In our brave new RV world, there is the continuing issue of grey waste (from the sink/bath), and black waste (from the loo), and the disposal thereof. The corner plot we’ve been given at Frank’s campsite has electricity and its own water supply, which is a big bonus. But it isn’t very close to the sewer point. In order to reach it, Steve has to drive Georgie through the trees on Frank’s orchardy bit, in the middle of the campsite.
I find this unbearable. Although he drives expertly through a very small gap, the screeching of the trees as they scrape along both sides of the van drives me nuts. I am constantly on the lookout for branches to snag on the wing mirrors or the awning pole, and to hear them being wrenched off. There are mere centimetres on each side. The other inhabitants of the campsite (the Intrepids) find this quite amusing, but I usually go and have a shower, and avoid the whole thing.
So, one day, I foolishly mutter, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we had a little extra hose, and then we could reach the sewer without packing everything down, lifting the levellers, bringing in the slide out, etc., etc.?’ And Steve decides to go with it, and buys a great long length of hose.
Now, the original hose is nine centimetres in circumference, and folds flat so that everything gets squeezed out as you roll it back up. It is also opaque. The new hose is barely six centimetres in circumference, pretty solid, and also transparent. The sewer point is also slightly uphill.
There are clues here as to what can go wrong.
First of all, Steve connects all the hoses beautifully: perfect joins, no leaks. The new multi-hose snakes its way over the grass and through the trees with aplomb. Then Steve turns on the macerator and we watch the original hose inflate as the effluent slowly chugs it’s way up to the new piece. After which it fills the hose with horrible, visible, lumpy ………… you get the drift.
And then the macerator chokes, and stops working. And we are left with MILES of hose filled with last week’s lunch.
To be emptied by hand. Oh yes.
I stand in the orchard holding the transparent hose over the sewer point, while Steve rolls up the first one from the van end, forcing the … stuff up to my end. I have to hold it high in order to make the air pockets (God, I hope they’re air pockets and not just massively visible farts) move the right way along the hose, swooshing it all down towards the end.
I watch things I neither wanted, nor expected, to see again, swim past me, upstream, like little chocolate salmon. It takes bloody ages, as the direction of flow changes according to the size of the ‘air pockets’.
Afterwards, I stay in the shower for a very, very long time.
While I’m scrubbing the top ten layers of skin from my body, Steve screeches past the trees and empties the van properly. And, for good measure, threads the outsidetap hose through the bathroom window, points it over the loo, and flushes the whole system through with fresh water.
Which should have been fine. Except, when I get out of the shower, Steve tells me the hose pulled free and flooded our bathroom a bit. Not a big deal, he says; he’s mostly cleaned it up.
I should have paid more attention to that ‘mostly’.
Now, it helps if you understand that when Georgie was built, the technique was to lay the carpet first, then erect all the walls and cupboards on top. Our carpet has been there since 1998. In the bathroom – yuk! So one of the first things I did when we moved in was to rip it up from there, and replace it with lino.
Because of the structures on top, it was no mean feat pulling it out. I got it off the floor (and the accompanying floppy foam underlay), but was unable to lift it from inside the under sink cupboard, or up the side of the bits that cover all the piping, etc.
And, naturally, these are the bits that get soaked – and only mostly cleaned up.
A week later I’m cleaning my teeth, and I notice something yellow protruding from under the sink cupboard. A swollen bit of underlay, I think, and try to yank it out. Big shock – it is cold, wet and rubbery. It is also living.
‘There’s a monster in the bedroom’, I say: ‘you made it, so you deal with it.’
And it is basically a huge fungus that has grown under the carpet. I think it has eaten all the underlay. Steve rips out all the carpet that he can reach, and leaves a fan heater blowing into the cupboard in an effort to dry it out. After a week the fan heater is still being used. The floor is still damp. And we do not know if there is a bath-sized mushroom underneath that, waiting to poke its head out soon.
The gasman cometh (not)
After we’ve been here several weeks, it starts to get a bit chilly of an evening. The Intrepids sensibly point out that we’re already paying for electricity, so why use our gas for heating? ‘Go and buy a small fan heater’, they say. So we get two, which is lucky as one is constantly employed drying out the bathroom.
