We are having a night off.
We are at the farm in the camper van.
When I say that we are having a night off, actually I mean that Mark is desperately hammering and sawing underneath the van, and I have been hoeing the stinging nettles out of the vegetable patch.
There are more stinging nettles than I can tell you about, because we have not been here for weeks and weeks, and they have sprouted in the sunshine in their millions, like admirers of Jeremy Corbyn at Glastonbury.
Even the irritating sheep do not eat stinging nettles. They have eaten the beans and the beetroot and dug up some of the carrots, although they do not seem to like those and have left them on the ground, dug up but intact, but the stinging nettles they have left completely alone.
Trying to exorcise them, the stinging nettles, not the sheep, tempting as that sounds, is a rubbish job, with built-in failure, and so I have stopped doing it on the lame excuse that I need to write to you.
Poor Mark can’t stop, even though the world is fast becoming dark. He is trying to fit the new draw bar.
It is the wrong size and shape and he has had to dismantle everything to try and get it to fit. If he does not do this, the bar will be too close to the ground and be bashed every time we go over a speed bump, especially when we are full of everything, like water and children, and the van is extra-heavy.
We have not been here very long. We have been at home for most of the day, and only came here when we realised that we wanted to be in the camper van very badly, and when it became difficult for Mark to do things whilst lying in the road.
Whilst lying in the road he realised that the exhaust has come loose and we need to get a new tyre, so tomorrow we have got to go to the tyre shop in Lancaster. If we are going to get stopped by policemen all the time, it had jolly well better not be trundling along on bald tyres as well as shedding rusty bits all over the place.
He stuck the exhaust back on with some gaffer tape. He said that it would at least get us here, which it did, almost, but it was not intended to be a long term repair, and in fact it has broken already.
Of course now that we are here we do not want to go away again. It is lovely to be in the camper van, here in the silence, away from everything. We are going to stay here for tonight, but we cannot come and stay here and spend a blissful week repainting the pictures and bashing the exhaust about. This is because we have got to go to work. If I am going to have some new shoes for Christmas we are going to have to go to work a very lot.
I had thought that perhaps we might work tonight, otherwise we would have sloped off from the noise and hubbub of Windermere rather earlier, but we are going to be idle tonight, which is lovely, and work tomorrow.
I have given the dogs a haircut, well, perhaps shave is a better description, because they are quite bald now. They did not like this. Roger Poopy fought quite hard. His father, who is my dog in his adoring little soul, did not. He surrendered miserably, and just stared at me with the wounded eyes of betrayed love.
I was ruthless anyway. If they do not have short fur now they will be like hearthrugs by the springtime, so I have taken advantage of the heatwave.
Have a picture of the view from the camper van door.
