Thursday 7 April - A day in which Alison is ill and Ray has a rant.

Alison became poorly on the journey to Littlehampton (West of Brighton,  geography fans) with some sort of sickness bug. Once we arrived at the nice site Ali immediately took to bed while I remembered all my medical training and made myself lunch. Which brings us apropos of nothing at all to a minor diversion on the subject of rules.

I've always considered rules with suspicion, I suppose its the anarchist in me. Some clearly make all our lives better and safer, all driving on the same side of the road or not sticking your willie in the toaster for example.

Bit caravan clubists do like a rule, i fear often to save them thinking for themselves. Their world, and I realise I am unfairly generalising, is one of black and white. Given the amount of Daily Express/Mail we see on sites I imagine severe punishment  is encouraged for minor infringements, like driving at 6 mph or not having a Waitrose loyalty card.

A letter to a club magazine recently decried falling standards because people were walking to the shower blocks in their dressing gowns. (I'm really not making this up). What sort of petty small minded blimp thinks that is wrong? I imagine some Major spluttering into his cornflakes as another Winceyette clad bosom bounces past his immaculately kept caravan.

Of course not everyone is like this,  but the rules of each site do sometimes verge on the unnecessary. Keeping noise down between 11 pm and 8 am should just be a common courtesy, but presumably because a few dolts with shoe sizes bigger than their IQ didn't respect their fellow campers its now enshrined in camp site law. Probably inscribed on vellum.

The list of infractions is plentiful, from how to park your 'rig' to showering in the correct fashion, avoiding the grass, and complicated lists of what exactly constitutes 'mixed recycling, and here I confess I got confused disposing of several bags of Alison's vomit, I'm hoping we leave before the DNA results are back.

We made up the sitting room bed and Ali spent the rest of the afternoon asleep under the quilt like a tiny mountain range gently rising and falling, and now we're watching Great Canal Journeys with Prunnella Scales and Timothy West because serendipitously they end up at Littlehampton we have the rest of today and all day today tomorrow to recover before an exciting weekend with James and Juliet.