Reality dawns

Listening to the wind howling and the rain lashing against the windows didn't bode well for Margot's first night on the drive. By morning she was wet. Very wet. So, the roof lights definitely needed sorting. The exhaust had definitely blown. The window seals definitely needed attention. We had our first list and a horrible feeling that it would grow considerably longer. In the short term, the best we could manage was buying economy shower curtains from the supermarket to prevent the interior from becoming sodden. Tom decided that he would attempt to patch up the exhaust for the time being, so that at least we could drive it up the road without disturbing the neighbours! The first half of the weekend involved Tom lying underneath the van, with a Haynes manual in one hand, doing a fairly convincing job of looking like he knew what he was doing. To my utter amazement, by mid-afternoon he announced that the exhaust was fixed. Plus it had stopped raining for the first time in days. Time to take Margot on her first little outing...

Mungo becomes Margot

The week before we collected her, we'd had a lovely weekend away in a hotel in the New Forest with a couple of friends. We savoured every moment of the luxury, knowing that we would find it hard to justify many weekends away like this in the future once we had a perfectly good campervan to sleep in. By this point I had already begun to research vintage 1970s fabrics and memorabilia on-line and stumbled across the existance of a little shop close to where we were staying in the New Forest. We dragged our friends along to seek it out and had great fun looking through the treasure trove of household items from our childhoods. It also sold vintage clothing and I was nearly talked in to buying a flambouyant green floaty 70s dress that we likened to something that Margot from The Good Life would wear. However, I thought it might be bad luck to buy something before we had officially got the campervan, plus why on earth did I need a green dress and when would I wear it?!! I don't really do dresses. Anyway, the Margot dress was referred to throughout the weekend, and we even caught an episode of The Good Life in our hotel room whilst getting ready for dinner one evening. On our return home, I was telling a friend the tale of the green dress that I didn't buy (we have thrilling conversations!) when she uttered the suggestion 'Why don't you call the van Margot?' In hindsight it seemed obvious, and so much more fitting for a lady than Mungo. Margot was born.

She comes home

Finally, she managed to pass her MOT and Tom arranged to catch the train up to Taunton to pick her up. Unfortunately it happened to be one of the rainiest days of the year which was likely to come as a bit of a shock to a campervan who'd had a roof over her head for the last four years. Relieved to make it home in one piece, Tom's only observation about the slow journey was that the overtaking lorries had made her wobble a bit!

Inspecting her on the driveway was probably the point at which our steep learning curve really started. Lessons learned so far:

1. Never assume that if you buy a van it will come with keys to lock it.
2. Never assume that the exhaust will have survived intact on the journey home.
3. Never assume that glazed roof skylights will actually stop the rain from coming in.

Undaunted, we made a cup of tea and sat inside our campervan looking out at the neighbours. In fact, our immediate neighbour came in to join us. Mungo had her first official visitor! The three of us looked around and watched forlornly as the rain trickled down the windows, both outside and in. When we went back inside it felt like leaving a tiny kitten outside all alone; would she be okay out there in the dark and the wet all night long?

Failure

1. We failed in our mission to get tickets for Carfest. 

2. Mungo (temporary name only remember) failed in her mission to pass her MOT.

Things could only get better.

More waiting

After leaving numerous unreturned messages concerning the progress of our purchase, we began to wonder if we had imagined the whole thing. Had we entered a parallel universe where we had behaved recklessly by buying a campervan, where beige and brown were the hip'n'happening colours and the 1970s was the coolest decade ever? Was it all a dream? Did we have to return to the harsh reality of a reliable Ford Focus and a holiday cottage on the Moors with a flushing toilet and hot running water? Jolted out of our bubble, we simply got on with the boring formalities of sorting out documentation, tax, insurance etc. Or rather Tom did; I was back on 'mission festival' in an effort to keep the dream alive. It had become evident fairly early on that it would be a big ask for the campervan to make it all the way to Ireland, not to mention a big expense. So the Electric Picnic was out, for this year at least. However, with near perfect timing, Chris Evans began to hype up his new Children in Need festival- Car Fest. It sounded right up our street (or at least in our part of the country.) Cars galore for Tom, The Great British Bake Off for Barbara, and good bands for us both. Chris Evans had even said on the radio that it was the perfect starter festival for 'festival virgins'. We had to try and get tickets. So, we had two things to look forward to: getting tickets to Carfest and hearing that the campervan had passed its MOT...

What's in a name?

