We have spent the day at the camper van.
It has been absolutely brilliant.
We dashed about getting house stuff done first, and then loaded everything useful we could think of into the car to spend the day at the farm.
The picture at the top is my effort.
I have spent the day painting , and that is what I have done.
Secretly I am quite pleased with it, although obviously I can’t say so because that would be vain, and also it would be to invite all my friends who actually have artistic ability to point out the bits where I have gone wrong. I don’t care where I have gone wrong. I have spent a sublimely happy day getting paint all over my fingers and my trousers and my glasses, and making our camper van look ridiculous.
In fact this has been quite exciting as well, mostly because our ladder has got one leg shorter than the other. This adds a certain adrenalin spice to its use.
I am feeling very happy indeed with life. Two glasses of wine has helped this feeling a bit, but all the same, life does not get better than a day spent painting pictures out of doors in the warm sunshine.
The dogs charged about and barked at everything. We think there might be a rabbit warren or a new baby deer on the fell side in front of the farm, because the dogs have spent the entire day dashing up there and barking their heads off. We were too idle to go trailing after them to find out properly, and just kept bellowing at them to come back. Mark’s sister threw out some ancient rice crackers, and they found them and spent the rest of the afternoon playing one-upmanship games with rice crackers. This was all right until Mark gave them a real biscuit, which led to some agonising choices.
Mark has been doing miraculous things with the engine.
It must have been miraculous, because this afternoon it started.
It actually started.
It wasn’t really meant to, we were just turning the ignition on because he was doing things with the wiring. We both yelled in shock and turned it off quickly, because it doesn’t yet have all of the things necessary for an engine to run beautifully, but it started. It really started, we have a camper van that will go.
We spent the rest of the day marvelling to one another about how sweet and quiet the engine had sounded in its split second burst of life. It did not need turning over and over and over, like both of the taxis do because of faults with the heater plugs. I turned the key in the ignition and the engine leapt into life.
We were not expecting that.
It has given us both a glorious hope for the future. In the now-foreseeable future we will possibly have a camper van which will go places. This will not be yet, because yesterday after the police meeting we took the prop shaft to a man who makes prop shafts into a different shape. He will give it back to us as soon as we have got two hundred quid, so we might be a while yet: however once we have got two hundred quid for a prop shaft, and also some cash for some legal tyres, we might very well be mobile.
There are still things to do inside as well, of course, but in a very few weeks now it might have an MOT.
When we had had enough camper van it was late. We went to Asda to improve our overdraft, after which we came home and ate cold pizza left over from last night, and drank further quantities of wine.
I am so very happy.
It is not nearly here yet, but I can see that really really one day we might get nearly here.
It is possible.
Also it has got pictures on it.
Life is ace.
