Sunshine

I know that I say this all the time and then still rabbit on for ages, but this time I really mean it, today I am not going to write very much. It is going to be a short entry because it is the middle of the night and I am beginning to feel very sleepy.

Actually by our slightly peculiar standards it is not really very late at all. It is just after one in the morning. This is a bit like three o’clock in the afternoon for everybody else, the time when you have really had enough of being at work but there are still a couple of hours left to go. In any case I am not at work and so there is nobody to interrupt me with stupid questions about where they might find the pub opposite or how much a taxi might be to the first three syllables of Aphrodite’s Lodge.

All the same, it feels late.

This is because we have had a full day. It has been full to brimming over with sunshine and nice things.

Of course when we woke up this morning we were in the camper van. That is always a good start to any day, especially when the sun is shining and there is nobody about to care if you have opened the curtains and are sitting up in bed, gazing contentedly at the landscape in a state of undress.

Somebody cycled past but they looked the other way, so that was all right. I don’t think they noticed us.

The sun shone. It shone in the most beautiful friendly way, with a little whisper of a cool breeze that rippled through the long grass and kept us from being overheated. Mark sawed and stacked logs, and I painted the camper van roof.

We stopped and had egg and bacon sandwiches for breakfast. This is always a happy thing to do, because usually I can’t be bothered. Egg and bacon is a lot of greasy washing up, but today we were on holiday and so I did not mind in the least.

After that I painted a bit more. You can see the poor faded roof in the picture, it is brilliant to feel it coming back to life.

After a while Mark moved the trestles along for me, only I forgot that I had left my hat on the roof, and he had to go and find a long stick and knock it off for me later.

We put some music on and I was so happy to be painting in the sunshine that I sang along with it, except painting is not easy when you keep inadvertently bobbing into little dance steps, especially when you are balancing on the top of a wobbly trestle.

We had just got to the stage of the day when I was starting to get impatient with painting, because the sun was so hot that the paint would not mix properly because it was drying too fast, when a car appeared over the brow of the hill in the distance, and our friends had come to visit us.

This was ace.

We sat in the sunshine together and drank water, then we explored the field for a while, and eventually we went home and drank wine. This was because our friends were staying the night, and there is not really room in the camper van for lots of people, not unless you are either very thin or very friendly.

Our house was beautifully cool after the field, and today I had got so hot that I actually appreciated this.

We talked and ate things until late into the night, which is why I have not gone to bed, even though my eyes are closing with tiredness. It was so splendid to have their company that I did not want to miss a minute.

I have, however, gone on for ages anyway.

I just wanted to let you all know that I have heard from both children, and they are fine, although Lucy has got sore feet. She went out tonight to look round Glastonbury but still had an early night in the end. However she has managed to have a shower, which is a splendid thing at Glastonbury, in my day you just had to spit on your flannel and wipe bits of yourself.

I am going to go to bed now.