Ah! The campervan life! The freedom of the open road. The freedom to have a blow-out on the A1, to injure your back fighting with sleep on a narrow bunk that tips towards the floor. A floor soaking with dog drool and the spillings of his water bowl, which has capsized during the night as he frantically and repeatedly tries to dry his nose on his bed, an act which takes the form of a terrified obsession. He doesn’t really like the van.

Then in the morning, in a desperate attempt to wash yourself clean of it all, you take yourself across the sodden grass to the shower-block at half past six in the morning, a time it seems impossible to sleep beyond, even though the rest of the site is still snoring through blissful dreams. Other than the blokes who are occupying every other toilet, that is, apart from the one you are striving on. From one of these there emanates a pained roaring and squelching, akin to the sound of a starving pride of lions dismembering a fresh wildebeest. Next door, someone is clearly bent double and sneezing into his underpants, while someone else is retching up twenty years of a tobacco habit, and there’s nose-blowing taking place elsewhere that’s worse than a demented whoopee cushion in full flight. I am perched in a squatting position slightly above the seat, where I am convinced a multitude of diseases is competing over the right to invade my orifices, and most of the previous occupant’s product is staring back at me from the cloudy water below, apparently in welcome. The whole cacophony is augmented by the joyous sounds of a herd of other people’s kids chasing through each of the showers in turn, wearing wellies that have been previously exercised in the swamp that deputises for the woodland walk. Not only that, but someone beyond the screen is squealing like a suckling pig, whether in horror or internal pain, no one knows. And a pulsing vibration has set up nearby, as another happy camper apparently tries to eject a blockage of lubricants by gargling through his nose.

The whole business has stunned my sphincter into paralysis, so in a torment of moral rectitude (rectal attitude) I unloose a retaliatory bellow of a fart, and tiptoe somewhat sharpish from the offensive premises, disappointed, and without flushing, for fear of agitating the ownerless residue in the bowl.

I think I’ll have a wash next week.