'I wasn't buying a van, I was buying a lifestyle' – How minivan camping holidays became cool
For The Telegraph, Tracey unpacked the cult of the Mazda Bongo — the Japanese grey-import minivan that's colonised Brighton, Cornwall and Devon — via her own Bingo Bango, a leaky tent at Hook Farm, and a neighbour on her third one.
The Bongo boom explained through the Brighton-cul-de-sac lens: Tracey's own 2004 Friendee ("Bingo Bango"), imported from Japan complete with chopsticks and coins under the seats, plus three more of them just on her street. She sketches the community — the "Bongo Bashes," the mandatory wave at fellow Bongonauts, neighbour Lee Taylor on her third one because "it will start first time" — before the piece lands where all her best writing does: a leaky tent at Hook Farm in the Sussex Weald, teenage girls and Miss Babs the dog bundled into the back of the van, "cosier than a pixie's pocket." Comes with the working detail — pop-up AFT roof, leisure battery, awning attachment — but you'll remember the pixie line.