Mara's Musings

This is just a reminder from a campervan enthusiast who is now an ex-VW campervan owner.

The Main Suspect

Genevieve is no more. Or is likely to be no-more according to the Insurance Company who are currently assessing the damage that was caused by a fault on the battery which as most enthusiasts know (in the T25 at least) is housed underneath the drivers seat.  The picture on the right is what is left of my battery, after something caused a short and it set light to the back of my drivers seat.  Since I was driving at the time, this was not a particularly pleasant experience!

Remains of the Driver's seat.

In the time it took from smelling and seeing smoke, pulling over and getting out through the back so I could grab the dog - which was under a minute - the whole of the back of the seat was ablaze.  No fire retardant foam in these old vans.  The Fire Brigade arrived in about 10 minutes and the whole van was billowing black smoke.  The image on the left shows what is left of the back of my seat, which was actually very little!

A full set of the images of what is left of the front of the van following this fire can be seen by clicking here.

Genevieve in better days

The view from the insurance company based on my description of the damage and everyone who has seen it including the guy who came to tow her to the assessors is that she is a complete write-off.  I am now waiting to hear back from the insurance.  Despite being quite upset and pissed off by the whole thing, and having had a pretty awful experience, I cannot help but think that considering the speed with which this fire took hold I am lucky to be alive. Or at the very least to have escaped a lengthy and painful stay in the burns unit.

It is the end of a dream for me that I had of owning a VW camper every since seeing the red VW microbus in Arlo Guthrie's film "Alice's Restaurant".  I don't know if I will ever own another, they are expensive to  buy and even more expensive to run, but at least I did live my dream for a while!

So for all you van owners - check the electrics and make sure the battery housing is sealed tight.  It seems likely according to the brigade that something had got into the housing to make the battery short, emit a spark and the rest, as they say, is history.  And so is my van.

Well, following 10 days off in a muddy field know as Glastonbury Festival, I have taken a good hard look at the areas in which I need to improve my repetoire of skills.

Over the next 12 months I plan to offer a new and extensive range of services. These will (hopefully) include extending the number of content management systems (like Wordpress) that are available for my clients, building more extensive knowledge of e-commerce sites and also mobile site development and database production and management.

As well as this I intend to undertake a course which will enable me to design, manage and install networks which should take around 8 months to complete.

I have a lot of hard work ahead of me, but I need to move forward with my business to ensure I am not left behind in what is a competitive industry.

Please keep your eye on my blog over the coming months, and look for updates to my website, to follow my progress.

I have a few people in my life who will look at me and ask because they see by my demeanour that I am obviously not.   These people are the true friends, the ones who don't pressurise you into talking about it if you don't want to, or get you to expose more of yourself than you are willing and will listen without judgement and also without looking bored or dragging the conversation back to themselves.  These people are rare gems indeed.

Mostly, and we all do it, we ask people  "are you OK?" and they say "Yes" or "I'm fine" and we are happy.  Off we go in our own little world where we have proved to ourselves and the other person just how caring we are because we took time out to enquire as to the wellbeing of our fellow human.

If you say NO this causes immediate confusion.  You broke the social rule.  You are not supposed to be honest because that's not playing the little game.  Now you have put that person in a awkward position where they basically have to demonstrate to you that they give enough of a toss to listen to what you have to say.  Or even worse, if you tell them you are not OK but don't want to discuss it with them.  What to do?  Prise it out of you or just be more honest, breathe a sigh of relief and skip off. 

Maybe I am just feeling cynical today, or maybe its time I learnt from the repeated experience of the fact that no matter how much time you have for other people, they will rarely return the favour!

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I became single after being either married or in a long term relationship for 21 years.  So at some point I decided to dip my toe back in the water and experience the joys on online dating.  To be fair to myself I was under no illusions as to the likelihood of my finding "the one" online but, hey, a few dates can never go amiss right?

Wrong.  There are indeed many great men in the world.  Not many of them seem in inhabit the dating sites.  I have met 3 possibly 4 couples who met on line, met in real life, connected and stayed together for longer than a couple of years.  Some are still together now so it is possible - just don't get your hopes up too much!!


Here, in a nutshell are my top 3 worst dates: (Names have been changed to protect the hideous):

#3  Andy - Andy liked his  dog...no he LOVED his dog, he LOVED all dogs soooo much!  Lovely but when dogs were concerned no sense of humour.  He was in essence looking for someone to look after both himself and said dog whilst he was in hospital having a back op.  I guess a nurse seemed the perfect girlfriend.  He did not, of course, put this in his bio on the site. 

The date started pleasantly enough although no chemistry on either side, but that's the way it goes.  It ended when he told me about the lady in his road who drove with 6 Jack Russells bouncing about loose in the back.  An amusing image.  I grinned.  He launched - it apparently was not funny because she could brake suddenly  and one could fly through the window.  My brain = cartoon image of dog shape in windscreen.  Me = PMSL Andy = disgusted and very, very angry!

Goodbye Andy
Site to Avoid  = Dating Direct.

#2 Chris - Chris was a PCSO with a nurse fetish.  No he did not put that on his bio but he was chatting to several other women all of whom I worked with, one in the same department (which was great fun as we could compare notes!). 

Anyway, out of interest more than anything else, and yeah he looked OK in his pic with his uniform on, I agreed to meet.  We went to a local pub for drinks.  Mistake. He spent the first 20 minutes telling me how he hadn't had a woman for ages (I could see why) and I ended up pinned in a booth with some idiot trying to snog me and stroke my hair.  When I told him to get off he asked me if I hated sex!! Not a good start.  So the only way forward was wine. The date ended when I squeezed past him to get out of the booth and he slapped my bum, I went straight to the loo, texted a mate who rang me "as the babysitter" and I fled.  The guy was still plaguing me days later saying he had "felt so much chemistry". 

