There’s something beautifully ridiculous about camping and caravaning. …

There’s something beautifully ridiculous about camping and caravaning.

Looking out across this fieldand I’m thinking at that here we are, modern humans with houses, central heating and air conditioning, broadband, sofas, fitted kitchens, proper beds, cupboards full of things – and for pleasure we hitch a small white box to the back of a car and go sit in a field under a grey sky.

And yet somehow it works.

Maybe the secret to the absurdity is that we’re not really leaving comfort because we hate comfort. We’re leaving it because too much comfort can become stale and invisible. The house becomes so much background noise. And we lose ourselves in the routine of living.

So we drag a miniature home into a patch of grass and make life awkward enough to notice it again.

You become aware of the wind direction, the damp grass, the neighbours you’ll probably never speak to beyond a nod, the small choreography of plugging in, levelling up, putting the steps out, and finding where the toilets are.

It is absurd. But it’s ritual absurdity.

In essence, we’ve setup a temporary village made of caravans, cables, folding tables, dogs, children, gas bottles, mugs of tea, and people pretending not to watch each other reverse badly into pitches. For a weekend, everyone agrees to live slightly closer to the elements and slightly closer to one another.

Maybe the caravan is a compromise between the cave and the house.

Not quite wild. Not quite domestic.

And maybe that’s why we love it because it loosens the spell of ordinary life just enough for us to feel ourselves living it.