I bought it from Murray, a guy I went to high school with.

Like most VW van owners I gave my van a name.

I called it "Shitty the Van" when it was performing poorly, which was most of the time.

And I called it "La Shité" when it was working well.

After I had owned it for a few years the finish on the van was looking ragged so my old man and I bought three cans of spray-paint and spent an afternoon transforming it to a hunter green shade.

Oddly enough, this paint-job didn't have the same pop culture reverberations as when Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady and the other Merry Pranksters spray-painted their school bus in Day-Glo colours and christened it Furthur.

It did, however, make me feel better about my underperforming 1973 Volkswagen van.