Park Life

So we’ve spent the last few days on our annual Easter pilgrimage, camping out in a caravan park and I was given pause yesterday and stopped to think about the different types of people that one finds in a caravan park.

There’s a few stereo types that I thought that I’d take a moment to share.

In previous years, there’s been the young girls that like to strut about the caravan park in all sorts of weather in their bikini’s. And whilst one can be appreciative of the aesthetics that this provides, when you look around the caravan park, you have to stop and wonder just who it is that they would like to be impressing. Because as far as I could determine, what they lacked was an audience of the young single male type. But that was a couple of years ago and clearly most of them have moved on.

There is of course the contingent that is made up of us and our family and friends (quite possibly referred to by those outside the group as breeders), which means families of kids that terrorise the caravan park in various ways. In years past it was the crying babies as we put them to sleep or during the middle of the night whereas these days, whilst the baby trend has continued with the extended group of friends that are part of our ‘party’, our own contingent’s terror now takes the form of t-ball games during the day or noisy games of spotlight (reminiscent of my own activities here some 20 years ago) at night, or even bicycles screaming around the asphalt roadway at excessive speeds.

And of course, there’s the group down the end that show up with trail bikes and noisy toys and like to party into the night. But given that we’re up playing cards on most nights until late, carrying on drinking and being silly, this isn’t really a problem for us.

And of course, then there’s the demographic that gave me pause and prompted me to sit down and write this. It’s the older blokes of the greying set that you find wandering about the caravan park.

Because you know when you’re standing in the amenities block, shaving or waiting for the shower early in the morning and a rotund, somewhat elderly, Mediterranean man walks in, toiletries bag tucked under one and towel over the shoulder and heads straight for cubicle number two that it’s time to swiftly vacate the premises. It doesn’t matter whether you’re only half way through shaving or partly unwashed, just grab your stuff and get out. Because the aural explosion that swiftly follows the closure of the door to cubicle number two is nothing compared to the violent and sudden assault that is about to confront the olfactories!

You soon learn to recognise these guys as they walk in and begin your hasty retreat.