We have had another day at the farm.
We rushed about this morning, eating breakfast and washing things, until we could leave with clear consciences, and then dashed off for a day of joyful contentedness, tiddling about with the camper van.
Mark cut another new hole in the side for something useful, and took the door off the back locker to fix it with a new one. This was a complicated project involving cutting metal and cutting wood and sanding and planing and swearing. We have not been able to get into the back locker for a long time, so this was a good thing to do. When we are on the road again we will not only be able to put things in, we will be able to lock it, unlock it and take things out. This is a magnificent bonus. It has been stuck shut for a jolly long time.
I will probably not be using the back locker. This is where Mark plans to keep his bank of batteries that he will be using to store the electricity that he gets when his solar panels are installed on the roof. Regular readers will know that he spent his spare time all the way through January and February manufacturing solar cells, and now he has got hundreds of them, all ready to be glued to the roof and connected together. This will mean that as long as we are in a warm climate we will not need to borrow anybody else’s electricity.
He has got other energy-saving wizard wheezes set up as well, his hydrogen exploder has been refurbished ready to go, so that we won’t need much diesel: and there is a water heating arrangement involving copper pipe and the engine which I do not understand, and then of course there is the newly invented LPG tank. He keeps going on about cold fusion, or maybe it is fission, but he still needs to do some work with that yet and so it is not being installed this time. This is a troubling arrangement which sets water on fire. I have told him that he is not allowed to install anything that we can’t explain to the insurance company.
I have also explained that he is not allowed to use all of the lockers for solar powered batteries and generators, because I want some deckchairs, and we are going to have to keep those somewhere as well. He has grudgingly consented to this.
Whilst he was busy cutting things up, I have been eating shortbread and painting. This has made me very happy.
It is the nicest thing in the world.
Mark’s workshop, which is actually a reconditioned aircraft hangar, sings to you when the wind blows, because of air and iron and gaps. This is menacing and horrid in winter, and makes me feel desolate and lost, like the ghost of Cathy in Wuthering Heights.
It is not horrid at all when the sun is shining and there is a glorious chorus of birdsong to go with it. It is warm and friendly and melodic and gentle.
I painted away happily today, listening to the birds and the workshop singing, and thought that there was no nicer way to spend a day ever.
The birds sing an awful lot, it is an absolutely colossal amount of effort. It is a huge noise to come from such a tiny creature. I wondered what on earth they were telling one another, because it must be important to make it worth such a massive effort: but Mark said it is because they are young and it is about sex. It must be exhausting. I am glad I am grown up.
We stayed there all day. When we came home we had Booths Reduced! lamb and mint burgers for dinner, with some pecan nut bread and home made mayonnaise. We ate this in the garden, because of having a perfect life, and thought that we will have to try and get back to the allotment this weekend.
There are so many things that need doing.
The picture is the camper van. I have finished the back and one side now, and next time we go back will be starting on the front.
I am so very excited about it.
