Caravan

David didn’t want to sleep in the top bunk anymore as he’d found an earwig on the top of the sheets.  They would come into the van when it was damp and hide in the nooks and crannies of which there were plenty.  Dad had a good look though under the mattress, shaking out the sheets and the pillows and found nothing.  Eventually he persuaded his eldest son to get back into bed in the small bedroom at the end of the static caravan, two boys and a girl in two bunks and a single bed.  Mam and Dad were in the double bed in the main part of the van, opposite the cooker.  There was no fridge or toilet inside in those days.

We settled down to sleep but a strange scarping noise was keeping us awake and in our young minds it turned into the huffing and puffing of a ghostly train on the main line a couple of miles away inland.  It was another reason for Dad to get out of his warm bed and after twenty minutes of looking and head scratching it turned out to be nothing more than an old aluminium pan hanging in the cupboard, its lip against the wall and rolling with the rocking of the van.  We were unconvinced and it took us a good while to get the fear out of our bodies, the adrenalin out of our veins and to fall asleep.

Morning came before we knew it.  The walls were damp with our breath.  The caravan door was open and the smell of wet grass and bracken and sand and salt in the air crept under the bedroom door and it was time to get up.  We rubbed the sleep out of our eyes and slipped on our shoes to make our way to the toilet block at the back of the site.  Our feet left a silver trail in the dew from the metal step at the door of the van, past the rabbit holes and along the tyre tracks cut by the cars and tractors in the fragile soil.  The toilet block was cold.  We washed ourselves and got our selves ready but the sand got everywhere and we could never really wash it away until we got home. 

The concrete floors and the steel sinks and the white porcelain toilets all smelt of disinfectant and sucked the heat from our bodies but breakfast was waiting for us back at the van and the toilet facilities were a small price to pay to be able to stay in the caravan by the sea.  In half and hour or so we would be down by the shoreline.  We were young and back then everyday playing on the beach was something to look forward to and the summers seemed to last for ever.