Acceptable

I am very pleased to announce that we have had our offer on some land accepted.

It is not very far away at all, and it is three acres of gently sloping Lake District with a stream and a few trees on it.

Mark says that the drainage on it needs some attention, but that will be all right because when he has finished the camper van he will fix his digger and we will be all set up. Also he thinks that somebody might have given him a tractor. That doesn’t work either, obviously, but we all know that this doesn’t matter. All he will need is some time and some oil and a few deliveries from Autoparts, and we will have some land, a tractor and a digger. No family could possibly wish for more.

We have been thinking and talking excitedly about it. Mark wants to build a shed out of straw bales with a huge overhanging roof, so that it all stays dry. I would like to plant some trees. We can have a burnt sugar tree. We can plant walnut and sweet chestnut trees, and bluebells and primroses and campion. We can make it a lovely place for people to walk on, because the Dales Way footpath goes right through it.

That is a part of the excitement. It will be brilliant to have the chance to make something beautiful for people to look at on their long walk, somewhere they can sit by the stream to rest their feet and listen to the birds singing. There are frogs and snails and hares and owls. We think that we could turn it into the bit of the path that everybody looks forward to reaching.

Mark wants to talk to his sister now and reassure her that we are all right so that she can feel happy again. He says that she will be feeling angry and miserable and it will be eating her up from the inside.

This is because he is nicer than I am. I wanted to write ‘you smell of poo’ on the shed plans and post them back through her letter box. This made Mark laugh but he wouldn’t let me, not least, he pointed out, because she doesn’t.

I know that he is right really, because of happy people being nicer to everybody, and if we help somebody feel happier then the world becomes just a bit better a place.

Knowing this is not quite the same as wanting to do it: but I feel so very happy myself at the moment that it will not be so terribly hard. We have been the recipients of magnificent, benevolent generosity, we have hoped for something which is beyond the hopes of almost everybody, and it has happened. We will have our happy ever after, and lots of brilliant times while making it happen.

Mark’s sister is cross and miserable and can’t even bring herself to smile at us when we pass her on the road. I think that we have come out of it all better than she has, because every grim angry day in your life is a day wasted for ever.

We didn’t see her today, because there was a big shiny estate agent car outside the house when we passed. They are sending the Most Important estate agents because it is such a big sale. We sloped off down to the shed and tootled about our camper van contentedly listening to the walls singing in the wind.

There is bat poo on the camper van, either that or we have got some enormously agile mice, and it had rained in a bit. We couldn’t stay very long because of having to go to work early, but we had long enough to make some more tiny steps forward towards the day when we can go on holiday.

Every day we are making a bit more difference.

Have a picture of sunset over the lake.  Life is splendid.