Mo Laethanta Saoire: Danielle McLaughlin on the joys of caravans
Danielle McLaughlin with her dad and the family's Ford Capri.
It’s the summer of 1979 and I am ten years old. I’m on holidays with my family in Ardmore, Co Waterford, and the campsite where we’re staying has been ambushed by a storm. Outside, the wind sucks noisily at the sides of the caravan. Inside, the wall panels bang and clatter as they move in and out - inhale, exhale - as if the storm, or the caravan itself, is a thing alive. Although it’s the middle of the night, I’m out of my bunk, standing barefoot in my pyjamas beside my baby sister’s carry cot.
For a child capable of mining anxiety from the most innocuous of sources, I’m curiously unafraid. This midnight drama is exhilarating. Another squall of wind rattles the caravan and the carry cot sways precariously on its stand. My parents tie a pair of my father’s trousers around the cot part, so that if the stand tips over, at least the baby won’t fall out. The caravan is shaking and jigging and groaning and my parents decide to evacuate it and take me, my younger brother, and the baby to the family car. And still my overwhelming emotion is not fear, but excitement. This was the sort of thing that might happen to a child in a book.
