‘A SPACE HOPPER KILLED MY HAMSTER …
amusing tales of growing up in the ’60s & ’70s‘ will be published via Amazon, in both paperback and Kindle formats, on Friday 4th July.

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER #17 – CARAVAN HOLIDAY HELL.

From the 1950s through The Seventies, caravan ownership boomed in the UK. The desire for more leisure time, coupled with the growing ease of obtaining credit and at that time, the expense of foreign travel, made owning one of these monstrosities seem attractive.

(Oh dear … !)
_____

I’d have only just entered my teenage years in 1971 when my parents came up with the whizz-bang idea of buying a caravan.

“We’ll now be able to take weekend breaks throughout the year, whenever we fancy. Won’t this be splendid?”

‘Splendid?!’ Are you mental? Weekends? What happens to my track meets and cross-country races? What about my football? My school parties? Saturday morning cartoons on the telly?

What possesses people to forsake their nice spacious homes to go live in a claustrophobic, formica-lined box on wheels?

I was already counting the days till my parents could no longer be jailed for illegally leaving me home alone. I’d even volunteer to do household and garden chores while the family were away. Maybe haggling some kind of deal would work? Creosote the fence or something?

Resistance was futile though, at least for a couple of years.

“Do you fancy going for a golfing trip to Pittenweem this weekend?”

If I’m going to stay in a five or four-star hotel, three at a push, then maybe.

“It’ll be fun,” they lied.

So, frequent weekends were thereafter spent collecting the caravan from the storage facility in the neighbouring town; bringing it to the house; uncoupling it overnight and loading it with clothes and provisions for the weekend; reconnecting the car the following morning and driving to Fife, usually arriving in time for lunch.

Reverse that procedure on the Sunday afternoon, ensuring we arrived back before the storage facility closed, and we had barely enough time to squeeze in a round of golf and a fish supper on the Saturday, with a walk along the bitterly cold, windswept and wave-lashed beach on the Sunday morning to round things off.

Happy days. (Are you kidding me?!)

The nightmare continued.

Horror of horrors! Emboldened by admittance into the Caravan Club of Great Britain, my excited parents announced we’d now be taking an additional summer holiday. An additional week. In Dornoch. In the far north of Scotland. In the caravan!

Heavens above! Dornoch, even in 2025, is a good four-hour drive away. Fifty-three years ago and towing a bleedin’ caravan …. a letter with a second-class stamp would get there quicker.

“It’s a lovely site – right by the golf course. And there’s a toilet and shower block too.”

That’s it? That’s the best selling-point you can come up with?

… read more here. 😉