Van-glorious days not-so Goodies times

All five of us are crammed inside the dual cab but the aggro is being disarmed by a steady stream of Aimee Mann and the knowledge those who keep their cool (difficult when at least one of us is a farter) for the next seven hours will be rewarded with a new car.

The vehicle in question is, in fact, nowhere near new. A van to replace a valiant antecedent, this one already has 200,000 kilometres on the clock but we (my wife) have a good feeling about it, so we've dropped everything and headed west, determined to beat the cavalcade of competitors who, despite our holding deposit, are still ringing the vendors and trying on any manner of gazumption because, like us, they know all's fair in the quest for a sound, pre-loved people-mover.

As we pass each hopeful property, I point out to the kids that the frozen front-end loaders, bulldozers and diggers resemble the menacing earth-moving dinosaurs from that Goodies episode we've only recently watched. The kids nod in recognition, igniting that certain pilot light of pride a parent feels knowing they've contributed substantially to their children's education.

I'm three-for-three. Although the kids baulked at the too-confronting Ricky Gervais original, they quickly became obsessed with the American version of The Office and similarly wet their pants when introduced to The IT Crowd (disappointingly, not so much Father Ted).

Recognising their genetic disposition for lazy laughs, I'd fetched the languishing Goodies compilation from the bottom drawer, calculating if they enjoyed it, I might even try them on The Two Ronnies, after which it'd be plain sailing all the way to Richard Briersshire and Felicity Kendaltown.

It didn't begin well. They laboured politely through the first few dated and unfunny episodes, glancing back at my exigent leer, thinking "Dad must have been a bit simple when he was our age".

But not wanting to hurt my feelings any more than usual, they persisted with Graeme, Tim and Bill and, as the plots, the props and the gags improved, the whole surreal silliness won them over (but, it has to be said, not in any repeat-viewing sense).

Their lack of investment was evident this week when I relayed coronavirus had killed Tim Brooke-Taylor: "You know, the 'I'm a teapot' one." They greeted the news with a distant "that's sad" whereas, had COVID-19 claimed Steve Carell, we'd have been observing a month's mourning and preparing a pilgrimage to Pennsylvania.

It was because of the old van the kids developed their love of sitcoms in the first place, having become staple viatic viewing via the Caravelle's entertainment system. Unfortunately, despite a functioning screen, we had to install a replacement DVD player because the vehicle had previously belonged to members of the Exclusive Brethren - a sect known for eschewing technology - who had apparently cast the demonic appliance out the window (albeit hanging on to the Old Testament air conditioning).

But the van was a good buy and worth the extra effort, which is why we've hit the road for its successor.

Living in the country, we're a family of super commuters and an eight-seater has afforded us long multi-tasking journeys with the peace-keeping luxury of space. A typical trip to the big smoke and back might include several children (ours and others), the groceries, a bale of lucerne and a fully inflated pool flamingo.

And, in hindsight, we're pleased the chore for a new car became an impromptu road trip because it turned out to be our last before the whole world went into lockdown.

It was a nourishing experience; the landscape was being replenished and its people similarly flushed with a generosity of spirit found on the other side of a break in the weather (except the second-hand book shop guy who refused me a discount for a Penelope Fitzgerald paperback and a 1970s coffee-table tome on lyrebirds).

It stormed as we slept at a farm stay near sandstone mesas that cut jigsaws pieces from the sky and, although livestock is nothing new, it was fun to feed cows on an early morning UTV ride and be shadowed by a charm of diamond firetails.

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The first leg of the trip also took us to my university town, a place to which I hadn't returned in more than 25 years.

As we approached a crucial intersection on the outskirts from where we could have easily bypassed my past, self-indulgence grabbed the wheel and I suggested a quick detour to my old share house, which, like Lot, I'd left behind as a collapsing two-storey pile of hedonism and heartbreak.

Amid growing complaint from the back seat, we searched what was once the wrong side of the tracks down near the river and eventually found the house; unrecognisable, gentrified and scrubbed of its secret history.

Indeed, in the madness of this towering place, we'd all scrambled to devour Donna Tartt's astonishing 1992 thriller and I'd always found it fitting our own rag-tag group had disbanded with the same tragic finality as her traumatised classics students, as if exploding away from each other were our only available act of self-preservation. As Kevin Kline said in The Big Chill: "How much sex, fun, friendship can one man take?".

This all comes back as I stand on the other side of the decorous street, taking evidential photos of what is now, according to a bespoke sign, a respectable "lodge" for paying guests and not the worst student house in town whose occupants used to reach over the fence to steal the neighbours' firewood.

A couple of doors down, my tired wife and children are huddled in the ute, patient, trusting and, for the most part, ignorant as to what transpired in this winter palace of grunge and apostasy.

Knowing our destination is still a couple of hours away, I wearily look in their direction then back to my old bedroom and allow myself the briefest moment of what might have been before my elegiac prism is shattered by the unmistakable call of home and unconditional love.

Who farted!

Time to go.