It was a beautiful dawn this morning. I was so busy watching the colours of the sky changing that I almost had a nasty accident on the way back from Kendal at the end of work.
It was so much daylight that we opened the curtains before we went to bed, which turned out to be an error of judgement because one of the neighbours mistakenly thought that we were up and banged on the back door at some point in the middle of the night, probably around ten, so we woke up then, and sat in bed groggily drinking coffee until our eyes came unstuck.
Number Two Daughter called to let us know that she was back in Windermere and had gone to work but would be home later. This would have been lovely to hear except that it reminded us guiltily that we had eaten pretty much everything in the fridge and all that was left for poor Number Two Daughter was an elderly onion and a half eaten jar of chocolate flavoured pesto: so we had to make a hasty dash up to Booths where we bought handy things like smoked trout and grapes and creamy Wensleydale and pears in order that we could welcome her home with a clear conscience.
We put the shopping away and hung the washing in the garden, and then belted off to the farm to resume the Camper Van Restoration Project.
Mark spent some time dismantling the engine and finally decided that it was beyond repair. He explained why and showed me some oily things, and I made interested and affirmative noises, but obviously did not have the least idea of what he was talking about and so if you were actually curious you would have to ask him yourself, because I haven’t got a clue, except that a new one is likely to cost at least four hundred quid and he is being grumpy about it.
I carried on dismantling the kitchen, and eventually he came and helped me. He went on the roof and took the old air conditioning unit off, which turned out to have a rather splendid attachment of pipes and wires with which you could make it rain indoors if you wanted to. Mark said that it was a mister, and it was for hot dry countries not at all like the Lake District, where people like the idea of rain because it has got novelty value and so like it indoors the way we might have a sunbed.
We put it in the bin, because we have got plenty of rain without needing to bother making pretend rain inside the camper, and anyway I want a window in the roof like the lovely camper vans in the shop. Then we carried on taking the kitchen apart, which was rather poignant, because Mark built the kitchen in the camper when we had not been married very long and were really poor, so it is all carefully pieced together from bits of scrap French timber and screwed in with often-used screws.
Also it is a perfect size for somebody about a foot taller than I am, which Mark happens to be, and probably in the early days he hadn’t really noticed that and so the working surface and sink were around my chest height.
In consequence I wanted a new one, so we have dismantled it, which made us laugh, because of remembering the past whilst we did it. We noticed all the things that we would do differently now because we have learned much more, and were touched by all the careful managing he must have done to fit it all together out of bits of old French doors and ancient planks.
It is all in a pile outside now and we are going to have a lovely new one, which is really exciting. We are going to put right all the things which we now know didn’t work very well with the old one, and because this is England and not France a long time ago we will be able to buy things like plywood which the French hadn’t invented in those days, and it will be shiningly fresh and beautiful.
In the end we thought it was going to rain and went dashing off home to bring the washing in, although it turned out that Number Two Daughter had already done it, but it was a good job that we did because of it being almost eight o’clock.
It is all going to be fine, although possibly not very soon.
There is an awful lot to do.
