Most Favourite

A little over a decade ago, I clearly recall standing on the pavement opposite the pub in which I'd just shared a pre-Christmas hair-of-the-dog with a couple of old friends (we had now accepted that the previous night's events were over and it was time to get on with what was left of Saturday).  As I stood, limbs close in to avoid heat loss and mostly oblivious to the slate gray December sky, I kept my face towards the general direction from which I knew my lift home would be coming.

Joy quickly followed surprised as the unmistakable form of the two women in my life nosed their way to the junction not more than one hundred yards from where I stood.  In over nine years, this was the first time my wife had taken my 1973 Volkswagen camper out solo.  A simple collection from the neighbouring town now had me akin to a stranded climber staring up into the rotors of a search and rescue helicopter.  And I felt proud.  Nine years I had waited to see this.  Nine years - the van had been the one constant in my marriage.  It had even been sold once and then bought back again.

The van was my differentiator from the unconscious conformity of all else, it was my clipper ship, using the trade winds to slowly wind it's way to destinations where my wife and I would cook what ever we could find in the supermarket which would fit on a couple of dimming burners and a rusty grill before cosying up on the flat packed, thick cushioned semblance of a bed with the hand-made curtains either flapping above our faces or pressed against the wet glass, depending on the lie of where we had parked, then driving back a couple of days later, refreshed for the fresh air but in need of a shower.

Yet it was not universally popular.  My best friend, whose judgement - now as then - I value above nearly all else, and who's approval I often subtly seek, hated it.  Really hated it.  He didn't think it was funny, odd, quirky, he just hated it.  Throughout it's ten year relationship with me he refused to travel in it, complaining bitterly when he had no alternative method - though he did bail out of one November night drive from the west country to London, opting for the train from Basingstoke's dank, stained public-convenience styled station, "At least the train will have some sort of bloody heating".  Yet this did not matter.  I sought no approval on this one particular issue.

A week after the surprise Saturday collection, my wife and I separated.  The van remained with me for another eight months, unused, still cherished, but a burden.  It was becoming awkward to squeeze it into the garage of my three bedroom semi and I had to move the nearly-new BMW each time to swing the garage door up-and-over, then shuffle along its flank with pot-holing dexterity in order to retrieve items from the space at the end of the long garage.

She was sold.  I don't know what happened to her.  Some of these destinations which took planning and patience to reach, I now drive past for a morning meeting, returning the same day.  And I have trouble equating the rusting old van in the last Polaroid I have of her to the van I owned.