The most common question we had when telling people what we had bought (after they had stopped laughing) was 'What are you going to call it?' Apparently all the coolest campervans have names. I was pretty convinced that our Bedford was a female (don't ask me how, just call it female intuition!) but that didn't seem to deter people from making all kinds of suggestions. Below is a selection of the best and worst that our friends and family could come up with...

• Brian (because it goes at a snail's pace)
• Andy (??)
• Trippy
• Portaview
• Farrah (as in Fawcett)
• Florence
• Bernie
• Cilla (because it has already given them a 'lorra lorra laughs'!)
• Rusty (from a witty 10 year old)
• The Yellow Peril (my dad is colour blind)
• Daffodil (ditto)
• David (after 1970s runner David Bedford)

Good efforts, but none of the names really grabbed us. We decided to wait until we had her before making a final decision. However, after a bit of research on 1972 hit records, I liked the name Mungo (as in Jerry). I know, I know, I said she was female. She still is. But I think Mungo is a cool name, with a definite 70s edge to it. So the campervan we didn't actually have yet did at least have a provisional name. But it was subject to change...

Waiting

It's a strange feeling to have bought something yet have nothing to show for it - other than some smelly cheese and a lovely, quirky book that I'd treated myself to, entitled 'My Cool Campervan' which is full of inspiring pictures to encourage me that we haven't just purchased a pile of junk. Our campervan has POTENTIAL. I had begun to discover a whole new world of 1970s retro websites and online shops selling vintage fabrics. Our campervan was going to be transformed to its former glory with groovy 70s curtains, the whole works! There was just the small matter of the campervan passing its MOT. In hindsight, not that likely considering it's 40 years old and hasn't been on the road for four years. Then things grew ominously quiet from the vendor's end of things as we began to attempt to unravel the minefield of tracking registration documents from long-dead previous owners.

Taking the plunge

Eventually we made it back to the show room which was actually more of a show barn. Full of expensive, shiny classic cars, it was more impressive than some car museums I've been dragged around in my time. Whilst we were having our little petrol drama, an elderly man had arrived after driving from Lincolnshire to view a car. Being nosy, I asked the vendor if he was expecting the man to buy the car. 'I would expect so as it's the only one in the country' was his reply. This spoke volumes about the kind of business this was; a specialist, high end dealer of beautifully restored classic vehicles. Plus one brown Bedford camper van. As much as Tom would have liked to make an offer on the gleaming purple E-type Jaguar, we both knew that there was only one vehicle in the place that we had any chance of owning. We were building up to making an offer but had one more feature to investigate...the awning. Luckily, it didn't disappoint. Large, stripy and intact, it had a definite ice-cream van feel to it. Perfect, we had to buy it. 

There shortly followed a period of rubbish negotiating over the price, with Tom displaying pathetic haggling skills that we shall gloss over. The upshot was that we parted having agreed to purchase it; we were to be the new owners of a 1972 Bedford CF camper van! 

On a high, we stopped off on the way home at the Exeter Food Festival to celebrate in the way we know best- by eating and drinking. It was here that we made our first purchase specifically for our new campervan...a huge piece of smelly cheese. The cheese maker said that it would taste better if left to mature for a few more weeks. Ideal - cheese and wine overlooking the sea would be a fitting first meal in our little brown van. Now all we needed to do was to await the MOT and arrange collection.

A test drive with a twist

Love at second sight? Not really, it still looked shabby; it still looked brown. There was still a dead wasp on the dashboard. But we were looking forward to going for a drive. The vendor drove us (Barbara safely in the passenger seat, Tom swinging dangerously around in the back) along a few country lanes before turning around in a lay by. Now it was Tom's turn to drive. All went smoothly, if somewhat jerkily, until the gear stick seemed to start behaving in a less than cooperative manner. Tom's confusion led him to question if he was in the right gear, to which a distant voice from the back of the van suggested that we may have run out of petrol. Oh. Yes. We. Had. So, there we were, stranded on a country lane with only just enough space for other vehicles to squeeze by us. The slightly embarrassed vendor set off on foot to find some petrol, with a cheery 'Well, you might as well have a good look around now!' Not quite the way I had envisaged our second viewing but we did have a good look around all the nooks and crannies(holidaying in the 1970s seemed to require alot of cupboard space!) The added bonus of running out of petrol meant that we got an unexpected taste of possible future scenarios. I decided that my concerns about an older vehicle being unreliable were probably unwarranted; this being stranded lark was a doddle!