Postcard from Norfolk - Caravans

Caravans, it would appear, have come a long way since the holidays of my childhood, when, if I recollect correctly, they were essentially overheated (perfect British holiday weather exists in fading Polaroid’s and childhood memories) Tupperware boxes filled with happy holidaymakers and a miasma of feet and drying beach-towels.

We are holidaying in Norfolk, and we are in a caravan.  This is not a social experiment.  This is real.  It’s also an attempt to ‘try something different”.  Why we have to ‘try something different’, I have no idea, as ‘sticking with the familiar’ is my favourite strategy when on holiday in Norfolk; rise late, walk on beach, lunch, shop at local shops for evening meal, visit the pub, cook dinner, teevee, bed, repeat.

But different it is, and the caravan is certainly that.  A lot of thought has gone into the modern caravan.  For a start, room in the bedrooms has been sacrificed to create more room in the communal areas, including a large kitchen and living area.  Obviously the designers consider that a family going on holiday together will actually want to spend time with each other, which is a charming ideal (it is good to know that there is still a place in the world for wild optimism), or be able to watch the telly in comfort, which is pragmatism.  The seating area is a large el shaped ‘bonkette’, traditionally used by teens for pouty slouches in very much the same boneless way that lemurs drape themselves over tree branches.  As well as a kitchen you can actually cook in, there is a dining table that you can sit at without having to fold away either another piece of furniture, or a teen.  All of this occupies the same space at the front of the caravan, the shared family living space.

The site itself is a mixture of residential and rentals.  You can tell the residential caravans because they are surrounded by tiny gardens enclosed with low fences.  Residential caravans also come with extensions, usually those lock up plastic tool sheds you see that look like a cross between one of those things that go on top of cars for extra luggage, and a portaloo.  Judging by the contents of the open ones, these can house bicycles (sensible) or washing machines (very sensible).

The site itself is a mixture of residential and rentals.  You can tell the residential caravans because they are surrounded by tiny gardens enclosed with low fences.  Residential caravans also come with extensions, usually those lock up plastic tool sheds you see that look like a cross between one of those things that go on top of cars for extra luggage, and a portaloo.  Judging by the contents of the open ones, these can house bicycles (sensible) or washing machines (very sensible).

The site itself is a mixture of residential and rentals.  You can tell the residential caravans because they are surrounded by tiny gardens enclosed with low fences.  Residential caravans also come with extensions, usually those lock up plastic tool sheds you see that look like a cross between one of those things that go on top of cars for extra luggage, and a portaloo.  Judging by the contents of the open ones, these can house bicycles (sensible) or washing machines (very sensible).

In terms of pecking order, residents look down on renters, renters look down on motor-homes and everyone looks down on campers.  Scum.

The caravan has two loos.

That’s right.

Two toilets.  Fuck the iPod, two toilets in a caravan is real design genius.  Two toilets in a caravan is probably the single greatest contribution to family, if not world, peace since the invention of alcohol.

I remember the facilities of my youth.  Even in the long hot summer, where the crispy crinkly grass’s colour had faded like that of an old Polaroid picture first to dull green then to brown, the toilet block had a fringe of lush green grass around it, kept fresh by the eternally damp concrete that was in turn moistened by the Timotei-scented showerings of endless adolescents and the occasional Imperial Leather lathered middle class refugee.

This then, is luxury caravanning.  Luxury because of the space, luxury because there’s a little rack to hang your towels up to dry on the outside of the caravan, luxury because the telly is colour and large (although not as interesting as watching the goings-on of your fellow caravanners through the enormous picture window) and luxury because, most importantly of all, you don’t have to lead a torchlight parade to shared facilities last thing at night, in flip flops.

A right Royal show

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is a fixture of the summer cultural calendar in London, a fixture of the cultural output of the BBC Arts Unit (if you can call a handful of commentators lolling on sofas in the courtyard of the RA and bickering about whether a particular piece is worthy of inclusion or even saving from the recycling ‘output’) and a fixture for the many amateur artists who send their efforts to the RA in the hope of having them included in the largest exhibition of public works anywhere. In essence, it’s not unlike an exhibition of the local art club’s works at a village fete, except it is lent credibility by being housed in a large building and anyone in a village art club can draw better than Tracey Emin (though credit where credit is due, her oversized post-it note with the provocative script on it bubbles up unbidden in my thoughts since seeing it).


Courtyard

This year was a very, very good show though. On previous years, the approach seemed to be to have as many works as possible crowding the walls of the galleries, effective tiling the place. I’m not sure if the curators love art, but they obviously hated white emulsion.


Raphael Revisited
Tom Phillips RA

It may be because I was late in seeing the show this year, in the final weeks in fact, but the gallery was less crowded and so, it appeared at least, were the walls. This was particularly true of the smallest gallery, where in previous years the crush of bodies resulted in the sort of close proximity and temperature that normally results in somebody bolting from the room to roll in the snow. What’s more, you could even see the art.


China Dog, 2010
Humphrey Ocean RA

On the whole, the standard was very good this year. The chaps had got the Pimm’s to lemonade ratio right and the champagne was chilled and not overpriced. As usual, the bar remained the best installation in the place and confirmed my suspicion that one should never see art sober. Certainly, most artists produce the stiff either pissed, stoned, out of their heads on thinners or a combination of all of the above and surely the best way to appreciate it is with a glass of something refreshing firmly clenched.


Four Vases, 1984
Lisa Milroy RA

As well as ‘professional’ artists being well represented, the RA affords and opportunity for members of the public to submit their works also. These are them casually glanced at by a collection of judges, most, but not all, wearing unnecessary scarves. The artist is then either sent a letter telling them they are crap (work didn’t get through first round of judging), they nearly made it (we need the entry fees from the continually hopeful and reckon that this letter is worth you entering for at least the next three years) or you’ve made it. The only thing that approaches this sort of middle-class uncertainty is the result of applying for planning permission for a new conservatory.


