I am in the camper van, and I think that we are at Perth.
There is a boy in the top bunk. Mark is in the shower. The dogs are under the bed. They are going to stay there unless something horrible happens in which case they will be sleeping outside on the A9.
The dogs, that is, not Oliver and Mark.
The reason I am concerned about something horrible is that we have been on the beach, and one of them, actually Roger Poopy, ate something that he found in a pile of smelly seaweed, and it might have been a rotten fish.
He was very pleased with it, so clearly it wasn’t something that might have pinched his nose.
He was enjoying it so much that he would not stop eating it even when we yelled and started rushing down the beach towards him. When he did stop, eventually, it was merely to dash off and roll in some seagull poo.
If my sense of smell had completely recovered from the bat-flu then he would have been sleeping on the A9 anyway, but it hasn’t, quite, and so he is allowed to remain under the bed.
It has been a splendid day. Firstly it was splendid because the last time we were at Perth, which was this morning, ages and ages ago in another life, my parents rang up with the very welcome news that they had made a donation towards the fuel money.
This was very welcome indeed, because the camper van is not exactly remarkable for its fuel economy. When it was designed, the Italians looked at it and contemplated the best way of streamlining it, and then decided not to bother. Streamlining was only for James Bond back in those days.
I was still at school then. That is a sobering thought.
Anyway, it takes a lot of diesel to chug all of the way up to Elgin and back, and so we were very grateful for a subsidy.
After that the day seemed brighter, somehow, and we chuffed up the A9 listening to a chap on the storybook thing telling us about the history of England. There is a lot of it, it started last night when we set off and we are still only at Oliver Cromwell, although we did stop at Forres so we could talk for the last bit.
I sewed the patch over the spider whilst Mark drove. He wanted to know what I was doing and when I told him he laughed so much that I thought he might have an accident. It is a green patch, because that was what I had got. It does not match the jersey but is an identical match for some of the curtains in the camper van, so that is all right, and it is a jolly sight better than having a horrible spider on the front of my jersey.
As it happened we arrived a bit early, and parked on the beach at Burghead. There is a Pictish fort there, although we did not look at that this time. Instead we took the dogs for a long amble along the beach, as I have already explained, we will not go into any more details here about revolting dog habits in beaches, and went for a paddle.
The paddle was very cold. Fortunately my feet are always so cold anyway that it did not matter very much, but Mark said that if we did not get out quickly his toes would come off.
It was so lovely. The sea up here is so clear you can see exactly what is around your feet, not at all like Blackpool where the first you would know about anything nasty would be when it bit you.
In the end we got our boy. He is taller again, and needs a haircut, but it is lovely to see him.
I will tell you his school stories tomorrow.
I am going to sleep now.
