The caravan is going to make a comeback

IN the 60s, 70s and 80s, owning a caravan was almost compulsory.

To have one parked in your yard, covered with a tarp until the next great pilgrimage to the promised land of communal ablution blocks, was somewhat the middle class dream and status symbol.

A caravan also came in very handy when family that you didn’t particularly like that much came to visit, so every second suburban house boasted a Jurgens or a Gypsy under an afdak.

But that all changed during the 90s and, like Grasshopper shoes, caravans become very unfashionable.

Today, being seen towing one means that you’ve probably lost your job on the mines and are now homeless, or a bit of pleb or most probably both.

Never mind that Grasshoppers were the most comfortable shoes since shoes, and that a caravan allows you to holiday wherever you please.

No, only an uber-chic cottage with unrestricted sea views of Camps

Bay will do in order to keep up with the Joneses, or the Barnards and the Van Niekerks.

That each day’s stay, with breakfast at Cat-on-the-Dock and lunch at the Horny Sanshez costs the same as a four-sleeper Sprite Splash, does not matter in these pretentious times we live in.

But a lot of curious things are happening in our country;

It’s now called Mzansi and it’s not just the Van der Merwes and Bothas who can keep up with the Joneses, but also the Buthelezis and Khumalos, and the Moekwenas and the Ramaphosas.

So things are getting a bit over subscribed.

Paradise Villa in Camps Bay, or any posh bay for that matter, is not the tranquil haven it use to be, but has become the proverbial Tower of Babel.

Now, if you’re over 50, you don’t even want your own children with you when on holiday because that means there will be grandchildren which means a lot of running, falling, crying, bickering and other general noise associated with runny noses and diapers.

You just want peace and harmony. But that’s almost impossible to find.

So what to do?

Get a caravan!

In a caravan, you can get away from all the noise and actually relax instead of having your blood pressure knocking the ceiling of a ridiculously expensive flat overlooking a ridiculously overcrowded beach.

Thank heavens that during the time in which everybody was living the la vida loca in Poshville, all the caravan parks were not lost in land claims or turned into low cost housing estates.

Now that would have been really ironic.