Abergwoun (Fishguard)
David Humphreys

While the exhibition seemed less hectic, more relaxed (certainly by my third Pimm’s it was), what it clearly evidenced was that there are, in sheds and garages, back rooms and spare rooms, an awful lot of genuinely talented artists out there who will never outrage the Daily Mail, maybe never get their own exhibition but have created something wonderful and, for one summer at least, had their work exhibited in one of the greatest galleries in the world and were glorious.

Summertime, and the cricket is easy

Today is supposed to be the hottest day of the year so far.

It certainly feels like it. I have made sure that I have derived maximum enjoyment from it by sitting indoors in the shade, sipping cool drinks and listening to Test Match Special. Something of a cliché? Possibly, but I recall that in the hot summers of my youth, the cricket was the background to whatever else was happening. Cricket is criticised because it takes five days to play a match, but surely that’s one of the many great things about it. Doing anything properly; building a cathedral, erecting a henge, singing a German opera, takes time. Things that are less impressive – instant coffee, Pot Noodle, eating anything that is ‘fun’ sized is less satisfying.

A colleague recently asked me if we weren’t in fact seeing a return to ‘proper’ weather, like wot we ad when we were kids! They have a point. Winter actually came with snow. Real, proper fluffy white snow rather than the brown slush we’ve been putting up with that insinuates itself into your shoes and, for some science-defying reason, never melts once it’s in there!

Now we have the sort of summer that’s turning the lawns the same shade of brown as the faded poleroids that document the last time we had a summer like this. I foresee hosepipe bans and brown lawns for everyone except the Midnight Waterer who is bright enough to realise that he’s not supposed to be watering his lawn, but not bright enough to realise that somebody in authority might make the connection between a street full of sepia grass and a single lawn of emerald green.

The idea then of climate change actually being caused by nostalgia has been added to the other theories about global warming. What nostalgia will not affect is my dress sense. Judging by those same faded photographs I was a big fan of man-made fibres and spent the summer of ’76 sporting nylon tee shirts decorated with pictures of Action Man. Not a good look on a fat adult.

The butterfly effect

Taking advantage of the opportunity to wander outside without the precaution of donning wellies, coat and snorkel this weekend, I made the most of the unexpected good weather by lounging in the garden and monitoring the conflict between torpor and my desire for a cold beer.

As afternoon turns into evening, somebody at a flight control desk somewhere flips a switch and, thanks to a change in flight plans and runway approaches, or possibly just for variety, the patch of sky over my head is filled not just with darting swifts but with the occasional jet aeroplane, toiling across the blue.

The appearance of these jets is always preceded or followed by a gentle wind of passing. This is not, I am sure, imagination - hot weather means that I have perfected the art of sitting perfectly still. When a 747 goes past, I can see the effect of the wind as well as feel it myself.

It makes you wonder what violence is being done to the air so that something so far away (luckily they are always high by the time they pass) can have such an effect.

Byways

I am composing this while standing up. Not, as you may reasonably assume, as a homage to Hemmingway (one must always be ready to pay homage to Hemmingway, but one must also be suspicious of anyone who is not a blood-relative and asks you to call you ‘Papa’. This is surely a step away from calling a family friend ’uncle’ and those inverted commas mean only one thing - ‘special cuddles’, years in therapy and never being able to properly enjoy Christmas again!), nor because it is the feast day of some Saint martyred by standing, nor even through misdirected patriotism (this manifests itself in beatings of ethnic minorities after dark).

No, I am composing this standing up because my arse feels like that of a buggered bum-boy after a Barrymore pool-party.

The reason? I was out on my bicycle this weekend. The weather was glorious and it seemed quite the thing to do to bike over to the park, point the trusty steed off the path and onto one of the trails through the trees and meadows and see where a sense of adventure, a lot of peddling in low gear and a great deal of sweat could take you.

It’s not that big a park, but by the simple method of criss-crossing it, it turned into quite a long ride - enough to justify a stop for refreshments at the tea shop and at least two occasions when I thought my front forks would end up pointing towards the heavens over my prostrate corpse. I think that the illusion of size is brought about in part by the screening off of the traffic noise and by the planting. At the moment everything is in leaf and so nature screens meadow from meadow. As for the meadows themselves - the grass is long (not as long as the grass used to conceal the ‘raptors in ‘Jurassic park III’, or I would have gone home for a cup of tea and a biccie until the trembling of fear passed), but long enough to contain fumbling couples, sullen teens sitting alone (that’s not just by themselves, which anyone can do, but ‘alone’, the exclusive preserve or the teen), as well as not-so-sullen teens, sitting with a book in the middle of a meadow and apparently enjoying the sunshine and solitude.

Tracks marked and unmarked, paved and unpaved, cross the park. Some of them are mere dirt tracks, other are lost byways - obviously roads at some point, paved in concrete but now - forgotten, overgrown, the branches of the bordering trees interlacing above them to form a tunnel of damp green gloom - an ideal spot to stop your bike and wait for your heart rate to return to normal.

And the arse? Well, despite the best efforts of a gel-filled saddle, I think I may have been somewhat too enthusiastic when riding. It’s great fun rushing down a trail at high speed, hammering over rough ground and tree-roots but, that evening, when I re-mounted to go and visit friends - it felt as if somebody had brought a cricket-bat to bear on my tender portions!

Obviously, if I am to enjoy the rough stuff this summer, I will need to toughen up, or learn to peddle side-saddle.