The Hidden Costs Of Campervanning

          For more than thirty years, campervans have loomed large in my life, satisfying both my wanderlust and my fantasy of self-sufficiency. Today, however, the van is looming rather larger than I would like. I just opened the post, a solitary envelope, addressed to me. It contained a demand for £70 as a penalty for outstaying my welcome in Aldi’s car park, as detected by Automatic Number Plate Recognition. My first reaction was outrage, though I had to concede that, since I had never bothered to read the notice outlining the terms and conditions, it was a fair cop. Still, resentment lingers. Am I not a frequent customer? True, I have lately switched allegiance to Lidl down the road, but do they have ways of knowing that?

          I put the letter on my desk, next to the one I received last month from the police demanding £100 for exceeding the speed limit in a built-up area. Proof of my misdemeanour was provided by ANPR and my speed awareness training session is scheduled for Monday.

          Before the post arrived, I had taken the van to be fixed – again. The electric window on the driver’s side won’t open so, earlier in the week, I had dropped in on Frank – he of the Richmond Exhaust and M.O.T. Centre – to see if he could fix it. “No,” he said, “I don’t get involved in electrics”, but named a couple of places nearby that do. I drove to one of them (next door to Tommy’s junk shop, as it happened) and found myself in a 1960s time-warp. The building is, like Frank’s, a scruffy-looking, post-war, light-industrial shed, with an office that appears still to contain the original desk and carpet, both of which are covered with the accumulated paperwork of the last fifty years. The proprietor, Derek, is, like Frank, a man of about seventy, yellowed by nicotine and clinging to old-fashioned business methods. He assured me that he would come up with the most cost-effective solution. We agreed I should bring the van in the next day, then he asked my first name, wrote down my phone number and shook my hand by way of sealing the deal. And so, this morning, I left the van with Frank and his operative, both of them smoking in a highly flammable environment. Should I be concerned?

          Actually, I feel quite the opposite, though there are grounds here to be wary of transacting with an outfit that, outwardly, does not conform to modern practices of safety and efficiency. Yet there is something irrationally reassuring about dealing face-to-face with a man who has been in the game for a long time and who wants to shake your hand (he was wearing latex gloves, a concession to the 21^st century). Perhaps it has to do with that feeling of community and the unspoken pact that it would be counter-productive to cheat or short-change someone you know, however slightly. And I admit to more irrationality, in the form of nostalgia. In my youth, it seems to me, all the back-street mechanics I encountered operated informally, hands-on, in filthy overalls and with cigarettes dangling from their lips. These were their marks of competence, not certificates on the wall, such as we see nowadays in corporate, branded workshops.

          But I hope they have made their retirement arrangements, as I see a limited future for the likes of Frank and Derek. Technology is overtaking their competences and whittling away their customers. Soon we will all be leasing electric cars, by the hour, day, month or year, and the responsibility for maintenance will not be ours. It will be contracted out to ‘proper’ companies. We can be certain, however, that one thing will not change: ANPR will still be tracking us down and punishing us for every transgression of the rules.