We are getting ourselves ready to embark on a small but personally significant adventure.
Tomorrow we will be visiting Nottingham to have our undressed pictures taken.
This all seemed very amusing when I volunteered for it: but I looked in the mirror at my cellulite last night, and it would appear that the naked truth is, well, that there is rather a lot of naked truth.
I am not sure how I feel about the whole idea now we are almost there. Amused, mostly, and curious, because I have never even seen the inside of a photographic studio and it is interesting, if slightly daunting, to be doing something so absolutely not like anything we would normally do.
Mark seems completely untroubled by the whole thing and said that he would think about it once he had finished the important business of getting both cars through their MOT and re licensed to be taxis again for another few months.
He finally achieved that this afternoon, and then called me to say that he thought we should go to Nottingham in the camper van in case I was traumatised by being undressed in a University photographic studio and needed a little rest and a cup of coffee afterwards.
I agreed with this wholeheartedly. On reflection I am probably a bit traumatised already mostly because we were prewarned that the studios might be chilly. I am not sure how much I will like a photographic record of my cellulite with goose pimples. Fortunately since it will be in black and white at least it won’t be greyish blue cellulite with the odd purple vein.
We have got to take dressing gowns with us, long-standing readers will know that this will not present a problem. Indeed, it pleased me to reflect that our photographer friend will probably be one of the first people to see us in our very lovely dressing gowns, which will be rather nice. It isn’t often they get an airing, they are my favourite clothes and of course we never, ever wear them to go out: so every cloud has its silver lining etc.
We are going to set off when we have finished work late tonight, and travel as far as we can before we start feeling too sleepy, and then finish the journey in the morning. It is really exciting just to be going away for a day or two, even without the photographs. I like being in the camper van so very much, all my troubles melt away when we get in to it. We are free and nobody knows where we are, and we can go anywhere or do anything and there are no taxis to be thought of, and I can read books and do what I like without feeling in the least guilty that I ought really to be doing some sort of manual labour.
I am looking forward to it so much that I have been trying to persuade Mark that we ought to pack up and slope off a bit early. It has felt like time to set off since about half past six, but he is determinedly resisting, at least until we have earned enough money to put some diesel in it, because it still seems to use quite a lot of that even with the hydrogen thing piped into the engine. This is because it is enormous and old.
I don’t know how much diesel it will need to go to Nottingham and back but since so far I have earned £11.70 I probably have got to stay here for a bit longer. Also I want to go for a swim at the BeautifulLoveliness PamperMe Holistic Health Spa before we set off. I don’t suppose it will make me noticeably any trimmer but I shall leave no stone unturned in my quest for if not a beautiful body then a slightly narrower oval.
I paused there and indeed did go and swim, the effects of which I have since probably spoiled with most of a bar of chocolate. However it was a splendid swim, and boiling sauna, the sort hot enough to make your eyes hurt, followed by ice shower and ice rub down, and now we are as beautiful as we ever will be and ready to go.
All we need to do now is earn another thirty quid and we will be gone.
Not long now…
The picture is rubbish but it is actually our folded dressing gowns waiting to be packed. In case you were wondering.
