49. A letter to Terry ✒️ #7
49. A letter to Terry ✒️ #7
Finding where you’ve put things, and how not to pack a campervan.
Dear Terry,
Thank you for your latest letter, in which you’d included your silhouette in the style of a Wedgwood Jasperware porcelain cameo. I’ve had a go at your likeness myself - what do you think? I’m calling him Jerry.
I’m glad you enjoyed my last letter, and that you appreciated the fact that it had been delivered by Royal Mail rather than our customary cyberbots!
I’m sorry about the squared paper, but even if I’d found some actual writing paper please know that it would have been neither pink nor scented, and nor would the envelope have contained rose petals. I mean, roses aren’t even in season yet – those velvety Valentine ones are forced into bloom so far ahead of when they’re supposed to flower that I always feel rather sorry for them.
Spring has sprung in this little corner of south-east UK: it was lovely to wake up last week to hear the dawn chorus for the first time since last year! Hearing it at getting-up time is at last a sign that the world is warming up and those dark mornings I’ve been getting so sick of over the winter are finally becoming lighter.
While I was out on a sunny walk at the weekend a robin which was perched just feet away from me took me by surprise when it started to sing. Because I hadn’t seen the bird its sudden racket made me jump, but as soon as I picked up my phone from the patch of mud it had landed in I hit the button for Voice Memos to capture the treat. Have a listen – it’s gorgeous!
I laughed when you told me that rather than going to the trouble of locating the stamps you had already bought you would simply buy another book of them. Terry, I hear you. The only time I can ever find things like the new bulb I’ve bought for the cooker, the right-sized battery for the bathroom scales or the next tub of walking boot wax is when I go to put away the NEW one of same that I’ve had to buy at the last minute because I can’t find the one I’ve already got.
Every single time. 🙄
I’ve attempted repeatedly to reverse-engineer the scenario, imagining each time hypothetical deliveries of much-needed replacement items needing putting away, even finding props to represent any article which I need to surface from the drawer of despair. But no, it only ever works when I’ve bought two more of whatever I’m missing – a bulb to relight the cooker AND a spare for next time – because I’ll always find the bulb I already own when I’m putting the new one away.
We’ve just arrived back from our first camping trip of 2023. Since acquiring our home on wheels in 2020 we’ve got packing the van down to a fine art: I have a packing list on an Excel spreadsheet which I tailor to every trip, basing each new list on the previous one. I save them all for future reference.
Keen to not spoil his unbroken streak of questioning my packing confidence within only five minutes of setting off, Jim asked me before we’d even reached the main road what we’d forgotten.
‘Nothing!’ I replied. ‘I have the van list, remember?’
We’d reached the M1 before it finally struck me that the rattling of unwedged-in flasks of coffee and soup in our respective door buckets was because I hadn’t packed any water. Now, it’s normally a struggle to get our two 5-litre bags of water into the door buckets, but once they’re in they dull any rattling of steel against soupy steel, and slosh their bulging contents around in a rather soothing by-the-sea fashion. I couldn’t believe it: we’d only recently been discussing whether to buy a couple more water bags from the camping shop in anticipation of one of ours springing a leak. And not only had I left them behind, I hadn’t even come across them in my search for the things I needed to pack, let alone filled them.
When we decided that we’d take in an English Heritage property during our lunchtime break from driving, one of us discovered that he hadn’t packed his membership card for free entry at about the same time as the other one realised she’d left her shampoo behind. Terry, if we hadn’t ascertained at that point that we had actually packed the camera gear, the tea bags and the requisite bottle of travelling pop, we’d’ve turned around at Watford Gap Services.
The van list had failed. But how? 🤔
Our previous overnight trip had been to my parents’ house for Christmas, where we'd decided that we’d sleep in the van on their driveway overnight1 like the festive little elves we were. We wouldn’t need our big bags of water, shampoo or membership cards to visitor attractions there, now would we? We’d be eating and drinking in the house, using the free-for-all shampoo in the bathroom, and any trips to local attractions were off the cards – I mean, it was Christmas!
So, for our Christmas trip packing, I’d taken those things off the list. And then foolishly used that very same spreadsheet to base our packing on for this last trip.
‘Come on, Rebecca!’ I hear you say. ‘We all know that you plan better than this!’
All was not lost. We bought a 2-litre bottle of water from a service station, refilling it when necessary from the drinking water tap on our pitch. We found the scrag end of the previous bottle of shampoo in one of the van’s two drawers. And despite adding an unscheduled extra night’s stay to our itinerary we ran out of neither teabags nor undercrackers2.
Now that we’re back I’ve deleted the culprit ‘Christmas’ tab from the van list spreadsheet, and set up a new one for our next trip. And once those two water bags I’ve just ordered have arrived, Terry, I know that I will at least be able to find the ones I’d forgotten to pack.
All the very best, as always,
Rebecca
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Yeah, right. In actual fact the lure of the woodburning stove inside the house, cosy chats with long-not-seen family members and Jim’s unfettered access to his father-in-law’s impressive collection of single malts had proved too great, and we bunked down for the night in my parents’ very comfortable spare room. Well, it was Christmas…
Always take extra undies: list or no list, extra pairs of smalls and socks are non-negotiable.
A very delightful letter, Rebecca. I'll say more in my reply, but just for now I wanted to say that whenever I go anywhere I never take shampoo because the hotel or self-catering place always provide sachets or little bottles. As these places are not exactly inexpensive, ~I always bring a few home. They come in handy when travelling a conference or something. Mind you, one hotel I stayed in didn't have sachets. It had a couple of huge dispensers stuck to the wall in the shower --- one for shampoo and one for conditioner. Took me ages getting them off....
I loved this Rebecca! And empathise with replacing the things and putting them in an OBVIOUS place. Never so obvious to my scattered brain a few months later. And I loved listening to the robin just now whilst in the cacophony of Heathrow-it was a balm of nature in an otherworldly place. I’m enjoying these letters. Terry-I need to go back and catch up on your end of the correspondence. Cheers to you both.