Alas, once again the demon drink has me in its thrall.
This is going to be really short because I am really struggling to write sensible things and already I have drunk so much that a headache is inescapable. I have had three glasses of wine, which might not sound very much but actually is just not a good starting point for composing entertaining and articulate prose, when you read the creative writing tips handed out by famous authors to would-be novelists they almost never say ‘get drunk first’.
Also I did a Facebook quiz on the topic of drinking last week where I explained that I don’t drink during the working week but that I usually have three or four glasses of wine on my day off, and then when I got to the personality analysis bit at the end it accused me of binge drinking and said that I ought to consider spreading my drinking habits in a more balanced way over the course of several days. I am uncomfortably aware that this road would probably conclude in going to the sort of social evening where I would have to start off with the phrase: “My name is Sarah, and…”
The problem is that I have spent all day at the farm helping Markie mend the camper van and we decided to have a night off when we finished, which we celebrated with some wine.
As a result I feel decidedly blurry and fuzzy, which is very pleasant indeed.
Actually we have had such an unspeakably busy day. We got in from work at about half past four, and then were woken up at half past nine by the stupid dogs charging about and barking at the postman. We were awake then, and when Autoparts showed up and provoked another flurry of hysterical woofing shortly afterwards we just got up.
That is, we got up in the sense of sitting in bed drinking coffee for an hour: followed by milling about sleepily trying to organise our lives for another hour, followed by trying to reorganise our mobile phone contracts for an astonishing length of time, and then we went off to the farm.
Poor, poor camper van.
In fairness to our postman, he woke us up because the thing that wouldn’t fit through our letter box was a new door for the camper.
We have been agonising over these for ages, because ours had been mended with a warped plank in an emergency some time ago and didn’t shut properly, and we have looked and looked on eBay but because ours is foreign and the door opens the wrong way the cheapest we had found was £250.
Then the other day we happened across a Geordie who couldn’t sell his caravan door because it opened the wrong way, and he sold it to us for a fiver and posted it.
Obviously it didn’t fit our camper van because it was too short and too wide, but Mark said that this didn’t matter and so we have spent today cutting a hole in the side of the camper van of the right size to fit it. This was not as difficult as it sounds because some of the timbers had completely rotted and just crumbled to bits because they needed replacing anyway.
It has been terrifically hot, and we have become filthy in a greasy, dusty, sweaty, sticky way that you wouldn’t believe. We have got coated in oil and sawdust and black mouldy spores and sweat and sticky glue: it is all terribly hard work. The picture makes it all look very much more optimistic than it actually is.
We staggered home at half past nine this evening and got drunk.
I told you this would be a short entry.
