Grey nomads monopolising the toilets

I THINK I’ll become a grey nomad.

Dump all the material pleasures of life in a real bed, with handy washing machines and microwaves, and hit the road, never knowing when the next stop will be, nor where, nor whether there’ll be any loo paper in the lavatory when I get there.

Once upon a time you had to die to achieve this degree of freedom. Now you just buy a caravan.

Everyone’s doing it. At least, everyone over 60.

Grey nomads, in case you hadn’t heard, are those couples (they seem to always come in pairs) who have grown weary of the daily grind and have hit the road, swapping the stress of work and grandchildren and homes that are in a state of continuous decay for… the stress of dirt tracks, and road trains that charge up in a cloud of dust, with overhangs that create shadows over the ditches on both sides of the road, not to mention the stress of punctures and oil leaks and big-end failure and well… vehicles that are in a state of continuous decay.

I’ve talked myself out of it already, thank God.

It would have been different if I could have been the Grey Nomad. The only one. I would have felt like the Lone Ranger, riding mysteriously into town in my silver Pajero, sashaying up to the bar, keys jingling, and leaving town with nothing more to mark my passing than a silver hair — one of hundreds that fall out of my head every day — in someone’s beer.

But being a grey nomad would be a nightmare.

Apparently there are thousands of them galloping round Australia like trotters round a track, and they’re spending billions of dollars on the experience. You can spot them in the Townsville supermarkets (they’re the ones buying milk by trolley-load. All of it UHT), and in the chemists (they’re the ones buying enough digestive aids to settle the stomach of a whale).

But what must it be like in the places where they stop!

A camping ground full of grey nomads would be the only place in the world where the lavatories would be busier at 2am than at any time in daylight. And at 3am. And 4am. And 5am.

And in the mornings you’d wake, not to the sounds of birdsong but to the communal groanings of people trying to get out of bed. Beach culture would be rewritten by a generation that doesn’t sunbake, not for any health-related reasons (they probably already have skin cancer) but because it’s too hard trying to stand up again.

And what would you talk about?

It’s well known that if you are thrown into conversation with a stranger the talk settles on those things you share.

I don’t want to go on a long holiday to discuss hip replacements, new knee joints and which ointments work best on muscle strain. I do not want to have eager enthusiasts poking around my decrepit 1950s plywood two-berther comparing it to their state-of-the-art, alloy, five-star travelling hotel with gimballed drink holders.

I do not want to hear about their children and grandchildren and how successful they are. I want to tell them about mine, of course. Don’t we all, but I don’t have time to listen to theirs.

I hear people saying: you’re nothing but a mean-minded, cynical old malcontent.

Yes.

It’s not that I don’t admire grey nomads. Good on ’em. I hope they find what they’re looking for.

But I can’t help feeling that when they’ve chased the setting sun to the western horizon and they’re sitting on the beach near Broome with their campervans at their backs and the endless ocean before them, they’ll feel like they’ve reached the end of the world. Which, of course, they have.

What did they expect – a man with a black cloak, a scythe and a little egg-timer?