Goodness me, there has been flapping about like you have never seen.
I have practically flapped my shirt off.
It started last night, when in the middle of the night, after work, we dumped the taxis in the camper van’s parking space and chugged out in the camper van, ready to collect the trailer.
This would have gone better had it not been for the discovery that none of the back lights on the camper van were working, and Mark had to crawl underneath with a torch for a little while, lying on the road and swearing.
It turned out that the earth wire had rusted away, so he bodged it together on a sort of short-term basis, actually it turned out to be very short-term, because it fell to bits again on the way to the farm, and off we went.
We spluttered, darkly, up to the farm, where Mark and I dragged the trailer out and the dogs buzzed off and got lost. I bellowed at them, and Roger Poopy’s father was so frightened that he hid underneath the camper van and would not come out.
It was late when we got home, and we were not at our finest this morning.
Mark went off to work, and I started to flap about. There are lots of things that need to go in the camper van, not just the usual things like clean knickers, but interesting different things, like glue and curtain rails and decorators’ hole filler. This is because we are going to extricate Lucy from one house, which has to be left pristine and free from any holes or other signs that somebody has lived there, and dump her in another, which is going to need some holes making in it, because new houses always do.
When I had finished collecting curtain rails I was just turning my attention to our catering arrangements when Number One Daughter rang.
She thought that there would be too many of us to eat in the camper van, and that perhaps we ought to go out for lunch.
I started to say that no, it would be fine, but then remembered that in fact there will be seven of us, and even though I have become marginally smaller since bat flu, it is not very much smaller.
Fitting seven of us around the table might cause some squishing difficulties.
She thought that going out for lunch would be the thing, and suggested a restaurant in Kettering, which I promptly booked, just to be on the safe side. I do not suppose that Kettering is much like Windermere, but if it is, you can hardly get a table here anywhere unless you book three weeks in advance, give them five hundred pounds cash deposit and your firstborn child, and promise to leave everything to the head waiter in your will.
It turned out not to be quite so problematic in Kettering, and I filled in my phone number on their web page, and that seemed to be enough.
I thought cheerfully that at least it would save me having to go shopping, until I remembered that lunch with the family is only one of the six eating occasions that one usually enjoys in two days, and had to go shopping anyway.
I forgot yoghurt, so we still do not have any, but bought some gin. I have had a sort of premonition that I might need it.
I flapped about cooking sausages and chicken and examining the cake to see if it would last, and running in and out to make sure that the Weather Gods were not working themselves up to some kind of humorous behaviour with the washing, but all was well.
I could not decide whether to pack shorts or long trousers, because Kettering is a long way south, and it might be warmer there, so I have packed both, the camper van is going to weigh a million tonnes.
When I started filling the fridge, I made the tiresome discovery that I had taken the shelves out and started wire-brushing the rust off them, after which I had forgotten and dumped them in the shed.
I used the wire brush that goes on Mark’s drill, which turned out to be a bit exciting, and the shelves became a bit crumbly, they are more fragile than you might think. Also I am now completely covered in rust, and my hands have gone black with the stuff that I painted on the shelves afterwards. I have tried once or twice to scrub this off, but to no avail, I might have to try the wire brush next.
Nevertheless, I think that we might be getting to the point at which we are nearly ready.
I have just got to chuck everything in the camper van, we have got to fix the fridge and the back lights, put Lucy’s bike in the trailer and have showers, and we can get off.
Hardly anything left to do at all.
