I’m not sure a motorhomer is even a word but language evolves, new words appear and it’s pretty exciting to think that this particular new word -Motorhomer- first appeared in the pages of this humble blog. After a few weeks of living in our motorhome I thought I’d try and give you a flavour of just what motorhome life is like. OK, here we go.
Morning.
It takes me a while to get used to sleeping in our motorhome. It’s only small and there is a little dip in the bed just at the point of my lower back which has given me some backache in the past but lately I’ve learnt to either avoid it or just live with it. Another issue that affects our sleep is the way the van is parked but I’ll come back to that later. My place on the bed is over by the window and there is no way out for me except by climbing over Liz so one of my rules is to not have beer prior to going to bed. Otherwise I’ll be waking in the night wanting to wee and struggling to get out. Even so, I’m usually the first one up so I’ll shuffle over to the small bathroom for a wash and a shave.
On summer mornings I can handle a wash in cold water but as summer has come to a close I’m less inclined to do that. I can switch on the water heater but usually I just put a pan of water on the hob.
Despite the bathroom being small, actually very small, there is a basin, toilet and even a shower in there. To shower it’s important to switch on the water heater first, pull out the panels that keep the water away from the toilet and basin and then switch on the water. In a motorhome I’m always aware that there isn’t an endless supply of water so a good idea is to apply shower gel liberally to the body, switch on the water and get washed as quickly as possible using as little water as you can.
Note to self: Don’t drop the soap as it’s pretty difficult to bend down and pick it up in these cramped conditions.
Shower over, towel yourself down, get dressed and get the kettle on before hanging your towel out in the sun on the bike carrier to the rear of the van.
Next I’ll check my emails while the van chef, Liz, gets herself ready too.
I’m a big lover of breakfast. In fact I’m even tempted to say it’s my favourite meal of the day and I love a standard English breakfast. Bacon, sausage, black pudding, tomatoes and eggs, preferably poached, served with toast. That can be a little difficult on the cramped three ring stove in the van so lately we’ve been having a bacon omelette with some French bread. I’ll either walk to a bakery if there is one nearby or we usually have some bread in our little freezer which always keeps pretty well.
Noon
Another option is to not have breakfast at all but to save ourselves for lunch. In France there are many places that serve a cheap lunchtime menu which will consist of a buffet starter, a simple main meal, a cheese course and a dessert.
We found an excellent restaurant near to Parçay Les Pins called the Restaurant De La Gare, the Station Restaurant. The buffet starter is always my favourite and I fill my plate with pâté, cold meats, coleslaw and various salad items. A basket of French bread will appear and is usually topped up when it gets low. Vin de table is provided as well as some chilled water and on this occasion, a large bottle of cider as well. Not bad for 12.50 euros each!
OK, breakfast (or lunch) over it’s time to head off.
We will usually be parked in an aire in France and these special parking places, reserved for motor homes tend to have all the important things we might need. A very important thing is a place to empty the van toilet. It’s not a pleasant task but I tend to empty it whenever we get the opportunity. A lot of French aires have a water pipe to help you rinse your toilet cassette but many require a token, a jeton that is usually available from nearby local shops although there are many aire de camping cars that are completely free.
The van navigator (Liz) will usually have perused google maps for a plan d’eau, a French swimming lake and we’ll be off to find it. We usually factor in a stop for some French bread and some more French cheese as well as a box of wine.
It’s important of course to keep a check on our fuel. We usually fill up with diesel at French supermarkets as they tend to be cheaper than the usual petrol stations. What can be a bit of a pain is that many of them are unmanned. That’s not really a problem except I tend to use a travel card that I preload with Euros and it’s not accepted at unmanned petrol stations. Then I have to pull out my credit card and pay the foreign currency fee.
Our fridge and cooker are powered by LPG, liquid petroleum gas and we always keep a look out for stations that provide gas. The big problem when we first came to France was finding a petrol station with LPG. There didn’t seem to be any until eventually, we realised that in France it’s called GPL! Duh!