But it’s too late by then and we’ve used too much gas. The indicator says it’s nearly all gone and if you bang on the tank it sounds hollow, which is the true test, obviously.
However, since our last manoeuvre with the van, a largish campervan has been parked on the corner, making it impossible for us to get out the way we came in. But Frank has a fence panel that he routinely removes to let larger vehicles in and out, and he decides this is the way for us to go. But it is at the bottom of the orchardy bit, and is just grass with some gravel chucked on top. It has also been raining to the point that Noah would have thrown up his hands and quit. Ergo, we wait for a dryish day to go out and fill up with gas.
And we wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Meanwhile, Steve searches for the right adaptor to change our gas feed over to cylinder rather than tank, but draws a blank (as our RV is American and the screws go the wrong way, apparently). We discuss getting a small BBQ and using that to cook with, but the problem is that our hot water and the fridge/freezer both run on gas, and now the indicator says that it is non-existent.
And the weather forecast says that the next few days are going to be even wetter: so like it or not, we have to go out and get gas. We pick a day that is dry but overcast, Frank removes the fence panel, and we get out without any problem.
Then we fail to find any gas. Everywhere we go is either closed (despite the signs that say ‘open’), or has the wrong gas, or is unreachable in a 34ft vehicle. But we finally find some after being out for hours, and head home to find it’s rained, a little, while we’ve been away.
Halfway through the open fence panel, Steve stops to check in with Frank who’s standing nearby….
… and the back wheel sinks several inches into the muddy ground and Georgie flatly refuses to move.
It is late, and getting dark (which happens fairly instantly here – the sun hits the horizon like it’s trying to do it some damage), and Frank, Steve and all the male Intrepids can’t get it to budge. So this is where we spend the night – half in and half out of the campsite, and on a terrible list to starboard, which requires me cushioning the van against the metal gatepost.
The next day, a local tractor drags us back out. In the pouring rain, of course.
Frank kindly (and sensibly) gives us a new location – right above the sewer point! So now it is easy to empty the waste tanks, although we have no water like we did in the corner plot.
Sadly, when ‘plumbing’ us back in, Steve loses his wedding ring. He’s lost nearly 3 stone in weight, and it just slips off, unnoticed. The Intrepids are all out the next morning with rakes and brushes, searching through the grass and gravel, trying to find it. So sweet. They even spot a metal detector at a local car boot sale, and tell us they would have bought it, if it had been strong enough to respond to gold.
The newest Intrepids
We have a lovely new edition to the Intrepids. They claim their names are Ian and Sue, but you can’t fool me: they are Mr and Mrs Jim Broadbent (that voice, face, and accent are unmistakable).
We go for another long walk together and this time we tackle the hill to the lookout point. All the way up, ‘Jim Broadbent’ stays next to Steve (because he happens to overhear me saying that Steve’s angina could play up, and he wants to keep a close eye on him.) So kind.
Terry makes us all marmalade from the oranges on Frank’s trees. We’ve all been donating packets of sugar, collected from the cafes we stop at after the walks. It is fabulous and I scoff half a jar in record time.
Brenda and John have a ‘happy hour’ that starts a three in the afternoon, and is still going strong at nine. I miss most of it by being in bed with bad CFS. But Steve gets hammered, which is a thing that I have only seen him do three times in as many decades.
I get him home, give him some food and coffee, but it’s too late – he feels ill and needs some fresh air. Steve never needs fresh air; he prefers the ready-warmed variety. So we wander down into the orange grove, where he starts singing, Let it go, let it go, from Frozen..
‘I love that song’, he admits.
It takes him several attempts to get back up the (slight) slope to the van, and he requires assistance even then. Once inside, he expresses a deep and pure love for the breadboard.
The next day, Brenda says, ‘It were that Terry – he wouldn’t let him go until he’d finished that last bottle – or were it two? Can’t remember.’
I’m guessing it was two. At the very least.
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