We could not go to the farm today.
This was because Mark’s sister had got some people coming to look at the house, and perhaps to spend seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds buying it.
She came down to the shed yesterday and said that in order to prevent anything dreadful going wrong, and because of, umm, dogs and things, would we please not be there today.
She didn’t actually say ‘scruffy degenerates with no idea how to behave’ , but it seemed to take a great deal of self control.
Obviously the part of me that is still cross with her, and also the part of me that still finds appallingly bad behaviour funny, had loads of ideas for amusing things that we could do that a potential buyer might find surprising.
Equally obviously, we did not do any of them, partly because we are grown up, and also because we don’t want to be given a week’s notice to be chucked out of the existing shed, at least not until we have properly sorted out the planning permission on the new field. Also, of course, we are far too idle really, and amusing bad behaviour generally demands a reasonable amount of effort to be successful.
Therefore, terribly reluctantly, because we have got so many things that we have still got to do to the poor van, and we are desperate to get it finished and go on holiday before the children have got to go back to school, we complied.
We did not drag Number One Daughter’s defunct camper van and the donor taxi to our field at the end of the road with some sheets of corrugated tin, all the children we could muster, some vodka bottles, a couple of dogs, and a bonfire and loud music, to wave at people turning into the farm drive.
We did not do anything nearly as amusing as that.
Instead, we stayed at home.
This was not such a dreadful thing, as it happened, because we had the inspired idea of doing some cooking, ready for the camper van and for the marvellous day when we can leap on board and disappear into the sunset.
We have always tried to make the camper van full of the very happiest things possible. The nicest things to eat, our favourite wine, and the best-scented soaps, all go into the camper van, along with books that we are dying to read, the fluffiest towels and dressing gowns that we can lay our hands on, and DVD films that we are all excited to watch.
This means that any trip away is a luxurious joy, and we do not in the least mind not staying in an expensive hotel.
Towards its sad end a couple of years ago it was beginning not to be like that any more, as more and more things did not work properly, like the heater and the fridge. The water heater didn’t work very well either, and showers had become primitive affairs with steaming buckets of hot water and jugs. There were terrible drafts, because of all the holes that we didn’t actually know about at the time, and everything was beginning to be tiresomely like living in an ancient travelling squat.
We didn’t mind this, but it wasn’t quite the same as the Midland.
We have repaired all of those things now, and although still isn’t quite the same as the Midland, no longer does it look so offensive that people complain about its very presence. It is well and truly on the road to recovery, with new faux cheetah-skin seat covers and many other similar luxuries built in ready for happiness.
Today we started making some extra-brilliant travelling food to take with us, in handy oven-tins so that it could be frozen, defrosted and warmed with neither effort nor excessive washing up, and so we would not mind in the least that we were not eating out.
We made Chinese rice, some for us with chicken and bacon and prawns and oyster sauce and onions and ace things, and some for Oliver with fried spam and peas, because of his tiresome dietary limitations, i.e., preferring not to have flavour in food.
We have frozen it ready for the Big Day.
It is so thrilling to be close to that point again.
We made biscuits as well, to sustain us during the rest of our repairing endeavours.
We can go back to the shed tomorrow.
