The story really begins around the time of my sixtieth birthday when I began to tell friends and family that I was thinking of getting a campervan. I was too old for another midlife crisis so they just thought I had become slightly unhinged and began, gently, to pose questions:
"Where are you going to keep it? You've got a very small drive and there wouldn't be room for a campervan alongside your car."
"Would you get rid of the car and just have a campervan? It wouldn't be very economical popping to the supermarket in a campervan."
"What about the grandchildren? Would the campervan have enough seatbelts?"
"How much would you actually use it, considering they're quite expensive?" … and so on.
But, if my solicitous friends and family thought this was a new idea that had just popped into my deranged newly-sexagenarian brain, they obviously don't know me well enough. No. In fact, I've been thinking about getting a campervan for over fifty years. You'll gather from this, I'm not one to rush into things. I may have put the idea on hold since reaching adulthood, but it never went away and it all began when I was nine or ten years old...
Around the time that I stopped playing with my toy soldiers and toy cars (including the two prized Matchbox campervans pictured,) I began to read voraciously, and to write (and sometimes illustrate) little stories. Whenever Mr Simcox asked the class to quietly get on with writing a story, I needed no encouragement and would enthusiastically continue writing another adventure in which my lead character would invariably be off travelling in a campervan. This protagonist might well have been a secret agent, like the heroes of my favourite TV programmes The Man from UNCLE, The Saint and The Champions. But, if he was a spy, he was also an author, going off in his campervan with his dog (a golden Labrador) and a portable typewriter. And when the character - who was probably called something like Adam Denton or Simon Fenton or possibly Roger Sterling - would park up in a layby, after taking his dog for a walk, he would settle at the compact table in his campervan with a mug of tea to hammer out a chapter of his latest novel on his typewriter because Adam, or Simon, or Roger, was a famous novelist and he liked to travel round researching locations for his books. He liked to set his stories in real locations, just like my favourite writer at the time, Malcolm Saville, who wrote exciting adventures for children of my age set in Shropshire and Sussex.
I had it in my head that Malcolm Saville had the perfect life - travelling in the summer, scouting out locations for his books and then, when summer was over, he could snuggle down in his warm study and write books through the cold days until the spring arrived when he'd set off again on his travels. I've since learnt that Malcolm Saville (despite the popularity of his books) held down a day job throughout his writing career. He encouraged his readers to write to him, so I did and told him I wanted to be an author. He kindly wrote back and wished me luck but strongly advised me to get a proper job.
Around this time, my dad had a job at a garage and occasionally brought home old brochures advertising motorhomes. I began to write off for up-to-date brochures showing all the very latest luxury motorhomes - or Dormobiles as they were often called in those days - (vehicles like the Martin Walter Ford Transit, which is the model for the bluish-silver one shown next to the VW camper in the picture above.) Every now and then, I'd receive a new brochure in the post, as if I was an affluent adult who was seriously contemplating buying one, rather than an impoverished ten-year-old fantasising about being a free-wheeling author (and possibly secret agent.)
As I grew a little older, I got interested in pop music, got my first guitar and began writing my first songs. The Malcolm Saville books were replaced by more grown-up reading, but I never completely gave up on the idea of being a writer (although I now also wanted to be a pop star or, at least, a singer-songwriter, like my new hero, Cat Stevens.)
At some point I must have forgotten about the campervan idea and, after doing a degree in English and French, I followed Malcolm Saville's advice and got myself a proper job. I began a career working in mental health which (satisfying as it was) distracted me, for more than three decades, from my early ambition to be a full-time writer and musician. Throughout that time, though, I led a parallel life, continuing to write books, articles, short stories and songs, until I eventually retired to become what I think I'd always been - a writer and musician. And it was then that the thought of that campervan began to creep back up on me...
Coming soon: Dulcimers and micro-campers explained; Malcolm Saville and spying, and what exactly is a micro-adventure?
