Last night we had our very first shower in our new camper van bathroom.
It was wonderful.
It was brilliantly wonderful in a way that you might not understand if you have never had a camper van.
In the past the showering arrangements were a mind-bogglingly inefficient mixture of original fittings plus French plumbing plus some English modifications and a lot of glue. The sink was made from an upside-down tin lampshade of the sort popular in the nineteen forties and not on sale anywhere in the world now, except France, and the loo was ancient even when we acquired it over ten years ago, out of a disused caravan.
None of it worked very well, all of it was cramped and if you weren’t careful you nudged the curtains and the world could watch you showering. This unattractive picture was not improved by the showeree hopping about as the water oscillated between too hot and too cold, but never actually managing a pleasing temperature in between. It was so rubbish that the jug-and-bucket arrangement was actually an improvement.
The new facilities are splendid.
The window has gone, and been replaced with a skylight which can be lifted to let steam out. The elderly loo has been replaced by a marvellous new-to-us electrically flushable one, and the sink has been made out of a beautiful emerald green recycled aluminium bowl with an elegantly tall tap. And then there is the shower.
We replaced the shower head with a new one which promised to save water and heating by making you wetter. This sounded to me like a bit of a tall story, but we tried it anyway, and indeed the results are quite astonishing. Mark says that it mixes air with the water so that the droplets stick to you better. I don’t understand this really but I can assure you that it works, uses hardly any water and gives an immensely satisfying shower at a perfect temperature.
We were very pleased with ourselves when we had finished, and slept beautifully soundly. We woke up this morning to glorious mellow autumn sunshine.
We had some time before we needed to collect Oliver, and took the dogs to do some exploring. This was lovely. We ambled around the woodland in the morning sunshine, listening to the birds and looking with interest at other people’s farming arrangements. We discovered a small track which led us past some pheasant pens, which we admired very much. They were brilliantly cleverly designed, with a high gate and tidy fox-proofing, and after a few moments of disobedient investigation Roger Poopy had his first electric shock.
We went to collect Oliver next, which was lovely. He was freckled and grinning and bounding with joyous energy, and was vociferously enthusiastic about the changes to the camper van.
He sat with us in the front and told us about school, about what he did in the rugby scrum, and about how he has been excused from Latin for ever.
He was very pleased about this. He has been woefully rubbish at Latin since the first moment of mystified declension. The Head of Studies and the Latin teacher have agreed that they do not wish to bring down their Common Entrance pass rate, and in consequence Oliver is being allowed to do extra maths and spelling lessons instead. I am entirely in sympathy with this judgement. I would not have liked to be responsible for persuading Oliver to understand Latin.
We went on from there to Nan, Grandad and Lucy and the pub.
This was ace. We ate the usual massively excessive lunch until our trouser buttons groaned under the strain, and listened to Lucy’s stories of the sixth form. She is doing splendidly well, a teacher from school sent me an email admiring that she had been discovered reading the Iliad in her spare time for pleasure. She wouldn’t have bothered if it had been a GCSE set text, she probably just hasn’t yet realised that there aren’t any vampires in it.
We had to set off back eventually.
Actually we set off down the road to a layby and then paused, and had a little snooze. This was because it is not easy to spend all day having adventures and then to go on and work until four o’ clock in the morning, especially now we are fifty.
In the end we came home, unpacked hastily and dashed out to work.
It is still the monsoon season in the Lake District.