Swimming
In the French alps this year we found a fabulous lake. It was in a valley surrounded by hills and mountains. It had a parking place for camping cars, the French name for motorhomes and it wasn’t too busy.
Various French people arrived around 12 noon with picnic baskets for lunch and few had a pre lunch swim. The water in the lake was lovely and cool and it was wonderful to have a swim and then lie back on our towels and dry off in the sun.
Over on the other side a couple of fishermen dipped their rods in the water and waited patiently for the fish to bite. We read our books, competed against each other to finish that day’s sudoku and swam some more.
Later it’s time to find somewhere to stop for the night. Usually, we will stop by the lake or if we are trying to make our way to somewhere in particular, we might get a few miles under our belt before stopping again.
On our last trip we had planned one evening to visit a restaurant where we have stopped before. The restaurant, Micheline’s in the village of Berny Rivière, is not far from a large camping and holiday spot. Sadly, when we arrived we found it was closed and the owners had gone on holiday after the camp site, presumably the source of most of their customers, had closed at the end of the summer. We were very disappointed. We found a place to park, not far from another restaurant but then the heavens opened and an almighty downpour began. Oh well. I decanted some wine and Liz made us some food and just as it was time to serve, the rain cleared and the evening sun came out.
The downpours in France always make me think of something that happened to me years ago when I was hitch hiking in France. I was making my way to Paris in order to get the train back home and it began to rain. It was pretty heavy and I was sheltering under a small porch but then I noticed a bus stop on the other side of the road. I ran across but just then the rain came down, or so it seemed, in one almighty whoosh and it was if I’d decided to run under a waterfall. I got to the bus stop completely soaked. The rain cleared and the sun began to beat down again and as I walked along, steam began to rise off me!
Evening
On summer evenings I will usually get out our table and chairs and our little gas barbecue and we’ll have some salad with sausages and whatever meat we have bought cooked on the barbecue. We might finish with some cheese washed down with a glass of wine. Lovely.
Later we’ll be off to sleep but making sure the van is parked properly is very important. A tilt to the left and Liz will be rolling over and crowding me. Over to the right and I’ll be crowding her. A slight tilt forward and we tend to slide off our pillows and down the bed. If we have to have a tilt its better to tilt back toward our pillows but we do have chocks which we can slip under the wheels to level us up.
The sun going down after a day by a plan d’eau
We usually relax in the evenings with a book or an iPad but looking around I’ve seen some fabulous motorhomes this year, some with impressive satellite dishes so the occupants can watch TV. We’ve even seen some vehicles with a trailer towing a small car so they can park up and then drive off into town.
Personally, I’m happy with a good book.
As I write this, I’m in France once again as Liz and I have decided to nip over to the continent. We came over earlier this year and have wanted to return for a while but various appointments and arrangements have been in place, keeping us at home but what the heck we thought, time for another trip in our motorhome.
So, what else have I done on this trip? Well I’ve read books, after all reading has always been one of my greatest pleasures. I took it upon myself some time ago to read the entire library of Hamish Macbeth novels. They are not great works of literature but the world of books has everything for everyone and sometimes, I just like an old fashioned, easy going mystery read. Here in France, I’ve just finished Death of a Scriptwriter, the 14th entry into the series which wasn’t actually one of the best. The previous two were very good though, Death of a Macho Man and Death of a Dentist. If you are not familiar with Hamish Macbeth, he is a constable in a Scottish highland village. He likes to apply the rule of law in his own way, taking away the car keys from drink drivers before they leave the pub, giving various minor bootleggers a warning before removing their illegal stills and he’s not averse to poaching the odd salmon. The books are wonderful, quirky murder mysteries which Hamish always solves but tries to give credit to others in case his bosses think of promoting him and moving him away from his beloved village of Lochdubh.
