Day

It has been A Day.

It has been rather a worse day for Mark than for me.

This was, of course, because of camper van issues.

When you have got a forty year old camper van, you are going to have issues, and we had one today.

It was a good job that we took everything out of it, because when Mark took it to the weigh bridge it weighed just under three and a half tonnes. All of my nice things will make it quite a bit heavier than that.

Mark sighed and said that we will need to re-register it as five tonnes. This is a good idea, but not until the New Year. He says that all it needs is some new springs for the suspension, because everything else is done for a five tonne van, because he likes to be on the safe side. He had some springs once, but chucked them in the skip when we were obliged to clear up and move out of the farm in haste, so we will have to get some more.

I do not know who you have got to write to to change the registration of a van. I will have to investigate.

After he had weighed it he took it for its MOT, which of course it failed.

It failed on another brake issue, not the one the DVLA man spotted. The MOT man said that there was too much play in one of the back brakes, so he had to bring it home and fix it quickly.

This was catastrophic for all concerned, because it meant that I had got to re-load the van by myself, and that poor Mark had to spend the entire day lying in a puddle underneath it.

It rained, and rained, and rained.

I mean it really rained. Rain hurtled down out of the sky as if it was being thrown in handfuls by some very irritated Weather Gods.

I will not go into details about Mark’s day. You do not even want to imagine being sodden and filthy with an urgent task to be achieved in the dark, because it was long after eight when he finished.

Instead I will tell you about mine, which although immeasurably better than Mark’s, was still not the sort of day that makes you glow with satisfied happiness at the end of it.

The camper van was parked back in its usual parking space in the middle of the village. I had to load everything into my taxi, take it out to the van, and then unload it in the lashing rain, and put it all away.

I had washed all of the sheets and towels, so the beds needed to be made up.

I had emptied every cupboard and every locker, and they all had to be refilled.

I filled my taxi three times.

Things were not helped much by having to park on the taxi rank behind the van, and people kept coming up to the door of the van and asking if they could have a taxi, so I had to stuff everything hastily out of the taxi and into the van and rush off.

By the end of the day I had made forty quid.

I was quite pleased with this, it is not a bad total when you are not trying.

I had not managed to get everything back into the van, but I was pretty close.

We gave up in the end, exhausted and wet. Mark was so filthy and drenched that he had to undress in the conservatory and make a hasty dash up the stairs to the shower.

He has got to take it back to the garage in the morning, so we are going to bed now. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day…