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I am just back from a week away in a caravan with my kids, my grandkids and (in a near-by ‘van) various accumulated ‘in-laws’* and during those seven days I have learned many things about the world in general and more specifically, about myself and my place within it as I get older.  I lay before you here, in no particular order, some of what I have learned…

• The caravan, like the world in general, is filled with good intentions and disappointing outcomes.
• There is nowhere in a caravan in which the keys cannot be lost.
• The world’s most efficient noise-amplification system is also known as the caravan bathroom.
• There is a huge amount of storage in a caravan – which you will discover on the day you leave.
• A single raindrop inadvertently introduced to a sealed caravan can render everything within it damp within twenty four hours.
• It is possible to sleep whilst a fox evenly distributes everything from your bin across a thirty acre campsite.
• It is not possible to sleep whilst someone is snoring in a caravan three blocks away.
• A banana is just a banana – unless it is the last banana.
• Never give your opinion when your shoe size will do.
• Life is always easy when one person knows the answer.  Life is never easy when two people know the answer.
• It is easy to understand how easily history is manipulated when you realise how quickly your own contribution to any conversation is erased from it.
• The sun may well shine on the righteous, but when it rains on the beach, you all get wet.
• The only person more right than the person with proof is the person who doesn’t need any.
• A watched kettle never boils – especially when you can’t work out how to turn it on.
• I am just as strong as I have always been – just not for as long.
• I am physiologically incapable of tolerating the North Sea at anything above knee level.
• There is absolutely no point in fighting it – I am to blame.

I hope it helps…

PS the caravan was absolutely nothing like the caravan in the picture at the head of this piece, although I did spend a great number of the weekends of my youth in such a tin can. If you would like to read about it, you can do so here in ‘A Pied-a-Terre of Yellow-Glossed Metal – The Van Beside the Sea (and Will There Be Cockles Still for Tea?)’.

*Hence I have not really been able to keep up with blog reading, an issue that I will endeavour to rectify over the next few days.