Turn The Plug Clockwise …...............

Often, for first timers, camping and caravanning can be a mysterious experience. Admit it yourself, have you ever watched a caravanner struggle putting up their brand new awning? I myself was doing this only last year at Castleton in the Peak District when the warden offered to sell tickets for my unforgeable matinee performance at a 60/40 split in his favour!  

I don't think there can be any first timer to a club site who hasn't plugged into a Site Electric Supply Bollard only to completely miss that you have to turn your plug clockwise to turn it on. Many minutes of pure entertainment can be had as they struggle to and from their caravan wondering why the electric kettle won't go on. The enjoyment of this performance is greatly enhanced when it is raining!

It was many years ago now but I remember the first ever time I emptied my Thetford Cassette Toilet. My wife accompanied me with the instruction leaflet. We were abroad at the time and there was no dedicated toilet emptying point. This meant we had to use a WC in a toilet block. I can tell that you are ahead of me now as you have an idea of where this is going don't you? Anyway, my wife decided that it was more embarrassing for her to use the gents toilet than for me to accompany her into the ladies loo as, that way, we could both lock ourselves into a cubicle.

All these years later, as I tell this story I can still feel myself getting hot and red with embarrassment! 

Anyway, we got to the toilet block and my wife disappeared into the ladies to “check that the coast was clear”. It was very like a clandestine military operation come to think of it. Have you ever tried to look casual whilst standing outside a ladies lavatory while holding a very full and heavy cassette toilet? I tell you, the Army Special Operations Forces would have been proud of me – and on enemy soil – well French soil at least.

After a what seemed a lifetime my wife came out and gave me the all clear to go in!

It is one of those strange things in life that, on hindsight, lots of decisions seem foolish in the extreme. It was now that we both made one of those, to regret, decisions. My wife had pushed open all the women’s cubicle doors. All were continental “footsteps” toilets except one which was a familiar standard WC. Why we ever thought it would be easier or better to try and empty a weeks worth of toilet contents down the only conventional WC in the ladies I'll never know. My only excuse is that being in the ladies and probably “breaking the law” had left me flustered and my brain confused. It is clear now that the whole operation would have been easier had we used a “continental toilet”.  

I'll skip the small details to save your feelings. With my wife reading out the emptying instructions from the Thetford instruction leaflet we eventually emptied the contents down the toilet. We rinsed out the cassette with a handy length of hose attached to a tap in the cubicle. It was only then that our real problems started! We flushed the toilet and were ready to leave when two things happened simultaneously. First, somebody came in to use the toilets. Second, flushing simply caused the toilet to back-up to the rim as it managed to block completely.

In truth, panic was now setting in. Thetford made it all sound so easy in their brochure. And to make it all so much worse I sensed that the woman outside was just that – just outside! Why hadn't she gone into another cubicle? Was she really waiting for this one? We flushed again. This time the level rose even higher and threatened to flow over the top. I remember saying to my wife is that what we really needed was a stick to push it all down. This nightmare of a vision turned our panic into giggles.

Then the banging on the toilet door started. Although there were loads of empty cubicles the woman outside, rather unhelpfully, only wanted to use our cubicle apparently. The knocks on the door got more and more angry and were now accompanied by what seemed like untranslatable French curses. I had visions of our trip drawing to a premature close as the gendarmerie took me away for questioning. A final flush in sheer desperation and, finally, someone must have been on my side as, with a big noisy and smelly gurgle, the contents suddenly disappeared down the bend. I can remember how we both wished for invisibility as we emerged from the cubicle to more gallic malediction!

I may be a more experienced camper all these years on, but I am still not necessarily immune from the mysteries of it all. For instance, the other week I had need to purchase a replacement Truma Ultraflow Pump Assembly for my caravan. Don't even get me on the cost though! What I noticed is that on the back of the trigger assembly there is a small blue plastic clip. This plastic clip is hinged so it lifts up from its normal position where it lays flat in a small shaped recess.

It is, apparently, a completely superfluous piece of plastic with no discernible use as far as I can see. Except that I cannot possible believe that a German company would go to the bother of engineering something that didn't have a specific function or use. I have asked fellow caravanners as to what think the blue plastic clip is for and they have no idea either.

Please take a look at the photo and see if you can work it out. I promise that, if you solve this particular camping mystery for me then, never again, will I watch a new caravanner struggling to connect up to a Site Electric Supply Bollard without telling them to turn the plug clockwise!