on Monday but the trimmer kept cutting out. Because it stopped and later started again, it had to be a loose wire. I took apart the connector that joins it where I cut through the cable in the spring, unscrewed the little screwy things inside, couldn’t see anything obviously loose, then got into a horrible dyspraxic muddle trying to put it back together and gave up for the day.

I read some more of ‘Women Who Run With the Wolves’, this time about creative blocks. The author suggests the usual things: keep trying, don’t self-edit, do a little every day, expect to fail, but keep going anyway. This is what I’ve been doing forever. Back to the old question of whether it matters that it never gets me anywhere? Apparently, it doesn’t. Either one day a miracle will happen and I’ll suddenly start writing something worthwhile, or I’ll be gone and someone will come along and wipe my hard drive and that will be that.

Last week I read the poem about the ‘Wild Thing’ to my therapist, and she said I should try to get it published. I haven’t done anything about it. Strictly speaking, I think posting it on here counts as publication, which disqualifies it from most competitions anyway.

I’ve been thinking about Daniel Defoe’s ‘Journal of the Plague Year’. I think this definitely counts as a ‘plague year’, but I don’t think this journal of mine is in the same class.

My current yoga teacher once said that destiny is what has to happen, but fate is what you make happen (or words to that effect). She is not having a great year, even worse than most of us. But she has faith in the fundamental goodness of the world, and I envy her for that. Today, I fear for the fate of us all.

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Tuesday plans

Reached the third of the month, and I haven’t yet mentioned NaNoWriMo. That’s because I haven’t got any plans to do anything about it. Two years ago I wrote 50k words, last year I read them and couldn’t see that there was anything I could do with them. Maybe this year I will think about The Long Way Back again – I think the last time I looked at it was in spring 2018. But one big ongoing project has been finished and gone this year. Maybe I could start thinking about it again. We’ll see.

I spent some time yesterday on the weather blanket, as I said I would. Every month (in the middle, not the beginning) I add a colour to the border – in two weeks time it will be the tenth and last. Quite a lot of my time yesterday was spent in untangling the previous nine. The only way I can see of avoiding that in the future would be to leave the border and do it all at the end, which would be massively tedious and probably mean that it wouldn’t be finished till about March. I have some plastic bobbins which are supposed to help, but only a few large ones. I will try to be more systematic about it next year.

The camper van went in for its MOT yesterday, and miraculously it passed on the first go (for the second year running). It was due in June, but was covered by the six months extension, which would have got it to January, but I wanted to avoid that because the tax is due then, and car insurance and MOT in March/April, so I decided to spread it out. The garage called me at about 5, and I didn’t really want to go and collect it then because that would have meant trying to reverse it into the garage in the dark (a nightmare) so I asked them to keep it for me till today. As the sun is shining – and the sky clear for the first time in ages – I am going to attempt to take it out for a picnic. I wasn’t sure if my season ticket for parking at the country park had been renewed or not, it was due in September but the direct debit didn’t go out. However I just had a rummage among my emails and found that they’ve extended it to the end of the year because of the closure for the first lockdown.

I will make sure I take a cup this time, and my coat. But I can’t stay too long, because I need to make sure I’m back before dark. I need to make sure I take it out at least once a month over winter, so it doesn’t end up in the same state as this spring and last. All this seems as good a reason as any to take it out today, before the next lockdown starts. A good sort of day.

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Wednesday

Where do the words come from? Same old question. I’m not sure any will come at all today, I will just burble on about the daily battle with my cat for space on the desk to put the keyboard – I’ve made a lovely empty space to the right of the monitor, from where she can watch the street, or leap at the odd bluebottle battering itself against the glass. I found a silhouette of a bluebottle on the living room carpet the other day, spread out with its wings either side, like a cartoon character which has just been hit by a falling 50 ton weight. How did it get that way? I don’t remember smashing any recently, and I don’t think it would have come from the bottom of my shoe, so I suspect she has had a rare hunting success, though how such soft paws can apply such force is a mystery.

