I have finished the door.
It has been a monumental effort but it is done.
To the person who thought that it might be a basket in which to put poopies, we do not want any more poopies, thank you, they leak dreadfully. I have filled the basket with flowers instead.
It is difficult to know what else to write. I have spent the whole day painting pictures on a camper van. The very first sentence on this page summarised the day very well indeed. All else is superfluity.
Nevertheless I shall plough on, because I know that if I do not get the important intellectual exercise of writing a sensible entertaining diary every day then my brain will turn into a revolting protein mush and I will get Alzheimers and start leaving my toothbrush in the fridge. Onwards and upwards.
We planned a complete day at the farm and got up this morning without even having had coffee. This was a ghastly experience, but in the interests of progress, we did it.
We got up terribly early, it was almost ten o’clock, and we staggered blindly around the house getting ready to go, trying to be quiet in order not to wake the children.
We regretted this thoughtfulness. We left our sheets in the washing machine along with a note asking them to add theirs to it and set it off, then peg the whole lot out on the line when they were done.
When we got to the farm we were so tired we sat in deckchairs with our flask of coffee for ages, groaning and shivering and trying to work out what we ought to be doing. In the end the coffee worked, and slowly we cranked ourselves into action.
I would like to point out, in case the Weather Gods are reading this, that it is very rubbish weather for August. I had all of my jumpers and my woolly socks and boots on today, and it was still not nice listening to the wind howling outside and the rain beating down on the roof.
Mark had to go back home at about three in the afternoon to pick up some T fittings that he had forgotten. Both children were still in bed and their sheets, and our sheets, were still unwashed. The problem was that whilst theirs were still comfortably on their beds, with the children snuggled between them, ours were in the washing machine, smelling of dogs and spilt coffee.
Mark read the riot act and insisted on rising and shining and sheet washing, but alas, the late hour meant that the washing machine did not even finish until six o’clock.
At this very moment, as I write, the house is draped with still-steaming bedlinen, we have lit the fire and wound up the dehumidifier, but we can’t go to bed yet.
Mark spent his day fitting the new van heating arrangement. He had got to run pipes from the engine to the heater unit which he has put underneath the bench in the van. He did a great deal of fiddling about underneath the bonnet with some copper pipes, and then added the hose which has got to go through into the back. He drilled some holes and shoved the pipes through, in casings so that they would not rub.
Since pictures are worth a good thousand words each I have stuck some underneath in order that you can see his jolly clever progress. He cut some aluminium into strips and then made a thing in his vice which would turn them into pipe clamps, and then screwed them to the floor. I was very impressed, I can tell you.
Pictures are below.
I am going to go and talk to the sheets to see if it helps.
