There are three Daves in my life: Dave the Debtor, Dave the Doctor and Dave Le Van Dave. The latter is a bright orange 1979 VW camper camper van I bought on a whim following my divorce. Some women get a sports car, I got dub.

To be honest, I thought Dave Le Van Dave would be bloke magnet. I envisaged parking up at dusk in a cool campsite next to a frothy beach in Cornwall, popping the camper van top up, breaking open a bottle of Chardonnay and waiting for the sexy singles to come a calling. I figured no man could resist the air cooled engine and one legged table that converts to a double bed. 

I hadn't anticipated the average age of your average campsite to be pensionable. Or that most would be morbidly obese. I soon discover they all have satellite dishes, microwaves and water tanks the size of the Hoover Dam and never leave their massive motor homes. 

The tent people are younger and their kids like Dave Le Van Dave. Small kids wave and squeal excitedly whilst bigger kids skip alongside just like Little House on the Prairie. Mums look away, afraid their husbands will want a Dave. The Dads eye Dave from a distance during Sausage Watch for the family BBQ. If they dare to venture over it is always under the careful gaze of a wife who has seen the envy in their eyes and given them the dog to deal with. A soggy dog threatening to shake itself over Dave's 1970s pale ale interior is not going to get the warmest of welcomes.

Some Dads persist and feel pressurised to say something mechanically manly. Usually it's 'I had a splitty once.' When I first heard this I assumed we were talking drugs and would later share some weed and a free pass for Thorpe Park behind the toilet block. Then I subscribed to Camper Van Weekly and realised it's shorthand for 'Splitscreen', the type of windscreen in the older vans. But I play dumb to make him feel better, just like all those Janet and John books said. The Dad is itching to climb inside but the wife is hovering and he knows he has seconds to re-live the drive to Greece when he was 21 with just a fiver in his pocket and a lithe Aussie bird in the back with a ready smile and tight ass. Then a child whines and the dog barks and the wife yells and he leaves Dave and me to our make our own memories.