Haven is a Place on Earth (Part 1)
Every 4-6 weeks, I take the car for a mini valet. I appreciate this is lazy but, amidst the endless reams of soul-sapping admin and domestic chores that accompany being a 37-year-old, sacrificing hours of my life to hose and hoover our Dacia Sandero is where I draw a line.
There are few things on earth more horrifying than the back of a family car when you remove the child seats and, as I pulled up at The Big Car Wash on Kirkstall Road and evaluated the filth - crumbs, dry mud, and a McDonald’s fry that could feasibly have been there for a month - I considered whether this was the worst state it has ever been in.
“Please can I get a mini valet?” I asked.
A muscular Eastern European man opened the back door, glanced at the seats, and looked, frankly, appalled.
“You need a full one, boss.”
A full valet costs more than I had in my wallet so, in one of my most shameful interactions of recent times, I haggled him down to a mini, “But don’t worry if you don’t get it all, mate…” while he frowned.
“Ok.”
As I sat in the waiting room next to a lad playing Latino pop music from his phone at an inexplicably loud volume, I watched several hardworking men furiously scrubbing the backseats of our car and did not feel good about myself. At all.
A couple of days later, I was working from home when Louise shouted upstairs.
“Why is there an amber warning sign on the dashboard, Andy?”
“Is there?”
Truth told, I had noticed it in the morning and made an active decision to do absolutely nothing about it. Louise checked the wheels, found a nail in one of the back tyres, and just about managed to drive to the local garage. She was informed that not one, but two tyres were punctured and, in life’s least exciting way to spend money, this would cost us £200. How had the nail got there? I wondered. Surely, I hadn’t irritated The Big Car Wash guy that much?
Anyway, these things happen (quite a lot, it seems) and there is no point in letting it ruin your day. Besides, with the car now spick, span, and safe to drive, we were heading to Haven “Where Happy Happens.”
We picked the boys up from school/pre-school and drove the always-longer-than-you-think journey from Leeds to the East Coast, via a McDonald’s drive-thru, finally arriving at our caravan at 6 pm. This year, we upgraded to silver which includes a balcony but still, incredibly, no bin.
We were spending the weekend with some friends, two families with children of similar ages. We first met at NCT class seven years ago, bonding over mutual bewilderment of the things our eccentric teacher told us (“Something to watch out for: Babies can be hairy. Very hairy.”) and have enjoyed/endured early parenthood concurrently since then. This is, of course, lovely, but the NCT women are in a very active WhatsApp group which Louise will, on occasion, contribute to while she and I are mid-disagreement. A live feed.
The kids were giddy to see one another, tearing around the caravans, bouncing balls, and pretending to be cats, eventually burning themselves out at 8 pm allowing the adults to have a drink while sharing a giant sack of lentil chips and listening to Britpop. As a man whose musical tastes stopped evolving circa 2003, this suited me just fine.
We went swimming the next morning and, not for the first time, I did not cover myself in glory in the changing rooms.
“Please can I have a pound for the locker, Lou?”
I inserted the coin, but the key did not come out. I wiggled it around, quite aggressively, to no avail. It was jammed.
“Please can I have another pound, Lou?”
I put the new coin in the slot of a locker below, then closed the door to discover that, instead of a lock and key on the front, there was only a hole. A large black hole.
“Umm…”
Staring at my feet, I meekly asked Louise for a third pound coin. While she was rummaging through her purse, I would describe her entire body as vibrating with rage.
We had a good time in the pool, at least. Joshua can now swim, and Jacob is not far off, so they enjoyed frolicking with their friends and going down the slides. On repeat. For ages. In standard dad-in-a-swimming-pool behaviour, I then pretended to be a shark and chase after the boys which triggered a flashback to my own youth and the time my friend’s dad, an affable Canadian, took a group of us to Doncaster Dome; playing the shark role with slightly took much vigour, he mistakenly picked up a boy who was not in our group and threw him, quite hard, into the water, then had to profusely apologize to the chucked child’s dad who looked ready to punch him in the face.
We returned to the caravan where the howling wind was now rocking it from side to side, threatening to blow the balcony off. After lunch we had some downtime (several episodes of Bluey) but, within seconds of putting the football on my phone, Louise stood up with a sense of urgency.
“Right, we’re going to the beach.”
“But it couldn’t be windier? Also, this game could significantly impact Leeds United’s promotion ho…”
“Stop whinging, Andy. We are going to the beach, and it will be fun.”
Wearing hats, gloves and scarves, which is unacceptable in late April, we battled the half-mile down to Thornwick Bay in drizzle and biting wind, faces reddening, eyes streaming. When we arrived, the waves were smashing against the cliffs, the tide was nearly in and, what was left of the sharp, rocky beach was covered in sea foam. The picnic we’d packed was ambitious.
“Right, just get a photo and let’s get out of here…”
On the way back, Louise suggested we go to The Activity Barn, which sounded like a decent wet weather option.
It was not.
It had a passable soft play area but, instead of a café, there was an out-of-order vending machine and a selection of plastic chairs scattered around a cold concrete floor where a handful of parents sat, staring at their phones, one man smoking an enormous vape. Behind the soft play, a teenage lad with a Peaky Blinders haircut was leathering a football against a wall over and over again. I genuinely think I’ve experienced a better atmosphere at the A&E in Leeds General Infirmary.
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