All Done … Our Final Day at Longleat

It’s dark outside, rain plops on the roof of the caravan as I rub the sleep from my eyes and curse Siri for setting my alarm clock when I asked him too.

Way back at the start of March we arrived here on site excited about the season ahead. Well, today, eight months later and it’s our last day of work. Up and at ’em, I splash water on my face, pits and bits. I’ll shower later, I’m going to spend the morning cleaning bogs so no point this morning.

Zoe Ball and a strong cup of builder’s tea coax me into the land of the living. As per every other day The Boss is pulling his boots on way too early, he’s proud we haven’t been a second late for work all season, not that impressive when the commute is only thirty seconds.

Our last two days are relatively quiet, the Safari park next door is closed so not many arrivals coming down the lane, and the ones that are don’t realise next door is closed, until we enlighten them, cue some rather disappointed facial expressions.

The Boss sets off early for his last bin run, he tells me it wasn’t really required except for countless decomposing, grotesque, carved up pumpkins smiling at him behind trees and bushes everywhere he looked. All collected and re-homed. He’s back for ten o’clock just in time to join me ‘boggin it’ as we do our final toilet clean of the year, but first, he better clean those boots. He ain’t walking muddy boot prints all over the floors.

As the site is so quiet the toilets are easily cleaned today, we even found ourselves enjoying it for a while, forgetting many of the days during the season when gifts of various shapes, sizes and odours would be presented to us. (some pictures didn’t make it to the collage below – you may be eating)

Bogs suitably spruced, sparkling and smelling fresh. Our final toilet clean of the season done.

The walk back from the loos is quite refreshing, the rain has stopped and it’s quite bright, threatening grey clouds in the distance but for now a reprieve in the wet weather. Just long enough for me to snatch a photo across the tent field and scuttle back to the office.

We decided to treat ourselves to a dinner hour, not normally possible when you are the only couple on site, a warm dinner too, I’d just handed The Boss a plate of hot sausage and bacon butties, when … the duty bell rang, a site contractor had tripped the electric … where? … “The furthest bloody end of the site” is what I think I heard him mumbling as he put the butties down. Mine were nice and hot anyway and slathered in brown sauce.

I busied myself in the afternoon completing office stuff, including adding many extra bookings for the ‘mega’ busy weekend coming up. No doubt he will say it’s my fault as we depart site just as eighty caravans are trying to squeeze down the single track lane towards site. The Boss waged battle on the millions of leaves fallen across the site, while a million further leaves fell around his head. The Safari park empty their leaves in the same compost area, he’s secretly pleased, he says it looks like he’s worked three times harder. The Boss’ boss isn’t daft though, he’d thought the same two days earlier when he did the leaf battle.

Hark! What’s that, a bugle? … The Cavalry? … well almost, my next arrival is the winter assistant wardens, riding a golden chariot blindingly out of rays of bright light accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets … OK … it was ‘razzin’ it down with rain and they arrived in a motorhome. I radio’d The Boss to which he replied “Start the car.”

I started the kettle instead and he took his cue to empty the tractor one last time and hang up his ear defenders. We shared a brew with the colleagues we won’t work with and processed our final arrivals. When I excitedly announced to the final arrival he was “my last arrival of the year” he simply gave me an “oh, really” look, he could have at least pretended to be honoured. To compensate, I rekindled my excitement by ceremoniously removing our names from the door, we are history.

Time to ‘cash up’ and close the system down. All present and correct, not surprising as we only took ‘ten bob and a kitkat’ today. Press a few buttons, draw a few blinds and put the key in the door….

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