It has been a day of terrible bloodshed.
I have been sewing.
It is not a good idea to attempt to make anything out of white corduroy when you are terminally clumsy.
The white corduroy is liberally splattered with a pattern of small stains, which started life as bright red and have slowly become brown.
I have stuck pins in my fingers, sliced my thumb with the sharp scissors, and managed to jab a needle under my fingernail.
Sewing is dangerous.
Despite grave peril I have managed to complete pretty much all of the things I set out to do, and by the time Mark got home from the farm I was feeling jolly pleased with myself.
We set out into the day with the resolution of crossing lots of things off our never-ending camper van completion list.
The reason for this is that its maiden voyage is planned for the day after tomorrow, and we are so scared and excited that we can hardly breathe.
We are not overnighting anywhere, because of the absence of bathroom. We are going to take the children up to Whitehaven for another lesson in Krav Maga. Regular readers may recall that is the unarmed combat technique that enables them to saunter about the world with the confidence that comes with not having to worry about murderers.
The difficulty with Whitehaven is that there is not a single thing to occupy me and Mark for four hours whilst the children beat one another up and hurl each other to the ground.
Hence we would like to go up in the camper van. At worst we can have a cup of tea and a little snooze, at best we can occupy ourselves by installing the new bathroom. Either sounds far more appealing than wandering about Whitehaven in the rain trying to find something interesting to do.
We would have done better had we got up earlier, but we didn’t. We burrowed under the quilt and tried to ignore the dogs and the children milling about, and hoped to catch up on sleep.
Eventually Roger Poopy ventured to join us. He breathed lovingly and heavily in our ears and we were obliged to surface.
Mark went to get his hair cut. He likes to get his money’s worth, and the barber has shaved his head to a state which would have encouraged Action Man to consider himself hirsute in comparison. He is going to need his flat cap all the time now unless the weather improves a bit.
Once suitably mown he took the dogs and buzzed off to the farm, leaving me with the curtain manufacture.
I have been so very busy.
I finished the stick-on covers for the windows in the cab. These were tiresome to do because of being lined with a silvery quilting, which was horribly slippery, and responsible for at least the first half dozen injuries. Then I made a bag to store them in when not in use, which I thought was a very sophisticated addition, and then I started on curtains.
I had to be very careful indeed because of being right at the very end of all the things I was using, the last few feet of fabric and lining and the last coil of curtain tape. In fact, although the colour scheme is probably going to be a bit odd, because I only had bright red or emerald green fabrics left to choose from, in the end there was just enough of everything. It all worked out very satisfactorily, so I must have been either concentrating hard or very lucky when I bought it all.
I made curtains for our bunk, and curtains for Oliver’s bunk, and curtains to go between the van and the cab, and by the time I finished I was completely sick of making curtains, and my fingers were so sore that now I can hardly bear to type.
I had to get a cloth to wipe the blood spatters off the sewing machine.
The curtains will bear the marks in memory of my noble efforts for ages, at least until the next time they are washed.
I didn’t take a picture of curtains, it would be dull. Also I forgot.
Have a picture of the camper van again.
