We have reached a sad conclusion.
The camper van is not going to be ready for our trip to France in April.
We had a Serious Think about it over coffee in bed this morning, and Mark made a long list of everything that still needs to be done, like building a new dashboard and putting the windscreen back and fitting the bathroom and the heater and the exhaust.
The list filled two sides of A4 and left ink on the duvet.
Of course I knew really that this was going to be the outcome.
The thing is that if we cobble any of it back together with the sort of bodge job that you do when you are in a hurry, we both know perfectly well that it will stay bodged for ever.
We are not going to take it off the road ever again once it finally comes out of the intensive care unit and enters convalescence.
Once we have bashed it into the sort of shape that we can live with, we will live with it. It will remain in the exact state in which it makes its first hesitant journey along the farm drive, because we will not want to do any more surgery then. We will want to have adventures in it again.
It is our very best thing, and we think that we would like it to be perfect.
We will not have achieved this in the four weeks that remain before we sail off into the sunset. This is a figure of speech, I know perfectly well that when you sail from Hull the sun sets on the other side of the sky.
We might have managed to achieve four wheels and an engine, but although that would be an improvement on its current state of being, it is not really sufficient to make an adventurous journey of hundreds of miles across Europe, certainly not without time for a bit of a test drive first.
We have had to be towed off the ferry in it before. It was not our finest hour.
Fortunately we had only planned to spend two nights of our thrilling holiday staying in the camper van. We have got two nights on the boat, and six whole nights at Disneyland, because it is our complementary stay.
I am sure even I will be bored with Disneyland by then. I think this is a Good Thing. I like the idea of having had so much magical loveliness that I have got fed up of it.
We were sad to make this decision, but resigned. It means that Mark will not get anxious and upset, and that I will not get cross and shout at him. This would not be fair because he is doing his best, and it has been an awfully big thing to do. He has been doing it almost every day for nearly a year now.
We have missed having it very badly indeed, but the end is beginning to be in sight. There will be a day, sooner or later, when you will be able to read, on these very pages, the thrilling news that we have started the nearly-new engine and the wheels have begun turning, and its daffodil-yellow magnificence will burst forth into the sunlight once again.
Regrettably, that day is not today.
