When we were still quite small, Mum and Dad bought a VW camper. Not the 1960s split screen model but only a little newer and still one of those ones that are coveted these days.
I am not sure that I recall the first time we went out with it but I feel like I do because mum and dad tell the tale of heading out to Wales, Angelesy in it and it rained…and rained…and rained. What I do remember is that someone they met up with had Divali sweets. Bright, colouful, salivatingly exciting to look at. I reached into the tin, put one to my lips to be met with URGGH. Coconut.
Seatbelts schmeetbelts back in the 80s, at least in the back of the car, so longer term journies the back was turned into a bed and my two brothers and I were laid down in the back with our blankets, our sweets, later their gameboys and my walkman.
We were each allowed to take ‘a couple of cuddlies’ for the ride. One holiday, my mum packed, we went to pick dad up from work and headed south to the ferry in france for dad – at the first stop – to be met with tsunami of teddy bears: we’d somehow managed to sneak every one we owned in while mum was packing the food.
Holidays, we only ever ate out the last meal to much ceremony and fanfare, my dad carefully examining the menu on the wall of each restaurant: we ate out once a year, the choice was important. The rest of the time was BBQs, baguettes, picnics, little packets of cereal and gross UHT milk. Mum prepared evening meals for on the road. She’d cook a beef bourginon, freeze it and we’d arrive in the Dordogne for it to be fully defrosted. It’s funny, mum’s cooking doesn’t feature much in my memories but anyone who can stock a van with good food to see a family of 5 through for two weeks must have had some sort of a knack.
The van took us to cornwall and devon but the holidays I remember most are to france. Trying not to touch each other when sunburnt, sand in the cushions, an eclectic array of music in the cassette player and a massive tupperware filled with boiled sweets.
In those pesky early teen years, Big white VWs were not the cool accessory they are these days, not in Rotherham at any rate. We’d start the journey with me lying flat on the back to get up past the Brecks, through Wickersley and onto the M18. Once on the motorway, up I’d sit, excited for the family holiday time ahead.
There must have been all manner of sleeping configerations throughout the years. It was a pop top with two hammocks. I slept there, opposite my littelst brother. My middlest brother got a makeshift bed laid across the passenger and drivers seats. Towards the end of the era of family holidays, his head stuck out one window, his feet out the other and each turn would lead to him putting the hazzards on. One holiday pulled up in a layby on the way home, the flashing lights, the hooting of an owl, and tired parents led mum and dad to a night of thinking we were being invaded by Hell’s Angels.
One year, we tried a trip to Paris. We drove down the Champs Alysee, found an underground carpark just along it, headed down only to find the van too tall to enter. Cue mum hopping out, standing central on the busiest road of one of the busiest capitals and stopping the traffic so Dad could reverse out. My Job? Keep the brothers QUIET at ALL COSTS. We rose to the occasion.
Once at the Loire or the Dordogne a 1970s orange and blue tent made it’s appearance. That was mine and my brothers’ home while on the campsite with mum and dad retiring to the back of the van.
As well as being a key feature of summer holidays, the van played a starring role on Christmas eve. My middlest brother was prone to acute asthma attacks at any time of excitement so mum and dad built in a drive in the van, a picnic and a walk to keep up occuppied and tire us out.
We kept up the tradition of heading off in the van, cuppa soups, baked potatotes, cooked sausages wrapped in foil, Christmas songs blaring out, all singing top of our lungs until I was quite old. Old enough to see the bemused, confused amusement-come-fear in the eyes of my adult boyfriend. You only realise how weird your christmas traditions are when they are viewed through the eyes of a newbie.
It would break down a lot, as these things do. But in those days, engines were something people could fix rather than weird computer based things. Someone always came along to help.
It stank of petrol – the fumes from the engine somehow pumping through into the vents that circulated the air.
It was noisy and rickety and prone to rust. When the Beastie Boys became a thing it became an actually liability and my dad had to take the VW logo, sculpted in metal and attached to the front, off. He hid it in the garage for fear of it becoming someone’s blingy jewelry.
Like me, my mum, dad and my brothers the van was brash and flawed, generally reliable put prone to the odd demand for attention. It was part of the family and I think I speak for all of us when I say how much we miss it.
Cogito Ergo Mum 