Sweden Spirit Camp 1.

It’s Sweden Spirit Camp and I appear to have joined a caravan club. Lovely happy people but pick up a spoon and there’ll be a swarm offering advice on how to use it better. I’ve never been in a caravan club but I imagine they’re the low in sodium salt of the earth. Resourceful when it’s raining, tied securely to a rock and a hard place when it’s blowing and singing when it’s sunny. They’re wise and experienced in the ways of caravanning, knowing for example the double flush valve in the later model Tow-a-Home Barracuda S300 is prone to blowback. Ask them nicely, and even if you don’t, even if you haven’t heard of a Barracuda S300 and have no intention of buying one they’ll share with hearty laughter how messy a blowback can be, and how to unlock the supply grommet half a turn so it’ll never happen again. But they will help each other out selflessly. Should you decide to redecorate your S300 on a weekend’s jaunt to Filey there’ll be a crew of eager souls cueing into the next bay ready to sand and strip, paint and paper before you can say Dulux Carsick Green on woodchip. This though comes with a hint of fascism. Rules are rules and the runes of ancient caravanning must be followed otherwise there would be chaos. Unfortunately I like a bit of chaos. Yesterday for example in continuous heavy rain I was the only one sensible enough to wear pink shorts and sandals on the basis you don’t wear rain gear and wellies to go swimming. But today we’re waking to sunshine and I’m sitting in long johns on a wet chair, but that’s just a mistake. I’m currently thinking, “Life is a perennial process of trying to get comfortable, but if you achieve it you’ve failed.” That’s how spirit is; always a sting in the tail, never a straight answer. At the moment amongst breakfast chat I feel like the Hunchback of Notradame, his hands clasped tightly over his ears crying, “The rules, argh the rules.” My son says 90% of talk is simply testing, “Do you like me, ‘cos I like you, so do you? I mean are we OK, I mean really?” However true it doesn’t help one’s powers of chitchat.