James was talking about VW camper vans this morning with Chris Evans which reminded me of this column:
Happiness is a camper van with Woman
I didn't mean to sneak up on my dad. I must have moved silently up the stairs to the open door of his little office and when I looked in he was - and there's no two ways of putting this - looking at some pictures on the internet. 
Oh, for a life on the open road
By James May
10:33AM BST 03 May 2010
There was nothing that could be said. Light travels quicker than broadband and the image was in my eye long before the Google homepage reappeared.
This sort of thing is always a bit disarming. It's not so bad when it's a coeval; we're all grown-ups and we've all done it. If it had been Richard Hammond I wouldn't have been in the slightest bit disturbed. But this was my dad, for Pete's sake. It was like being 10 and realising that your parents must have enjoyed the biological spasm that gave you life.
He knows that I know what was on there and it was something that would be very difficult to explain to my mum. He was looking at pictures of camper vans.
What makes it so terrifying is that I'd been looking at something similar only a few days before. I've always had a sneaking desire for a camper van, or what used to be called a motor caravan. Normal caravans are terrible things, but a camper van is a new driving experience, whereas a caravan spoils the one you already had.
However, until now I'd have been forced to keep one on the street, where camper vans look strangely tragic, and so I'd put the idea to one side. Suddenly, though, I realised that the secret underground bunker makes camper-van ownership a possibility.
Worse still, the one that has me excited is that Brazilian-built version of the classic VW bay-window Type 2. I ought not to approve of this; it's a hopeless hankering for the past, when everything was terrible, and comes with gruesome sociological baggage about free love, surfing, life as a journey and not a destination, and being Australian.
On the other hand, it looks like a good job. The air-cooled donkey has given way to a 1.4-litre liquid-cooled and injected Polo engine with weatherproofed electronic ignition. It will run on biofuel and attracts tax discounts. You can get power steering and the living accommodation can be tailored to embrace modern materials such as Formica.
The VW has endured because it was the right shape. It has the glass area to promote a holiday atmosphere, slim pillars and a cab-forward design. It is definitely only a camper and not a motorhome. I don't know the technical difference, but my own rules say that when the stuff at the back is bigger than the same bit of the van it is based on, it is trying to be a Winnebago.
I think life - even normal life - with a camper would be rewarding. To take an example, I have today been with Woman to the town of Wareham, which has a special place in my heart stemming from childhood, when we would visit it on holiday because of its fabulous fish 'n' chip shop. We were merely camping in a tent then, because we were poor. But we were happy.
Unfortunately, Woman and I were there in the Fezza, which is a useless car for stopping off for a large cod. It's too wide to park in the high street, I'm too neurotic about leaving it and I keep scraping its nose on rustic speed bumps. Its chin already looks like Jimmy Hill's did when he shaved his beard off for charity; a bit raw.
But imagine the same scenario in a well-specified VW. We could pick up the tuck, park up near the river, take out our Pyrex plates, put on a little light music and enjoy a bespoke dining experience in the perfect location. This, in fact, is what a camper is actually for. Woman is already planning a tour of England by camper van interrupted by nights in pleasant family-run hotels.
This in itself is a very encouraging development. Previously, any suggestion that a camper van would provide a good basis for a holiday has been met with ripostes themed around the notion of preferring to be dead in a ditch, but now even That She Than Whom No Fairer Is* has come around to the idea.
We agree that there is something cathartic about trying to reduce the trappings of life to just that which would fit in the back of something originally designed to lug lengths of timber and panes of glass around. Two of everything necessary but no more: bread, jam, soap, duvet; the staffs of life, and nothing else. It is a vision of austere domestic purity that eludes us in our house.
But I think it could be ours in VW's machine for living.
* Thomas Bateson, from his madrigals, I think.
www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/columnists/jamesmay/7652453/Happiness-is-a-camper-van-with-Woman.html
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