Parts

The weekend is upon us once again.

We rushed about tidying our lives up before we went out to the farm this morning, pegging washing on the line and organising yesterday’s catering into freezer bags. We set the hoover about its business and washed all of the pots.

After that we could go and play outside.

The weather has been still and cool and cloudy all day, and I have been very peacefully occupied in Mark’s workshop, painting more pictures on our lovely camper van.

I am still enjoying this very much indeed. It is a quietly joyful occupation, blending colours and dabbing them on to the sides. I have been using some old acrylic paints, which are for children really, the sort you get at playgroup. This is fine, because they mix and paint over very nicely. The thing is that they will very probably wash off in the rain. Mark says that this will be perfectly easily resolved, and that when I have finally finished he will spray lacquer over the top, which will make it stick there for ever.

It is starting to look very full now, soon I will be able to move on and paint the other side. Just a few more leaves and bumble bees and I will be done.

It will be just perfect for when we are trying not to be noticed at the side of the road. Mark says that we will just blend into any woodland scene just as if we were really supposed to be there. This is a pleasing thought. We are both getting more and more excited about it the whole time. Soon, very soon now, it will be on the road again.

Mark spent the day lying underneath the back of the camper and swearing. He has been fitting our newly-restored prop shaft. This is the bit that runs along underneath the van and makes the axle turn round. I have had this explained to me.

Mark picked this up the other day when he went to the dentist. We were lucky with this, because it turned out that the chap at the prop shaft repair centre accepted credit cards, which was a happy result. I know that one day sooner or later we will either have to pay this bill or shoot ourselves, but that day is not today, and so I don’t care.

He has been fitting brakes as well, but there was some sort of difficulty with bolts and so that has had to stop a while. It is not at all easy to get the right bits  for the camper, because when you ring parts companies they all want to know the registration number.

Of course it has got a registration number, all cars have, except it is not the one that it had when it was born, long, long ago, in nineteen eighty one in France.

We had to change its registration number by deed poll once we came back to England, at least, we did once the local traffic warden investigated the legislation about foreign vehicles. He was not fond of our camper van because it looked as though it ought to be illegal. He couldn’t be sure of this because of not knowing the rules, and once put a notice on the back telling us that we had seven days to do something else with it or he would have it towed off for scrap. Once he came round to our house with a policeman and an outburst of bad temper. We still laugh about this sometimes.

Anyway, it does not have a proper registration number, only a sort of immigrant one that says it has been adopted by a British family. Worse than that is that it is now on its third engine, and so some bits for it have got the registration number of the second engine, and some have got the registration number for the engine we have just put in.

Mark has got to be very persistent with parts companies, because they don’t want to bother trying really hard to work out which bit we need, and mostly they listen for a minute and then just tell us to buzz off. On the whole Mark buys parts that are pretty close and then twiddles them about or hits them with a hammer until he can get them to fit.

We might have to do this with the brakes.

I have every faith in him.