As regular followers of my weekly scribblings will know, we have abandoned regular life – work, home, council rates etc – for an unspecified period to sample life on the road.
We came across loads of people who said they wanted to do the same thing, so we’ve thrown caution (and sometimes, I think, our sanity) to the wind and are giving it a go. We are trying our best to give the big smoke a miss and focus on small-town NZ.
Now, when you live in a caravan fulltime, there are some things you have to ensure you have each day. Like water. And if you can get hot water, you are allowed to consider yourself extremely clever.
Unfortunately, the other day I couldn’t so I didn’t.
Luckily, we were pulling into a spot in a little town where we heard the bloke over the fence was a bona fide expert in all things caravan and engineering.
I’m sure you know the type. There may even be one where you live. He’ll probably have old bits of machinery laying ‘round all over the place. He’s always repairing something in his shed.
Anyway.
We rock up to this parking place, get the caravan in position and, after heaps of faffing around setting up – a necessary requirement in our new life after parking, I’ve discovered – I am in need of a shower.
But there’s a problem. I can’t get any hot water.
Now, here’s the thing. Our caravan is a bit fancy. It’s got all sorts of whistles and bells and electronic this and that. And if none of that works, it’s all replicated on one of those app thingies you can get on your phone.
Unfortunately, I was at the back of the queue when it came to interest in all that stuff, and even further back when it came to learning how it all works.
Thankfully, Mrs P is an expert – all women are, apparently – and we manage. Which basically means I just press any button when I like and if it doesn’t do what I think it should, she sorts it all out.
So that’s what I did the other day as I was standing there, basically in my birthday suit. I pushed all the buttons that looked appropriate on the wall control panel, and then when that didn’t work, all the ones that looked similarly appropriate on the app thingy.
Long story short, nothing worked. For me or my “in-house” expert. So an hour or so later, we gave up. I put my full kit back on and went in search of the Expert Neighbour.
Luckily, he had just finished rebuilding or repairing something and positively leapt at the chance to come over and warm us up. So to speak.
“Where’s the fuse box?” he said eagerly as he arrived on-site, impressive-looking bit of electrical test equipment already in his hands. I have a feeling he might sleep with it.
“I got it online,” he said proudly. “Been looking for a chance to use it.”
Sadly, I couldn’t help him with the location of the fuse box.
We thought it was under the bed but that was something else. Then the black box thing in one of Mrs P’s cupboards turned out to be a, well, a black box thing. Still don’t know what it is, but it looked important so we took everything out of the cupboard to have a good look.
Nope.
Some time later, I could see the enthusiasm of our Expert Neighbour was wavering. So just to cheer him up a bit, I asked if he would mind testing the electrical current on our fridge. His eyes lit up and he disappeared, or rather his head and shoulders did, into a cupboard underneath.
While he was gone I rang up the dealer’s head office and asked for help.
Mrs P grabbed my phone and put the guy on speakerphone – experience has taught her it’s best to do that because I’ll forget everything the technician will have told me the minute I put the phone down.
It turns out we don’t have a traditional fuse box, much to the disappointment of Expert Neighbour.
Apparently, the best way to sort this particular issue is to open the app and press the icon which looks like a drop of water. It’s got the letter H written in it.
I’m cringing as I write this now but I heard myself say: “What’s that stand for?”
“Hot,” came the reply. “Just press it and you’ll have hot water. Somebody must have turned it off.”
Gulp.
Naturally, I blamed the kids – even though two of them are currently overseas and the other two are both at the other end of the country.
The head office technician muttered a farewell which suggested he’d heard it all before and was used to dealing with idiots. Expert Neighbour just laughed and went back to find something to repair.
And I went and had my shower.
The next day, Mrs P and I took a large bag of washing into the local laundromat – something else you have to do when you live on the road.
We washed all our clobber then moved across to the large bank of dryers on the other side of the room, where we chucked it into one of the few not in use. We had 20 minutes or so to kill, so we went for a quick stroll.
When we came back, we could see our machine had two minutes to go so we stood by it and waited.
Strangely, the dryer next to ours appeared to have no door.
Seeing as it was the only one not in use, I deduced it had been vandalised, with the evil miscreants obviously having ripped the door off its hinges and making off.
“Why would somebody do that?” I said to Mrs P. “Makes you wonder about some people, doesn’t it?”
My Beloved nodded in solemn agreement.
With our machine showing just a minute to go, a bloke came in and began stuffing his own items into the “broken” dryer.
I let him go for a bit, thinking he’d see the door was missing, but he didn’t.
“That one’s broken, mate,” I said. “The door’s been ripped off. Ours will be finished shortly; you can use it if you like.”
He looked at me confused and shook his head.
Then he reached across the front of my machine, grabbed his machine’s door, which had been open fully but back on to mine so I couldn’t see it, and closed it.
Then he said: “I’m guessing you’re the guy from the caravan up the road I heard about at the pub last night.”