There’s a camper van parked directly across the street, a big beast, about three times the size of mine, parked across the fronts of two houses, and with a door halfway down the side. Thinking about it, maybe it’s only twice the size of mine, twice the length, anyway, though it might be wider… no, not even that, because it fits behind the dotted parking lines. I guess if you take off the cab, the living space is more than twice as big anyway. It seems to have been there a while – can’t remember when I first saw it. Maybe the owner is leaving it there for the winter. They’d have to be a resident of this parking zone to get a resident’s parking permit for it – you have to send a copy of the log book with the address on to get one (or possibly not now it’s all online). When I moved into this house there were no parking restrictions on this street, but since then the zoning system has been extended. I don’t have a permit for my van because I rent a garage for it from a friend who lives in a neighbouring road. The first winter I had it, when I was living in the flat, I kept it out on the street and it was broken into and my folding bike was stolen. It was very upsetting at the time. Bad things happen.

Speaking of which, I just moved my hand and accidentally whacked my cat in the face, so she has now slunk off to ‘her’ chair, a spare office chair which I keep next to the desk for her.

The website’s done (fingers crossed) and is waiting to be signed off and invoiced. And I have finally decided that the jumper is big enough to separate the sleeves. I hate wearing anything that’s too tight under the armpits (not that I’ll be wearing this one). It’s now on three circular needles (body and sleeves) with four balls of wool – looking forward to spending more time untangling than knitting.

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Van Outing

After breakfast yesterday I decided that, despite what I’d said about self-isolation, I would take my van out for a run (one of those semi-commitments I’d made that I was talking about not wanting to face up to). The only brief encounters I had with other people was when I went into Sainsbury’s en route to the garage where I keep the van and bought picnic ingredients (wearing a scarf over my nose and mouth, naturally).

The guys at the garage (not the one where I keep it but the one where they fix it) had made me promise solemnly that I would take it out regularly and keep it running, now that they’ve not only replaced the battery (yet again) but fixed up a butterfly nut to make it easy to disconnect the battery every time I leave it. The problem last winter was that the previous new battery they’d installed was too tight for me to disconnect (even using a spanner) so I’d left it standing from November to January, and then, after they’d charged it, only took it out for a 10 mile drive up and down the seafront (I thought that would be enough but apparently it wasn’t), and it was dead again by the time I tried again in March. After that, we all know what happened, and I don’t think I should really be held responsible for that, but six months without being touched at all left the battery completely useless, so they had to replace it again.

Going out in the van is one of those things that you’d think should be a real pleasure, but I still have to psych myself up to do it. It’s not that I’m nervous about driving it as I used to be (except when it comes to reversing and parking), it’s just like everything else, it always feels like it’s going to be a hassle and I’d rather just stay at home.

But it’s been on my mind that I need to take it out more regularly, so, as yesterday was bright and sunny – after a couple of rainy days – I thought I’d take it over to my favourite park on the South Downs, about twenty miles away. The pleasure of it is to park up, go for a walk, brew up a cup of tea or coffee, get out the camping chair and have a picnic. It’s not as if I couldn’t just do that in the car with hot water in a flask, but it feels like camping even if I then turn round and come home.

So that’s what I did – except that although I had tea bags, water, milk and camping stove, I’d taken all the cups out last time to put through the dishwasher and forgot to take one with me. It was windier and colder than I thought, and I hadn’t taken a coat, so didn’t feel like a walk. So I sat in the van and ate my sandwiches.

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Camping in the Forest

It’s a year since I camped out in my van – for obvious reasons. Although the campsites have been open in theory since the beginning of July, I haven’t felt like going, or even hassling the garage guys to sort out the battery, till the last few weeks. As with everything, I have to psych myself up – or bully myself – into doing anything about it.

The last time I slept out was in Holland’s Wood campsite, near Brockenhurst, this week last year, the first week after the end of the school holidays, when the New Forest Tour Bus was still running. The first time I went to Holland’s Wood was the same week five years ago, when I took the bus for the first time. I don’t know if they’ve been running it this year, but if so this will be the last week.