Book 2, Farewell My Lovely, starts off well. It’s about Moose Malloy, an oversized fellow looking for Velma, an old flame. Marlowe gets in on the hunt as well as looking into another case and later finds both are related. I read the first part of the novel pretty much all in one go and enjoyed it very much. The next quarter was a little confusing. (During the filming of The Big Sleep the director and his stars wondered who killed the character of Owen Taylor, the Sternwood’s chauffeur. They sent a cable to Raymond Chandler asking him. Chandler told a friend later ‘Dammit, I don’t know either!)’ Happily, in Farewell My Lovely, everything finally came together towards the end.
It’s really quite fascinating the way digital publishing is moving ever forward. Although I suppose I’m very much still an amateur writer I publish a blog post every weekend just like this one. I can also be found in various videos over on YouTube and many of my blog posts can be listened to as a podcast. I say many although in fact there are only nine podcasts available at the present time. I could make more I suppose, after all, I’m now retired and I’ve got plenty of time to make them as well as owning that special essential, a top quality microphone. The thing is I’m not really sure how I feel about my podcasts. I’m not a trained actor or public speaker and I’ve never been that keen on my voice. Someone once told me I sounded a lot like Terry Christian. You may not have heard of him but he’s a Manchester DJ and minor TV personality and he sounds a lot like a very northern working-class Mancunian which is pretty much how you might describe me.
I’ve always liked the original Rocky film but something more interesting than the film itself is the story of how it came to be made. In the mid-seventies Sylvester Stallone was a bit part actor with few acting credits to his name. One day in 1975 he watched the Ali v Chuck Wepner fight in which Wepner lost but managed to stay 15 rounds with heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali. Stallone, inspired by the bout, wrote a screenplay about a washed-up fighter called Rocky who manages to stay the distance with the world champion. He passed the screenplay to his agents who took it to various producers. The screenplay was good and many producers were interested but Stallone attached one small condition to the sale, that he himself had to play the part of Rocky.
Voice Over
When I was a teenager up on my bedroom wall alongside pictures of various racing drivers was a poster of my first crush, Olivia Newton John. In fact, the very first vinyl singles I ever bought were records by Olivia; The banks of the Ohio and What is life? A chart single at the time in 1973 cost about 48p and as those two singles had dropped out of the charts they were half price. To this day one of the few songs I can correctly recite the lyrics to is one of her other songs, Country Roads. I bought many of her albums and followed her career with interest. It was sad to hear of her death last week.
Update: When this post appeared on Facebook, one of my readers told me in the comments that she had the Face App Teen Filter and sent me a photo of herself using it. The result was really amazing and later she sent me a picture of myself, suitably Faceapped. Actually I kind of like it. Should I start using it as my profile picture? Well, I like it but I’m probably better sticking to reality.
It was a cold afternoon in Manchester and I mumbled something to myself about the supposed heatwave and zipped my jacket up to my neck. At the left luggage office I took out the key that had been given to me earlier and when I opened the compartment I found a small package inside. I took the package and walked the short distance to the square. I sat down on the hard wooden bench and opened it up. Inside was a small tape player and a set of earphones. I put on the earphones and pressed play. There was a short burst of static and then a voice spoke.
This second instalment of the franchise was directed by John Woo. It’s about a biological weapon called Chimera. Rogue agent Sean Ambrose steals the virus from its inventor by impersonating Ethan Hunt. He destroys the aircraft on which the inventor is travelling and parachutes to safety. Hunt was played once again by Tom Cruise and his mission is to regain the virus. The opening sequence sees Cruise doing some daring rock climbing which the studio wasn’t happy about. Cruise didn’t have a safety net but did apparently wear a harness. I didn’t like the heavy metal style version of the classic theme and as a matter of fact, I lost interest in the film early on.
I had a few ideas for the title of this post. I had A Piece of My Life on the brain for a long time and then substituted A Pizza My Life (A piece of my life, geddit?) I even had a graphic sorted showing a slice of pizza. The thing with that I thought is that even though it ranges from funny to faintly humorous, I reckoned I would be giving people the wrong idea and that readers might have been expecting a post about, well pizza. Just lately I’m trying to optimise my titles for SEO (search engine optimisation) and at the same time also trying to give the impression that I know something about it. Some time ago I did a few posts titled 
Letters from an Unknown Author! 