I sent my story out to another agent last night.
So far I have had twelve rejections.
I am taking heart from the knowledge that lots of writers have rejections before they make their first million pounds. All I have got to do is find somebody who likes ripping yarn adventure stories without a single topical or pointedly relevant pressing social issue anywhere, and I will be a success overnight.
Since that person has so far proved elusive I am on the taxi rank again.
I don’t mind this because we have been so busy on the camper van that my neck and shoulders are aching. This is from balancing on wobbly scaffolding waving a paintbrush for the last four days.
They were so bad when we got home those evening that Mark insisted on giving me a massage. Admittedly this made me feel better afterwards, but in the short term was the sort of experience that made me wish we had arranged a safe word before we started. It upset the dogs very much, who tried to save me at first, and then when that failed, tried to reassure me by sticking their noses into my ears and licking them kindly.
It has been another happy day. The picture at the top is our little workshop domestic arrangement. It is on the saw bench, since Mark is not using that for anything at the moment. We have two flasks, one of the sort of coffee where you have got to spit out the last mouthful, and one for later on in the day when we have woken up, which is chai.
Mark has been planing and varnishing the wooden bit of the dashboard and installing the water heaters. I have almost finished the urban side of the camper van now, another few days will do it. I have added a water pump and some chickens today, and I have painted absolutely everything at the top of it, so we took the scaffolding down.
We have put it up again around the other side, so that I can paint some more things at the top of that without risking life and limb. The scaffolding is exciting, but it is absolutely nothing compared to the ladder with one leg shorter than the other.
We are not supposed to be going to the farm tomorrow, because the house needs some tidying up, Actually it is worse than that, because I have not done anything to the children’s rooms since they went back to school, which is absolutely ages ago, and Oliver is coming back on Saturday. If we do not do some cleaning and shopping then he will be at risk of some awful disease, brought about by lack of parental hygiene and also having nothing to eat except tuck.
We have had pasta for dinner for the last three nights now, partly because we like it and partly because since I became a feminist Mark has been responsible for planning dinners. We had it with lettuce last night and carrots tonight. We are going to go shopping tomorrow to see if we can find anything else that we might like to eat and that also does not involve too much washing up.
I am not looking forward to tomorrow. I don’t at all want to spend the day wiping dust off things and cleaning horrible hairy black mould out of the bath, and then at the end of it all, going to work.
I am resigned to my fate, alas.
No more camper van until next week.