Goodbye Chris
Site to Avoid = Girls Date for Free (I know, the clue was in the name!)

And my #1 - Steven. God this was dire. 

I met him in a cafe where I got his life story.  A case in point of why not to share too much early on.  Married 4 times, ex-Para who got thrown out for kicking the crap out of an officer when he came back from the Gulf, ended up in the loony bin and was "possibly" schizophrenic but they hadn't decided yet.  Then he announced exactly what he would like to do with me sexually in detail so graphic it would have made Hugh Heffner blush.  He suggested a walk on the local common, I agreed because I didn't want to appear rude (God how times, and I, have changed!) and he started trying to snog me.


After 10 minutes he disappared to the toilet, only to come back and tell me that he had only gone because he was so excited he had "leaked a bit".  I fled.  He texted for weeks afterwards until I basically told him to F-off (my polite gene was obviously away that day).

Goodbye Steven.
Site to Avoid = yep, Girls Date for Free, a bit of a theme developing.

Before everyone goes off and deletes their online dating profile I did meet some pretty nice guys, they just weren't for me.  I probably I wasn't for them either!  However the numpties outweighed the nice guys by probably a 10:1 ratio. 

I have not included in this list 2 people who I did go on to have long-term dealings, though not necessarily relationships, with.  One was particularly grim and would make an amusing blog but it's too close to kiss-and-tell to be fair, the other is a man who started off as a friend with "benefits" and ended up being probably one of the best male friends I have had.  He is not included either!!

I finally met my partner the old-fashioned way, at a picnic via friends.  

Only 7 more sleeps and I will be wending my way onsite at Glastonbury Festival for my stint in the backstage passes office on the Theatre and Circus field.  The angst is already starting to permeate...I am talking 5 people on site this year with all their stuff plus rucksacks and tents belonging to 4 other people.  I think Genevieve is going to be a rather snug fit on the way on.

Lots of questions about stuff to bring which can only be answered by reproducing a list that was facebooked by an extremely efficient and experienced camping friend of mine:

Camping Kit
Tent – practice putting it up before leaving if you’ve not done it before
Roll mats
Torch (preferably wind-up, preferably small as you might need to carry it all evening before you actually need to use it to get back in your tent!)
Sleeping bag
Water bottle
Blanket
Hat & gloves for cold nights
Hot water bottle (!) (only if there is a source of hot water on site)
Some empty carrier bags / bin bags
Personal Kit
Waterproof jacket
At least 2 pairs of footwear – walking boots, wellies, sandals/crocks (I will defend my crocks: waking at 3am desperate for a piss still drunk in the dark is no time to be prattling about trying to put wellies on)
Medication (+ a written note of it’s name and dose in case it gets lost and you need replacements)
Shower gel
Scissors
Shampoo – Lush do lovely solid shampoo – no chance of leaking
Soap
Hand sanitizer
Sunscreen
Baby wipes
Day bag
Clothes – include layers

So there's a start anyway


In the meantime I have been nagging people to get tents and rucksacks to me by Saturday noon at the latest so I can play VW Tetris and get it all loaded.  The plan being to chill out Saturday night with Richard and the kids, cook a full English breakfast for everyone and then head off to be there by 2, help put up people's tents and head off to my first shift at 4pm.  That's the plan. 

The weather is appalling but on the plus side I do have a heater on board so I wont be suffering from the cold, Richard has invested in some thermal window pads which will keep us cool if its hot and snug if its cold.  I also have a chemical loo in case my dreaded IBS decides to kick in like it has most years.  And in the light of recent leak problems I also managed to purchase a waterproof tarp to sling over the skylight in the roof in case of emergency!

I am both looking forward to it and dreading it in equal measure.  It is the same every year but I always love it when I am there.  Bring it on!

I am not saying it doesn't exist, and I am not casting moral judgement on the subject of infidelity but it seems to me that as soon as a celebrity or public figure gets caught with his pants down they throw their hands up in the air, and say "Oh my God, I'm a sex addict!"  

Recent events following the spectacular failure of the "super injunction" taken out by Ryan Giggs to spare us all the details of this philandering tosser's sex life have now typically culminated in his seeking treatment for his so-called  "sex addiction".  A very neat way of sidestepping the responsibility for shagging your brother's wife and some random z-lister from big brother. 

In an article for BBC Health a Doctor in the field says that "it affects approximately 6 per cent of the population".  Call me cynical but is it actually that likely that of those 6% it seems that most, if not all of them, are celebrties who get caught out doing the dirty and then try to wriggle out of it the consequences of their inability to keep their dick in their pants?

The "symptoms" of sex addition Dr Mcnair lists in the BBC article sound remarkably like the normal expressions of guilt people feel when they are cheating, and especially when they get caught! So are they all sex addicts?  I think not.


For some reason many of the wives of these guys just seem to accept this as an explanation. The answer as to why can sensibly only be found in the man's bank balance.  The loss of celebrity lifestyle and status must be an extremely powerful motivator for these women.  But if their men were truly addicted to sex how come they only seem to have affairs with extremely beautiful women?  If it was a real "addiction" anyone would do, including the 56 year old Portuguese maid with the facial hair and body odour problem.  It seems the addiction is actually quite selective. 

How many of the ordinary man-on-the-street who  tried this particular excuse would get a hearing?  Probably not many.  In most cases he would either be shown the door so fast his nose would bleed, end up getting intimately aquainted with a pan several times, or both!!