What struck me then was not just the beauty of the landscape, but also the way the Forest has the feeling of an island, so that distances become distorted, and place names which are on ‘the far side of the forest’ suddenly appear on signposts as being 8 miles away. It feels like a quaint and mystical land, and yet the M27/A31 and the mainline from Waterloo to the West Country run straight through its most northerly, wildest part.

And it’s on my doorstep. On any given day, I could get in my car, drive down the motorway, and within an hour I could be enjoying a cream tea at the Buttery in Brockenhurst, or buying local produce at Setley vineyard, or drive a little further to watch the boats in Lymington Habour. Taking the train down to Dorset – which I did for a few years even before I moved here – I’ve always felt a buzz of excitement after we leave Southampton, and start looking out for the first ponies grazing near the tracks.

Hollands Wood is my favourite of the (admittedly not very many) campsites that I’ve stayed in – though I’ve never stayed longer than a couple of nights – there’s no electricity, although the reception will charge your phone up for you for a pound. But you can camp under the trees, and wake in the morning to see the ponies appearing out of the mist lifting over the ‘lawn’. Or catch the bus into Lyndhurst, from where the Forest is your oyster.

Having lived most of my life in Bedfordshire, where the Home Counties meets the Midlands and East Anglia between the M1 and the A1, the New Forest is for me a reminder of how surprising England can be. Not that there aren’t interesting places and pretty countryside there too, but you can draw a circle 50 miles in radius around Bedford and not find anything quite so special.

Ah well. Maybe, in the coming autumn and winter, I’ll take the van out regularly and have picnics, as I always plan to – or maybe I’ll just hunker down like I do every year.

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Not Writing About the New Forest

I said yesterday that today I’d write about going to the New Forest, but when I try to start there are so many other things I’m thinking about, like I got up at 6.00 because that’s what I decided I should do, although that’s still not ‘first thing’ because I’ve been awake since 4.00, reading and listening to the radio. And at 6.00 it’s still dark, so that’s how it’s going to be from now, probably till March or maybe April, I’m not sure.  

I thought I’d come straight to the computer and start writing, but I fed the cat and let her out, then wondered whether to make coffee, because usually I do my exercise first, and then should I use my espresso pot or the Tassimo, which is quicker but only makes a small cup? And thinking about how I should start, where I should start, about moving here and what it is about the south coast for me, and when did I first go to the New Forest, what is the attraction? And issues around the van, because it’s brought me so much stress and expense down the years, but I have to not think about that, and that’s a split infinitive, but apart from the fact that it’s quite passé to care about split infinitives, it’s important because what I was trying to say there is subtly different from how else it could be said: ‘can’t think’ or ‘mustn’t think’ is different from a choice to ‘not think’ about something, so arguably that two word phrase is a verb in itself, and ‘to not think’ is the infinitive form of that compound verb.

Speaking about ‘choice’, the choice about coffee is a decision in itself, with the factors of speed, flavour and quantity of coffee all having to be taken into account and balanced, and the outcome of that decision (to prioritise speed and use the Tassimo) is that the coffee has already gone and I haven’t finished writing.

Which reminded me of a conversation I had yesterday with the garage man about keeping UHT milk in the van (his suggestion), but once it’s been opened, it only keeps as well as normal milk, so I might as well just take a small bottle of fresh milk with me each time, which is what I do.

This is how my mind works all the time – bouncing from one apparently trivial and meaningless thought to another. I used to assume that it was the same for everybody, but that other people were better than me at cutting through the crap and dealing with it. Now I’m beginning to understand that it goes deeper than that. That’s why the idea of ‘thinking visually’ blew my mind, though I’m now coming to think that that’s probably not as prevalent as I’ve been led to believe – I honestly don’t see how it could be. Thinking is thinking and it’s made up of words and depends on words, and that’s that.

