I am very pleased to be able to tell you that for the first time today I managed to push the hoover around with a single hand.
For the first time in over a month I did not need to struggle and heave with both hands on the handle and all of my weight behind it.
I was exhausted afterwards, but it did not matter. I am becoming my normal self again, and it is a very Good Thing.
I had been cleaning the bedrooms, and after the hoover I had to stop for a little while to recover, so I sat down at the desk and made a sign to put in the back window of the camper van. This explains to the world’s curious policemen that it does not have an MOT because it is elderly, not because we are just too wicked and reckless to bother.
I don’t suppose it will make much difference, but it is worth a try.
We are going to leave tomorrow evening, when Mark has finished installing rural broadband. I am excited about this, because it means that tomorrow I do not need to go to work, and when I finish tonight it will all be over until Friday.
I can hardly wait, and keep looking excitedly at the time, but disappointingly it is still the same time as it was half an hour ago.
I have spent all of today organising our lives in readiness for this adventure. We will have biscuits and fudge to take with us, and a tidy house to come home to. This is important.
We have earned enough this weekend to pay off all of our bills, which is splendid, and I am here tonight earning money to buy food to take with us. I have just done a job that I think will pay for a nice piece of Cambazola, and the one before that covered butter and orange juice. We still need yoghurt, and I am hoping for a really good one that will get us a bottle of gin, but it is very quiet and so I am not holding out any great hope.
It would be good if it did. I would like to be able to make a gin cocktail, even if the camper fridge is rubbish at doing ice.
Mark is not at work yet. He has finished rural broadbanding and has gone home to bolt the camper van together a bit more, you can never have too many bolts. Bolt and braces, as it were.
We are going to collect the trailer after work this evening. It is still at the farm, and we have got to tow it with the camper van, so there will be some shenanigans involved. We will have to leave the taxis in the camper’s parking space when we go and get it. Mark is hoping that the trailer lights are working but we have no idea if they are or not. It is a very long time since we have used it. There is no point in having a polite notice explaining about the MOT if we have got a dodgy trailer and ought to be arrested anyway.
I am hoping that poor Lucy will be well enough to move, it would be awful if we had to put her bed on the trailer with her still in it, especially if we were going to be arrested. She is still not better, and today the doctor has given her some antibiotics for the chest infection that you get when you have bat flu. I had these when I was ill, but I only took three. I know you should take them all, but I didn’t, because within about fifteen minutes of swallowing them they made me throw up so uncontrollably that it was practically exploding out of my ears. There did not seem much point in repeating that experience four times a day for a week, so I desisted. I got better anyway, so probably it was all right.
We are almost ready to go, apart from the bolts, and earning enough money for the shopping, and getting the van packed up. We are going to meet all sorts of people on our travels, not least my parents and Number One Daughter, if all goes according to plan, and I have got gate fever already.
The clock still has not moved.
It can’t be much longer now.
