KING TRAMP

John and I make up stories about other campers.
(John – No, I don’t. For example, the German owner of a mobile home parked next to us in Slovenia had a label in the manner of a licence plate stuck to the window of the driver’s door. Ruth said this indicated that his name was “Dieter”. I said it merely showed that he was trying to lose weight.)
Our stories are of course always gratuitous and libellous fictions and we have to keep changing the plot because they aren’t true. For example the English couple at Lisebergbyn had not really made a suicide pact and locked themselves in their campervan – they had actually taken a short cruise on the Skaggerak.
Anyhow - here is another concoction from us (but not from me).

At first all we saw was an Aboriginal ‘humpy’ constructed from a tarpaulin. Later we glimpsed the ‘humpy’ constructor who aroused our scholarly curiosity. On each of our return visits from the ‘conveniences’, (another fabrication though not ours) we collate our observations as to the nature of this person.
As yet we have reached no firm conclusions.
I, of course, am a realist. I suggested that he was recently discharged from hospital – even possibly an escapee! John who is an unusually fine fantasist – thinks he is a King waiting to be reinstated on one of the many Balkan thrones.

These are the facts we have assembled.
• He has a paid-for tag from the camping office.
• He has a smart pull along suitcase just right for jet-travel.
• He is of our years with thick white and yellow hair down to his collar but not untidy – so a man of standing and experience.
• He has lost his spectacles and has to hold the newspapers he is constantly reading close to his nose.
• He never uses less than two basins for his ablutions after his shower. (This John tells me – I do not know this!)
• His clothes – jeans, shirt and pullover and flower-pot man type-hat seem new –ish! His watch of good design perhaps, has a leather strap.
• His leather lace-up shoes when he arrived were ‘tramped’ down at the heels but have since been replaced with similar though not ‘tramped’ down. No slobbish trainers please note! Is this the real meaning of ‘down-at-heels’?

The first week there was a shopping trolley by his tent. Now he has a folding office chair held together with a plastic bag. Piece by piece it seems he has gradually acquired a blow-up mattress, a small camping gaz and a saucepan so he no longer eats from cans.
His ‘humpy’ building skills however, seem limited to say the least.
His first edifice was an awning of a blue plastic bit of sacking and two scavenged sticks to hold it overhead. Quite ineffective it proved to be. He now has a good tarpaulin but has apparently given up the idea of suspending it over his small tent.
He uses plastic packing material to sit on outside his tent. The office chair is kept for drying his laundry which he does daily.
He speaks to no one and sits with his back to the passing world.

So far we have seen no signs of officers come to take him away and none of his loyal subjects and supporters.

King Tramp the Everyman is constructing his life
– or reconstructing it.

He is a fine contrast with the rest of us in our Wheely Cabins, Gazebos and baldaquins or palanquins. Even those who play at the primitive for a week or two in summer are kitted out with every need of womankind, childkind, and mankind. We all drag objects around with us because we believe life is insupportable without acquisitions and possessions.

What is a human without a mortgage?

Perhaps King Everyman the Tramp or Everyman, the Tramp King, would prefer a mortgage – and a roof that stayed over his head.