Flap

I have got myself into such a flap about everything that I am practically taking off.

I have got so many things that I have not done that my head is beginning to steam in just the way a taxi does before the head gasket blows off.

I am trying to organise clothes and dinners for a week of travelling the entire length of Britain. I can’t even grumble about this, because Mark is trying to fix everything that is wrong with our forty-year-old camper van in the same time.

He came in this afternoon in a black grumble, because some bit had broken and we needed a new starter motor. The camper van has not been entirely reliable about starting for ages. You turn the key and sometimes the engine fires into its dreadful deafening roar, and sometimes there is a very much worse silence.

He was hoping to fix the starter motor but could not and has had to order a new one. This was terrifically expensive but we do not have to pay the Autoparts bill until the beginning of next month so it will not matter. Well, it will not matter until the beginning of next month anyway, and anything might have happened by then.

Mark was downcast about the starter motor, because he has only got two days left to go, and it is a great nuisance to have to take more things out from under the bonnet and pile them up on the pavement whilst he replaces a broken bit. Also people keep talking to him, because they see the camper van and think that he will be friendly. This is much worse when you are rushing.

I have also only got two days left to go. I have ironed Oliver’s school uniform but not yet cleaned his shoes, nor have I done anything about the troubling problem of Mark’s trousers being too tight. I do not know what I am going to do about this. He has got three pairs that fit him and about ten pairs that don’t, but the ones that don’t are too tight to be worn comfortably whilst driving.

He can hardly take them off and manage without, given the number of times we have been stopped by the police lately.

They will be all right for an evening out or for anything that involves standing up, but one needs a comfortable midriff to drive a thousand miles or so.

I forgot to make sandwiches to put in our picnic tonight, which he said would probably help a bit. It will not help me because I have just filled in the gap with a bag of chocolate buttons that I found in the door pocket. They are a bit covered in fire extinguisher dust but apart from that they are fine.

I have got to look at the trousers to see if they can be let out a bit but I have not. I have not even got round to cutting the labels out of his new underpants yet. I managed today to cut all of the labels out of Oliver’s hoodies, and have put them in a bag to take with us so that I can sew name labels into them during tedious moments on the long journey. I am already worried that I might forget it, and have put it at the top of the stairs where I keep seeing it but also tripping over it.

I have not started to get our clothes ready yet. I am just worrying about them, quietly. I have spent the entire day dashing about trying to get things done.

I have had to wash Lucy’s sheets and towels because Mark’s mother might come and stay in her room when we get back. She also might not but if we do not have any clean sheets then she very definitely will, because the world is just like that sometimes. Also our own sheets needed washing. Also Oliver needed feeding. Also the dogs needed emptying, as did the compost bin and the rubbish bin, but the firewood stack needed filling. 

It still needs filling, now I think about it. I forgot that.

I am flapping.