I have had the happy experience of resolving a difficult problem today.
We have recently set up a new fuel card arrangement, meaning that we buy all fuel on special cards for the purpose and pay for it later. The main advantage to this is that it is considerably cheaper than buying fuel with money, contrary to reasonable expectation.
The new cards arrived a few days ago, and whilst Mark’s worked perfectly, mine did not. It did not work at all, despite several goes at the garage, eventually resulting in Mark having to call in there a day or two later and pay with his card for the large fuel bill that I had run up in the meantime.
When we came to discussing fuel purchases this morning he wondered tactfully if possibly the reason for my lack of success was that I was trying to buy fuel at a BP station with the Esso fuel card.
Of course I knew as soon as I thought about it that he was right, and I discovered later, to my happiness, that when I used the BP card at the BP station it worked like a dream. This made Mark laugh a great deal, at intervals through the day whenever he remembered about it.
The discussion about fuel was prompted by a major trip down the motorway this afternoon. My father and brother have manufactured, for our joint birthday present, a set of shelves and plate racks for the camper van.
Having produced them to the desired specifications they discovered that they were far too large to fit in any of their vehicles. They rang up in the manner of people who have had quite enough of complicated shelf-design for clapped-out camper vans, and explained that we would need to come and collect them.
There was no rush to make this journey, because the camper van is nowhere near finished yet, but all the same once we knew that they were ready we were swallowed up by impatience to see them and to install them in all their glory without further delay.
My father rang us last night, and by half past eleven this morning we were on our way down the motorway, chirpy with excitement.
When we got there of course it turned out that the shelves are beautiful. We had left my father with the challenging task of manufacturing shelves that would fit in the space, would display our nice Mr. Tumpy china to its best advantage so that the pretty flowery pattern could be seen: and at the same time would protect it from getting jolted about and broken during any hasty emergency swerves on bumpy roads.
I am not sure that you could exactly say that my father relished this particular project, he has made one or two grumbly noises about ridiculously unrealistic expectations: but in the end they surpassed themselves.
We are now the proud owners of a set of oak-finished shelves with matching spice and plate racks. Every cup and plate and dish has its own place into which it fits perfectly in order not to rattle, they will be safe and lovely on the most hazardous of journeys.
They are silky-smooth to the touch and look absolutely stunning. As a bonus they came with some spice jars and some handy wine already sitting tidily on top, along with some incongruous but nevertheless beautifully scented French soap. I have saved this last to put in the new bathroom next to the Moroccan arch.
As well as the shelves of course we had a nice day, with lunch and as much coffee as we could drink all included. We investigated their garden after lunch, which was interesting: some things are doing lots and lots better than in my garden and made me feel like a failure, and some things are not doing nearly so well, which made me feel smug. This is because I am a rubbish human being sometimes. My mother kindly dug up a bounty of things that were doing very nicely which are now sitting in plastic bags on our path at home, awaiting transplantation into the dreadfully neglected realm of my garden
I meant to take a picture of the shelves to go on the top of this so that you could see them, on account of saving myself a thousand words, etc., but by the time we got them back to the farm this evening we were so very late for work that we just had time to unload them carefully and dash off. By the time I remembered the photograph it was too late.
I will have to do it when we have hung them on the wall.
I don’t think this moment will be long in coming, because the possession of beautiful new shelves has made us so excited we could hardly bear to leave them and go to work tonight.
In the meantime here is a picture of the garden.
Sorry.
