A few days off: Not waving, but frowning

I have owned a number of vehicles which seem to attract wavers (see below). I have had a Frogeye Sprite, two Morris Travellers, an MG Midget, VW Camper and a Series Land Rover, all of which granted me honorary membership of some invisible owners’ club.

Wherever I went in these vehicles, people in similar vehicles would wave as we passed. I could not imagine having anything in common with anyone who would think we had anything in common just because we had something as insubstantial in common as a type of vehicle (if you see what I mean).

And now I have a camper, what the French refer to as a camping car. It is a little strange that they have chosen to use two English words rather than come up with their own word as they do with so many other things. I favour the word Bivouacture, or maybe the ChapiteauCV... [ Use the comments box below for your suggestion for a suitable French word.]

Regardless, the French LOVE camping cars - almost as much as they dislike caravans, which are considered fit only for itinerant fruit pickers. In a camping car you can park up and stay the night almost anywhere for a few Euros, or less. There are waste water dumping stations in many small towns (we have one in Lauzerte) where you simply stop above a shallow basin, open the valve and all your washing up water disappears down the drain. 

There are several downsides to camping cars like the speed (lumbersome) handling (cumbersome), fuel consumption (frightening) and cornering (noisy if you have forgooten to stow everything properly). But the most annoying thing is that when you drive one of these things other camping car drivers wave at you. I have met a few people who have campers and they are as varied as any other given group of people, but I KNOW that the wavers are not ‘people like me’ – they can’t be.

Basically, ‘wavers’ are what Kurt Vonnegut called granfalloon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon) and having read Cat’s Cradle at  age fifteen I have a long standing aversion to such relationships. Notwithstanding all that, I have many friends and contacts I have met through my work and who I wave at while driving around simply because we work in the same industry, which is granfalloon-ish – so what do I know…