Currently, me and Our Gert are speccing out buying a static caravan; you know, the big buggers which infest the likes of Ingoldmells and Cleethorpes.  We’ve lugged a touring caravan behind us for nigh on forty years but have decided it’s time to change.

Now, most people who tread this path do it because they are happy to keep going back to a particular destination or because they’re too old and frail and stupid to tow a caravan about.  As it happens, both of these reasons apply in a small measure to us.  But the main reason is the plumbing.

Not, as you might think, insofar as it relates to the supply of mains water, its heating or the disposal of “waste” but plumbing by a far more personal definition.  See, whereas a static caravan’s connected to mains sewage a tourer relies on a toilet cassette (a la aeroplane) which needs to be emptied every few days by Yours Truly.  And I have stipulated a rigorous rule about this – NO PLUMPS.  The toilet is to be used for No. 1’s only.

And herein lies a Mars and Venus issue.  Whereas a man can go to the loo knowing precisely what for, it seems a woman’s plumbing’s less certain.  A No 1 is often “followed through” which causes Our Gert some stress for fear of me beating her to within an inch of her life.  Or worse still, of making her empty the bloody thing herself.