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Another Morning

Been thinking that maybe I should reorganise my morning routine. If I did the writing before the exercise, that would be more in keeping with Dorothea Brande’s original instructions. I could get up an hour earlier and write, instead of lying in bed trying/hoping to get back to sleep. I resolve to do it, and then, when the time comes… I could move the ‘gentle alarm’ on the Sleep Cycle app forward from 7-7.30 to 6.30-7.00 – the half hour is because it’s supposed to detect whereabouts your sleep is, and go off when you’re in the most appropriate sleep phase for waking (until it comes to the end of the period, when it goes off anyway). It’s fairly immaterial, given that I almost never hear it because I’ve already stopped the app before then – except for the extremely rare occasions when I HAVE managed to get back to sleep.

Whatever, it’s only going to get harder as we move inexorably from the light half of the year into the dark.

Had a day out yesterday, with my camper van, which only got back on the road after lockdown last week. Another new battery, another stern warning from the garage that I need to use it regularly. The new (refurbished) battery they fitted last year was so tightly connected that I couldn’t disconnect it over winter, so when I tried it in March they said they would come and recharge it, but it wasn’t a priority either for them or for me in the following months, so although they’ve had the keys all that time, I hadn’t been chasing them about it.

Well, it’s going now, and last week I took it out for a picnic in the Queen Elizabeth Country Park, off the A3 heading for London, and my favourite go-to place for a significant non-overnight jaunt. Yesterday I went in the other direction, to the New Forest, which I’ve never done as a day out before, always camped, even though it’s only an hour’s drive. I had a vision of a memory from the last time I was there, this time last year, of the empty moors covered with purple flowering heather, seen from the open-top tour bus. I had another memory too, from a few years earlier, when I drove my old Micra back from Dorset to Bedford over two days with an overnight stop in Salisbury, of walking on the same moors in early summer.

I should write more about this. Why am I reluctant to write about happy things? Perhaps because I’m afraid I can’t do them justice? Or because, when you try to describe something like that, you – I – never feel I can capture the essence of what made it special? Like trying to take photographs and then being disappointed with all of them. Writing words and being disappointed with all of them. I got lost, I found somewhere to stop, sat on a tree stump and looked at the view.

Maybe I’ll try tomorrow.

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Bother

Why do I bother? God knows. I haven’t got a clue.

I did another of the five items on the list yesterday – and a bit of another (sorting out my accounts, which is going to be a long job), and had a stab at another (renewing the insurance on my van) but got stymied by the technology, because I thought I could renew it online, but couldn’t see how, so now I don’t know if it will renew automatically or if I have to call them – which reminds me that the van itself is a can of worms, because I need to call the garage – but I don’t want to use it at present anyway.

You’ll notice there are still five items – I haven’t added any more, although I keep thinking of them, but I never remember to write them on the list. However, I did do last night’s washing up when I got up, and tidied and wiped the kitchen counters and sink (again). We’ll see how long that lasts.

I made a plan yesterday evening that if I was awake early enough this morning I would walk to the beach and watch the sunrise, but I slept in till 5.20, so there wasn’t time to get myself sorted and to the beach before the actual sunrise at 5.37.  And although I don’t really like lying in bed when I know I won’t get back to sleep, I still don’t want to get up either, even now, when it’s warm.

This is why I’ve decided that routine is so important, because if I know what I ‘should’ be doing, maybe that will push me (‘motivate’ is too strong a word) into doing things even when I really don’t feel like it (which is about 23 hours and 55 minutes of every day). Given that I’ve got quite good about doing my half hour of exercise and meditation, and writing my 500 words of drivel, over the last few months, I’m hoping that maybe I can squeeze some more useful and positive habits into my days.

I’ve given some thought in the past to how to get over the problem I was talking about yesterday, of never knowing where I’ve left things. One solution would be to constantly scan every room for anything which isn’t in its ‘specific place’ and return it so I can find it when I need it again – the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. I guess that’s what most non-cahotic (I like that typo, I think I’ll leave it) people do automatically – but the idea fills me with horror and deadens my soul. There wouldn’t be time for anything else, would there? But then if it actually worked, wouldn’t it save the time and stress of constantly searching for things? I think of my spirit animal, Mole from The Wind in the Willows, throwing down his paintbrush and running out into the springtime to cries of ‘Bother!’ and ‘Oh blow!’ and ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’