I am so tired that I can hardly keep my eyes open. We are not at work, so that is all right, because it is never brilliant to fall asleep behind the wheel of a taxi. I think most taxi drivers do it occasionally, especially the younger ones, who are usually trying to do far too many other things with their lives and sleep gets squeezed out by everything else. It is much easier when you are older, because of being less frantically excited by everything, and being able to consider an afternoon snooze as a delightful prospect.
We did not have an afternoon snooze, there would have been no point because we were only just getting up when afternoon arrived. We worked very late indeed last night, and did not go to bed until Lucy was just getting up to get ready for work.
We woke up as she was coming in for her lunch and listened to stories of floristry and meeting boys online. She is too old to be of interest to paedophiles now, it is just the thought of every other male on the planet that is making Mark grumpy. Note here to my mother, please do not worry about this, she has no interest in meeting any of them. She thinks they are entirely dull, interested in boring things like football and Playstation. She just likes to get messages from them telling her how pretty they think she is.
Even then we did not go to the camper van.
In a monumental effort of self control we went to Kendal to collect the new licence plate for my taxi, and then went shopping in Asda.
This cost far too much and left me with a headache, even though we had not taken the children. Other people had got more than enough children, since it is the school holidays. We looked at a very pretty new baby fast asleep in a pushchair at the checkout, which gave us both the momentary pang of gentle longing that you get when you wonder really if your family is finished.
Two minutes later a mother rushed past in yelling pursuit of two shrieking hooligans who clearly had no intention of being recaptured. This was far more similar to our experience of parenting, and we both grinned the sort of rueful grin that you get when ghastly memories are triggered, how glad I am to leave parenting to other people.
Outside Asda a gloomy sort of man from the RAC asked us sagely how we thought we might manage if our car ever broke down, and how on earth did we think we might be able to fix it without proper access to parts and technical expertise? It turned out that he did not want a sensible answer, but wanted us to give him some money, even though our car has not broken down at the moment. This made Mark cross, he said he was playing on people’s fears and encouraging them to be helpless, so we left hastily.
Once we had unloaded the shopping and fed the children and pegged out the washing we were finally free to go to the farm and do things to the camper van.
We stayed there until it was too dark to see anything much, and then we came home to eat cheese and crackers and to see if the children remembered us.
It turned out that although the children did know who we were, their interest in us was limited to whether or not we had remembered to purchase chocolate Mini Rolls.
We organised our lives ready for a whole, long day at the camper van tomorrow, and now Mark is downstairs reading, and I am writing to you before bed. He is trying to build something called a Power Wall in his spare time, it is something to do with his solar panels and some dismantled battery cells.
I daresay you will hear all about it sooner or later.
