Awful

There are no words to describe the misery of today, and it is not over yet.

It all started very badly, when we had a huge domestic dispute about the thousand mile journey upon which we were about to embark.

This was because I wanted to drive.

Usually Mark drives. In fact, Mark always drives. He pretends that this is because he is brave and masculine and noble, but actually it is because he doesn’t like being bored for eight hours in the passenger seat, and his contribution having to be looking after the dogs and doing all the cooking whenever we stop.

Today I decided that I don’t like being bored in the passenger seat either and insisted that I drive.

Mark disagreed for a while but then gave in, crossly.

We had a lot to do before we left, because as you know I did not finish packing yesterday, despite still doing it at four in the morning. In the end we did not walk out of the back door until late in the afternoon.

It was lashing with rain.

We chucked everything into the back of the taxis and drove them round to exchange them for the camper van. We always do this so that we do not lose the parking space.

We hurled everything into the camper van, getting drenched in the process. Then we had another brief domestic which I won, and he subsided reluctantly into the passenger seat whilst I took possession of the keys.

I like driving the camper van. It is big enough for me to be able to see over the top of walls and fences, and I was really quite pleased with myself.

Things went brilliantly until the exhaust fell off, at Glasgow.

I pulled off the motorway, and Mark jumped out to effect a hasty repair. Obviously it was not my fault, but after that he decided that he wanted to drive himself, and it was my turn to subside, reluctantly.

I am accustomed to travelling as a passenger, which Mark is not, and hence we had gone no distance at all before I was struck by a very obvious omission that unsurprisingly, he had failed to notice.

Where are the dogs? I asked him.

It turned out that they were still in the back of his car, in Windermere.

We stopped for a while, whilst some extremely kind friends went round to try and break in and get them out, but once the alarm had gone off the car deadlocked, and it was not going to happen.

We set off back.

Or rather, we were going to set off back, but something went wrong with the ignition, and the van would not start.

Rewiring it took twenty minutes.

It is after ten o’clock at night. We are almost back now. Everybody is cross and upset, except, by the sounds of it, the dogs. They sat in the back of the car and ignored the frantic attempts to break in to it, yawning and snoozing and not being any good at all at protecting their territory.

As soon as we get back and rescue the dogs we will have to start again.

I am not having a good day.