Busman’s holiday

I always worry

When writing about old people.

Older in my language

You see,

Given they are aligned to my profession,

That is,

The wellbeing of those older than myself,

It wouldn’t do

To use terms such as

Elderly, frail or infirm.

A positive psychology must be applied

Even in my own head.

And so it is,

Many miles from home

On the upper northwest edge of Scotland

50 meters from the beach

I am surrounded by older folk.

Camping and caravanning have always

At least in my mind been associated with the elderly.

I know people who are relatively young who have caravanned all over the world.

They, at least, I perceive to be the minority.

My holiday began yesterday when, shortly after arriving at the campsite I parked my car beside the toilet block, nipped out for a pee and…

Is that your car? It has just crashed into our motorhome!

I stare in incomprehension.

It takes me time to understand what has happened.

In between parking, peeing and returning, my car had rolled down a short incline into the van of these southern travellers.

Your car, it crashed into our van. The woman repeated.

It was such a loud noise.

Your car, look what it has done to our van.

I stand in disbelief.

Initially thinking,

OK, the handbrake must not have been on and my car (electronic, sigh), it has rolled down the incline. Why didn’t they stop their van and not drive into it? The question passes through my head. None of this was said out loud.

It’s really damaged that front part of our van. The woman went on.

It was then I realised that my car had crashed into their parked van. They had been filling up on water or downloading faeces, whatever they do at these designated stops. And bam.

I am sorry. I apologised. What else can you say?

Such a loud bang.

The woman, and her husband, I imagine are in their late 60’s or early 70’s.

Let’s call them older.

I know what life is like for older people. They are my work. I wanted to express. I wanted to say that I feel her upset, I know how traumatic unexpected events can be in the lives of people who have retired who, are for the most their own bosses, sometimes for the first time in their lives. I get it, I wanted to say.

I didn’t.

Her husband and I exchanged details.

He allowed me in from the rain into the tidiness of their small living space. As if, they had been preparing for guests, for every eventuality although perhaps not this.

I wanted to say, don’t you see the concatenation of events? The randomness of circumstances that led to this happening. I briefly imagine a child had been in the place of the van and shudder.

I flash to the scene in The Omen where David Warner (Jennings) is decapitated in similar circumstances in the ancient town of Megiddo. Armageddon.

No, this isn’t on par. Hopefully you get my allusion.

It is the Swiss Cheese model of causality; where A must be aligned with B and C and D and perhaps F for Y to happen. A one in a million chance.

None of this was expressed to the couple.

They eventually drove off, leaving me with the insurance company and wranglings relating to the excess for the policy.

Later, after pitching my tent, with the rain falling and the wind howling, I was grateful that the midges haven’t made it this far north.

And I look around at the campervans. Mostly older people. Hair grey, they are generally lean. Ageing well. Getting out and doing types. Many with dogs. From the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. I see the rare Italian.

Me and my little tent and my bumped bumper.

For this trip I hired a car in Doncaster. Thinking of the uncertainty of electric charging points in the Scottish Highlands and the vulnerability of our much older diesel car.

On Saturday I ran 10k to pick it up, the car that is.

It was dry although the rain threatened. As it does now in Wester Ross.

What were the chances, the possibilities?

My dad would have said b’shert which in Yiddish alludes to fate. It was always going to happen, accept the inevitable, he would argue. This a determinist view of the world is against many of my principles of doing and being.

They call mine the growth mindset in psychology. The notion that we are not fixed, that the possibility for shifting and changing is always present so long as we are breathing. So long as our heart still beats, the moon rises and the sun sets.

A short while ago my brother rang from Israel. He was checking-in following my visit to the cemetery. Where are you? He asked.

When you are on the road, Jack Kerouac might have said, days, weeks and months blur. Where am I? Time and identity blend into the ineffable.

In my rear-view mirror (I am sitting in the bashed car), I see a couple packing their tent, ready to move-on.

The woman I notice has brought her pillow from home, like me.

I remember the old days when I used to roll my trousers and pile them onto my backpack to create a stable yet firm surface for my head.

Those were the days.

Where have they gone?

Last week I listened to an interview with Dan Harris and Sebastian Junger. The battle-hardened journalist described his experiences relating to a near death experience when an aneurysm in his pancreas ruptured. I saw my dad. We talked.

He analysed this within the confines of quantum mechanics, dark matter and the new physics; multiverses, time and space that confound reality that bypass religion into the realm of the theoretical.

How odd.

Yesterday I thought of my parents, still, in their graves.

I reflected on their immortality, their existence that has passed through me onwards to my children.

Immortality is perhaps a grand term, for, who knows what is around the corner. And yet.

The present.

The van, my car, the tent.

The rain the wind.

Sand and dust.

Machair and blue water.

Roads log-jammed with campervans.