On his return to the UK from California, David Hockney brought with him a certain emerald green, transported for 6,000 miles inside his head. It’s a brightly luminous, unreal greener-than-green green that he splashed about in Yorkshire to make us momentarily happy in the never-ending winter gloom, as if to remind us what spring might look like one day. Two months ago I found myself in a field that exact colour, with a thick, solid advancing border of buttercups so vividly, violently yellow they made my eyes squint.
It was an English pastoral scene of retina-burning primary colour, made brighter after months of grey. A shining sun framed by delicate white puffy clouds set in a perfect sky. All that was missing was the Teletubbies’ smiling baby. Summer had arrived like a bolt from the blue. Colour intensity like this was why people used to take acid.
In its midst, the most unlikely UFO had landed. A bright, shiny, silver metallic Airstream caravan, Americana’s most lasting contribution to retro styling, straight from the period: buffed up and gleaming, perfect in every detail. Its smooth mirrored panels reflected twelve siblings, dotted around the field – a full-on Doctor Who time-portal transmission back to an imaginary mid-Western summer holiday. The nostalgia dial had been turned up to 11.
A full-on Doctor Who time-portal transmission back to an imaginary mid-Western summer holiday
I climbed inside, banging my head on the doorframe, stepping even further back in time, to charity shop crockery, fragile mid-century furniture, and a small welcoming bottle of Babycham to wash down my Tunnock’s Teacake. I lit the gas to boil the kettle and, while waiting and waiting and waiting for the whistle (I was watching it, you see), I put on the record player. It was The Shadows. Actually it was a heavily stylised retro CD player, with a 1960s compilation album, but let’s not nitpick.
Welcome to my 1946 Spartan Manor Airstream, the oldest – by far – of the mainly 60s trailers imported from the USA by Helen and Fraser, two refugees from the crowded London world of photography and styling. It all started with a location shoot, where a cheap single caravan was a backdrop, and grew from there. They came to the Isle of Wight to pick up props for shoots and after a moment of red-wine induced madness found themselves running a business from a rented farmer’s field.
I squinted out the window at my neighbours. A Pillar Box Red Mustang was parked across the way, replicating a scene from Happy Days. I expected the Fonz, comb in hand, to suddenly emerge from his Airstream, leap over the driver’s door and roar off across the grass.
Helen showed me how to function in the 60s, emphasising the need for a sense of humour. Space is limited, so everything is small – which must have included the people at the time, I figured, as I grazed my head once more on the door frame. If you lived in an Airstream caravan in the 60s this is exactly what it would be like. No dishwasher, for a start, just a tiny metallic sink and hot water that’s lit on demand (by you). The shower would just about accommodate a size zero model (there’s a communal facility next door to the Fonz’s place), and the simple-to-operate waste water system comprises a bright plastic container that might just be from a later period.
In the evening, we sat outside to sip wine on stripy deckchairs. We hadn’t got the log burner up and running yet (this was only day one of what would prove to be an unexpectedly authentic summer), but we could have been cremating sausages, making salads, drinking lager and dancing to Rockabilly. Or Skiffle. Even drinking cups of tea. I glared at the kettle, having banged my head on the way back in, willing it to boil.
The next morning, in bright, bright sunshine, we explored, leaving by the farm gate where there’s an honesty box for fresh eggs (£1.20 for six double yolkers!).
The Isle of Wight’s a funny old place. Traditionally it’s a retirement location for bank managers, although since banks don’t actually employ managers any more, a friend is convinced the demographic is slowly changing to old hippies who’ve never come home from the festival. It has beautiful rolling countryside, farm shops, a donkey sanctuary, and little tourist amenities like Queen Victoria’s gigantic summer retreat, Osborne House. And while the landscape is regularly interrupted by less than attractive suburbia, there are still pockets of beauty (Newtown on the west coast, Seaview on the east), with the jewel being Ventnor, a perfectly restored proper little seaside resort with dinky caffs and an influx of gay bistros with sharply written menus. Modernity has arrived, and with it a demand for food that doesn’t end with the words “and chips”.
In The Taverners at Godshill, the only pub where I’ve ever seen copies of the Australian mag Gourmet Traveller casually strewn around, they pride themselves on locally sourced, perfect nosh. As if to emphasise this I ordered the day’s special: rare hangar steak from a beast that lived next door. There was some hesitation. I asked if there was a problem. “Not really,” the owner said, “we’ve got the steak alright but we’ve run out of asparagus. They’re up in the field cutting it now. Do you mind waiting ten minutes?”
Eat your heart out, London foodies.
The best secret is kept till last, just for you, dear reader, who has made it all the way to the end. Just south of Ventnor is Steephill Cove, accessed via Love Lane and a flight of perilous stone steps behind a cricket ground. At the bottom you’ll find a dinky private beach, with about a dozen jaunty houses crammed along the shoreline. There you’ll find Wheelers Crab Shed – not the old restaurant chain, but a family of lobster and crab fishermen who’ve set up shop so that on a sunny day, with a chilled bottle of Sauv, you can devour the freshest shellfish of your dreams to the sound of gently lapping waves and a few happy smiling families playing on the sand.
We rounded it off with a cup of tea on a deckchair, from a stripy-doored shack which had a kettle that actually boiled. C