I am in the camper van.
I am on my own with the dogs, because Mark has gone to his maths class. This is running two nights a week at the moment, which makes life a bit full.
We have had absolutely the happiest day I can tell you about.
We went for our run up the fell this morning, and got back just before it started to rain. It rained a lot.
This was a nuisance, because we wanted to put the new wardrobe door in the camper, and of course it needed to be lacquered first. I have painted it with acrylic paints, and they will wash off eventually if you do not spray them thoroughly with car lacquer. This does not seem to apply to shirts, trousers or jackets. If you get paint on them they will stay painted.
You cannot spray lacquer in the rain, so we decided that we would have to spray the door in the house. I held a dust sheet behind it so that we would not get too much on the carpet, and Mark sprayed it. It made the house a bit excitingly chemical for a while, but Mark said that it would not matter, because it would glue all of yesterday’s dust down and stop it from floating about.
We went to the ironmonger’s for hinges. These had to be very substantial, because now that the door has got an enormous mirror glued to the back of it it is very heavy indeed.
We put the mirror there because we have never had a full-length mirror in the camper van, which has been a bit of an inconvenience. The thing that we do most of all in the camper van is visit the children’s schools, and it is really not brilliant to turn up with buttons done up wrongly, or colours that clash with one another, like lavender and orange. It is important to be able to see what we look like, not that I find that helps much with colours, usually the best thing to do is phone somebody and ask. I have been blessed with the sort of colour sense that just appreciates more, and brighter, and preferably with some sparkly bits.
Once we had sprayed the door in the living room then it stopped raining, and the sun came out, so we carried it out to the camper van to hang it. This was a joint effort, in that Mark did most of the work whilst I helped to hold it in the right place.
When it was done we were very pleased indeed. It is lovely to have the camper van becoming a little bit more and more perfect all the time.
After that Mark fixed the hot water tank and the heater, and I wallpapered the inside of the wardrobe. I am not very good at wallpapering at all, but it was only the inside of the wardrobe, and didn’t matter, which was why I was allowed to do it.
It all turned out a bit bubbly and ragged, and I got absolutely covered in glue, but it was all right. It made the wardrobe look clean and bright and also made Mark laugh. It took ages, because we had put some music on the CD player, and we kept stopping to dance. It is brilliant to have some time just to be together.
It will be good to have the water tank and the heater working again as well. A rubber seal had perished on the water tank, which had made it leak, and the heater is just elderly and temperamental. Mark had to replace a valve. I do not understand what the valve did, although he has explained it carefully. It had a magnet in it, and sometimes it needed to be open, and sometimes it needed to be shut, and it seemed to get it wrong quite a lot. It should work again now.
In the end we were done, and tidy, and excited about going. We rushed home to shower and to collect the dogs, and now here we are.
I am in a bright clean camper van with a new wardrobe door.
We are going to Haverigg. We might not get there tonight if we are too tired, which we often are when we get in the camper van, but that doesn’t matter, because we are on holiday. We don’t need to be back until Friday.
That is absolutely ages away.
