Green and black

Dear everybody.

This may not be as coherent as it ought to be because I am sorry to say that I have been drinking.

It is almost midnight. We arrived back from the farm and the camper van just before eleven, and were so hungry that we poured a glass of wine almost before we had taken our shoes off. Despite the cheese and crackers that we mixed in with it afterwards, now we are drunk.

I had already drunk two glasses before I remembered that I had got to write to you.

We have calmed down an awful lot since yesterday, probably the wine has helped.

Also we have found Mark’s phone.

It was at the farm next door. It had obviously fallen off the bonnet on the way home. The lady from the farm found it and rang us up this morning to tell us to come and collect it.

We spent a very great deal of the day wondering why on earth the Find My Phone app had been so certain that it was in Ings.

Ings is about four miles away from the farm. The Find My Phone app is a bit like sat nav. It shows you on a map where you are, and has a little icon to show where the phone is that you are looking for.

We trailed up and down a wet field in Ings last night playing a sort of Hunt The Phone game where my phone said that we were getting warmer…warmer…no, going cold…oh, boiling hot…and of course we did not find Mark’s lost phone because it wasn’t there at all.

We thought in the end that probably the Gods had decided that we needed some exercise and fresh air and a bit of calming down time. It is not really a good idea to drive a taxi when you are tired and cross and upset, so probably it was for the best.

We did not see Mark’s sister at the farm today. It was raining very hard, and she might not have felt like paddling down to the shed  to visit us. We were too busy to paddle anywhere. We think that we might get the van through an MOT this week and be able to drive it to Lucy’s school this weekend for Speech Day.

We might.

We have still got some things to do, like the brakes and the driver’s seat, and we have got to put the windscreen wipers back and invent some indicators. It hasn’t got indicators any more because of the new ultra-modern bumper we have put on. All the same it is very close to being usable.

We painted the cab doors today.

To begin with we both painted them, but then Mark got so impatient with my dribbly painting that I went to get the inside of the van organised and he painted the doors himself.

I stuck some loose ceiling tiles back on and got covered in glue. There are some people who ought not to be allowed to use a substance called Fast Grab High Strength Contact Adhesive, and I am one of them. I got absolutely everything stuck to everything else and to me, and my jumper is now one large gluey smear.

Mark rescued me in the end, and laughed a lot.

I have got glue in my hair and under my fingernails, along with the yellow and green paint that we have been using on the doors. It is not exactly that I mind this, but we have got a very smart event at Lucy’s school this week. It is Speech Day, and even if you wear the smartest dress in the world, which I won’t do, having green and black fingernails spoils the sophisticated effect. Imagine the Queen, for example, with green and black fingernails.

My fingernails are very green and black. Actually, a lot of me is green and black, and there are some bits that are yellow. I am going to be an embarrassing parent again.

My father has phoned and said that they might be able to help us buy the shed if we turn out to be impecunious and desperate and it isn’t too expensive.

I don’t want to be impecunious or desperate, and I hope that we won’t be. All the same it is incredibly encouraging to know that there are people in the world who care about you and your troubles.

This makes me feel that actually life is rather lovely. Even if everything goes horribly wrong then there are people who are kindly and want to make things better for you.

This is more than I deserve.

I am feeling rather grateful to the Gods tonight, in a drunk, exhausted, green and black sort of way.

The picture is Mark’s shed, for anybody who has not seen it and wonders how lovely it is.