We should have set off for work this afternoon, but we went back to bed instead.
It is Sunday and so there are still lots of people here, and we should have gone to the taxi rank at lunchtime, but we were both yawning too much for sensible conversation, and so when Number Two Daughter buzzed off to work and Oliver buzzed off to the zoo with Harry we sloped off back upstairs, where we fell soundly asleep within moments of tugging the quilt over us.
It is nice to inhabit a world where we can do this.
We went to work afterwards, when we woke up: but it was raining. This seems to have curtailed people’s milling about plans a bit. In consequence of everywhere being quiet, we had a fairly undisturbed evening, largely occupied by sitting on the taxi rank contemplating the purchase of things from eBay that we still need to buy for the everlasting camper van project.
It is very important to get it right. I am not sure if I have explained that a huge part of the point of the exercise, at least from Mark’s point of view, is to create a mobile hotel which will be so lovely that I won’t have any wish to stay in a real hotel.
This is because all of the hotels that I like to stay in seem to cost about five hundred pounds a night. Mark is hoping that all the cash we are currently sloshing liberally all over the camper van will ultimately turn out to have been an investment over the next ten years, because of saving us a small fortune in paying hotel bills and giving a fiver to the concierge.
I think this is a brilliant idea. The camper van has long been my favourite thing, but I have stopped enjoying it quite as much as I once did, and we have come to the realisation that this is because we have not really kept up with the pace of change and it has become overdue for a revamp.
When we were emptying it we discovered that we were still carting a supply of spare dummies and nappies about with us. Oliver is ten now, and does not feel the need for either these days, but even so I still found it hard to throw them away. This is not good behaviour. I have told myself firmly that it is time to move on.
I am still struggling with the box of old DVDs that we have kept as favourites in the camper for years. I know that neither of them watches My Little Pony now, and they must go. They are unusable clutter and no longer treasure. They are spoiling my happiness and not adding to it.
There is an old nylon quilt kept for emergencies in case a child had a midnight accident. There are things on shelves that I can’t reach and am no longer athletic enough to jump for. There are ice skates that don’t fit and the mattresses on the beds double up as seat cushions, and encourage stiff necks and pins and needles.
We all shared a bedroom all four of us together for years when Lucy and Oliver were small, not just in the camper van, but in the house, a bit like the puppies, all tumbling over one another in their box. This was because I like it better that way: it is good to have babies close at hand, and it is nice to wake up in the night and feel your family sleeping close around you.
However, there has been a fairly major change in them both over the last few years: and now they are not babies any more.
Lucy is not five now. She is taking her GCSE exams, so obviously we don’t share a bedroom in the house these days, in fact we don’t even share a bathroom. We have become more separate from one another now that they have grown up.
The thing is that as the children have been busy growing up, we have occupied the time by becoming elderly.
When we thought about it we realised that one of the reasons camper van life had become less joyful was that we just hadn’t quite got round to adapting the camper van to our more recent needs.
Mark and I are creakier, and visit the bathroom in the middle of the night more often. The children visit the bathroom in the middle of the night far less often. It is not us, but Lucy and Oliver who are sitting up late at night watching films with the volume turned down low so as not to disturb the members of the family who have collapsed into exhausted sleep after a day in the fresh air.
Things have changed. We have had a wonderful time all together in the camper van, but some modifications had become overdue.
It appears that we are different people, and we need a different camper van. The one that we had suited us splendidly ten years ago. The people we have become have got different needs.
We will make it perfect for us again.
