"Sitting up like a citizen"

I just received these photographs from my son, Jeremy. It has provoked a serious attack of nostalgia. When I moved to Cambridge in the early eighties, I bought myself a Volkswagen Camper. Not the oldest version, the "split screen", but the bay-fronted version. The vehicle had already had eight owners and was venerable, to say the least. The camper conversion was, I think, a Danbury, but its main value was that it gave me a table and seat at which I could sit to eat and drink after a hard morning's birdwatching. Katy (from the registration plate KTY) was painted a bilious green, and flaked with rust, but I loved her (If a van is called Katy, I guess she has to be a she). I finally sold her for £50 to a lunatic who rebuilt her and took her to the south of France and back.
After two years without, I bought another bay-front, a white one this time, called - a bit of imagination failure here - Katy Two. After more years of great enjoyment, "sitting up like a citizen" and starting to sing as soon as I got behind the wheel, I sold her for £100 to a local farmer who wanted her reconditioned engine.
And now, mes potes, years on, Jeremy has bought himself one. Just look at it! Pristine, rustfree, spotless. This is what happens if a VW Camper spends its life in a dry climate like Australia, and latterly in New Zealand. I am envious. I have my Land Rover Discovery, of course, which can do two things the VW Camper cannot: it can go anywhere, and it can get up a decent speed if you need it. But there is something magical about the VW Camper. I know of no better way to reduce stress, lower blood pressure, lift the spirits and fluff up the kidneys.
But what really eats me up are the roo bars on Jeremy's camper. OK, I know we don't have a problem with kangaroos in the UK, but it would have been a real pose to have had roo bars on my two Katies.