The real meaning of VWE

...and so Rosie enters my life! "Who is Rosie?" I hear you ask! Well, she actually came to live with me a week ago, but we kept it a bit secret. Rosie is 10 years my junior and is a flame redhead with attitude! She has wonderful curves, most of which are natural, but she's also a bit rough around the edges and showing her age, if I'm honest.  I would be lying if I said she goes like the clappers! In fact she is more 'slow and steady' and you have to stroke her and speak nicely to get her to go anything like uphill.  She needs working on, but with a little bit of polish and care, I hope to be able to introduce her to polite company in the not too distant future.  I have had quite a few friends, male and female, that have said they would be more than happy to help me knock her into shape.  I think that is mainly because they are expecting to get a ride, if you ask me!!  However, I have to keep my wits about me, she is expensive to keep, will break down in public, without the slightest provocation and attracts the attention of all sorts of enthusiastic admirers! But I love her and plan to spend a fair bit of the summer inside her.


Oh! Didn't I say! Rosie is a 1972 Late Bay Volkswagen Campervan. I have bought her with my great friends Barbara and Freya and we intend sprucing her up over the coming weeks and having some summer fun camping, doing festivals and getting to see friends and family.  She is really an 'unfinished project'.  Structurally and engine wise, Rosie is very much up and together.  However, she needs a pretty good makeover.  She is currently making my arms ache like b*****y where I'm trying to make the best of a bad paint job.  She looks good in the pictures, but was poorly re-sprayed. So I'm learning the art of 'wet and dry' and 'cutting in'.  Internally, she is a bit of a mess and needs just about everything replacing.  So we plan to strip her out and just about start from scratch.  I think the term that best describes where we are going with this is 'pimp my ride'!! 

Freya & Rosie

So, it looks like my 'garden' leave is turning into 'garage workshop' leave.  Our first big outing is to be a camping trip later in June.  Therefore, we have to get our skates on to get Rosie presentable.  We have, of course, taken the precaution of subscribing to a breakdown/recovery service.  For as much as I want to have faith in Rosie's abilities to carry me around this sceptered isle...I don't.  Everyone I have met with a VDUB has told me, usually with an ironically beaming smile, she'll always be breaking down on you and you'll never make it to where you're going...but isn't it great!!!  I fear that I, too, will turn into one of those, rather weird but, enthusiastically blinded nutters.


For all of her faults, Rosie is already becoming a part of the family.  Wherever I take her people look and smile.  Everyone comments on how they would love to have one like her and wish that they, too, could just take off into the sunset.  I'm hoping that this will be the start of something new and exciting in my life and that I, now have Rosie in it, will become the subject of VWE (VolkWagen Envy!! - why what else did you think I was going to talks about!! Tsk tsk!)