It has been a short day, for the usual reason that it started late, and hence it has involved a lot of rushing about, because when you do not wake up until lunchtime the day has slipped away almost before it has started.
It has also put Mark into a very bad mood, because it turns out that Autoparts have sent him the wrong bit for the camper van, and now they are closed until Wednesday. This is most irritating, because it has its MOT on Thursday.
It needs an MOT certificate as evidence to show to DVLA that we have fixed the leaky brake cylinder, but we have decided to carry on putting it through its MOT every year anyway. This is basically because we are fed up of being stopped. Every time we go through a motorway camera, every police officer in the area is alerted that there is an MOT-free camper van in the area, and any one with not much to do can just stop us.
Even if they are not going to be a completely expensive and time-wasting nuisance, like the last one, they are still enough of a nuisance for us to prefer to avoid them. We have been stopped six times – maybe more – on our last few outings, and since police officers do not like to look as though they have not read the paperwork properly, they are then looking for something to justify stopping us, like looking to see if we are wearing seatbelts. Mostly we are, but it is something that we often forget, since taxi drivers don’t, and sooner or later we are going to be caught out.
I am irritated about this but it seems to be the least tiresome course of action.
It has got to have an MOT before we go to London, and now we are rushing frantically to get it done. It is quite difficult at this time of year anyway, because of going to bed so late and not getting up early enough for there to be any daylight left.
Today we were running short of daylight even by the time we had finished our coffee, so I took the dogs out whilst Mark went straight over to the van, and after that I had to go into Kendal.
This was because Number One Daughter bought Oliver the most beautiful coat for Christmas. He loved it on sight, and it made him look very dapper and tailored, because it fitted him like a pair of Marks and Spencer stretch jeans just after Christmas, the sort that were bought in a moment of optimism in June and have been at the bottom of the drawer ever since.
The problem is that when you are a sixteen year old youth it is not a good thing to have things that fit like an extra dermal layer, because in three weeks’ time they will have become uncomfortably tight.
Hence I have peeled it off his reluctant back and today I returned it to the shop in Kendal. They did not have the next size up until Wednesday, so they have ordered it and I am going to collect it so that he can look smart, if slightly less perfectly tailored, in London next week.
It is a sophisticated shade of grey wool, and makes him look very tall and grown-up.
In any case he needs a coat in London because he has not brought any of his warm school ones back with him. I loathe anoraks as an outer garment, indeed, loathe any garment that rustles, but would be able to tolerate him wearing one that said Gordonstoun on the back in big letters, because of the obviously beneficial middle-class implications.
Oliver did not come with me to Kendal. He is very busy at the moment, between washing dishes at the pub and revising for his mock exams, and in between all of that he is devising a Roblox computer game that he is hoping to launch on their platform this week. I have barely seen him over the holidays, apart from when he is hungry, and even this happens less often since he worked out how to cook his own pizzas.
The holiday just seems to be slipping away, and I have still got a couple of thousand words to write for my course before we leave.
Tomorrow. I will do it tomorrow.
