The Trailer Tent - Part One.

The Trailer Tent – Part 1

We had been married a year when my brother in law Stan gave us a trailer tent from his packed garden. I didn’t know there was such a thing. It wasn’t new, and he said, “It’s just needs a little cleaning up and then we will have something nice.” I had my favourite car my fab mini, Stan said I would need to have a tow bar fitted first, so I went and had that done.

We didn’t have anywhere to keep the trailer tent so Paul my Husband got a large metal hook type thing and set it into concrete and put it into our small front garden. The front garden is only about 4ft by 7ft with a small wall 1ft high, all the way round it.

It was summer and we went to get it from Stan, (who is a lot older than my husband) had suggested we hook it up to my mini and take it to a camp site and there open it up and clean it, so that was what we did.

It was weird pulling this huge thing, I felt like it was slowing me down. Stan had explained to me that going round corners I would notice and only an experienced driver like him would be able to reverse with it, but with practice I could do it too, otherwise I would have to unhook if I needed to reverse. I thought that was the safest option, as I’m not good on reversing anyway. That reminds me of the time when I first had my car, and I had not long past my test, and they were doing road works but I didn’t realized that, for a temporary time they had decided to make the road, one way! I came face to face with a car full of cops! I looked at the driver as if so say, “What you doing mate, you going the wrong way!” Only for him to point to the new temporary sign that said, “One way,” and pointed at me to go back the way I had just come. So as it was about one hundred yards, it took awhile and all that time as I reversed there were the cops edging forward a foot from my car, the people watching at the side of the road, I don’t know what they must have thought! I was very embarrassed!

So as reversing back then wasn’t my strong point I was going to do my best not to reverse. Paul found on the map a camp site and the only time I had to unhook the trailer tent was at the entrance! All the traffic had to wait, but hey, that’s life. It was a fabulous sunny hot day; we opened it out and gave it a good clean. The kids were not born yet so it was just us. We stayed there for two nights, then when we got it back home it was fastened with a large chain and pad lock in the front garden.

Soon I was expecting our first child and Stan said to me one day, “My wife asked me to have a vasectomy and as we had three children, I agreed but back then men were not allowed to watch their children been born.” Stan had found out soon after he’d had the snip that is wife was having an affair and they divorced. So he asked me, “Can I watch you give birth?” I looked at him and burst out laughing! And said, “No way!!!” He is a lovely brother in law but I had to deny him this! If it was anything else, like borrowing my mini, I’d have said “OK.”

So time pasted and the mini was sold for a bigger car. I remember when we went to buy a baby high chair.... we couldn’t get it into the mini, folks around us in the car park had a good laugh as we tried first the top part, then the bottom part, but it made no difference we still couldn’t get it into the mini! Then some clever clogs came over and showed us that there four clips that separated the top part of the high chair from the bottom, that way we were just able to get both parts into the car! So that was the deciding factor for selling my lovely, lovely car.

So the mini went and in time the trailer tent went, leaving just the metal hook thing in the concrete.....