This is advance notice that there will be no diary entry tomorrow.
This is because, like all best-laid plans, we have completely messed it up.
I am still at home. We have not yet set off for Oliver. I have had my shower and am on my way to bed.
The shower was a bit grim. I have been doing a very lot of cleaning up today, after Mark’s dust-manufacturing activities, and little brown trickles oozed out of my skin as I scrubbed the dust out of my pores.
The problem is that we have not fixed the camper van. You will recall that the taps froze, and then burst. Indeed, one of the taps has split completely, not just popped the valve, and is spraying water out like the fountains at the Burj Khalifa. We were going to fix it all today, but when Mark went to make a start on it, at six o’clock tonight, because we had been really busy, he discovered that we did not have the right bits. Certainly we did not have a spare tap anywhere. This was a bit surprising because usually Mark has every kind of junk imaginable. We would have managed without a kitchen tap, this, but when we looked at the other taps it turned out that we did not have the right valves either. We had got some valves but inexplicably they seemed to be the wrong ones.
We were not even sure if the pump itself had burst. Certainly things seemed to be a bit suspiciously damp. The whole thing would have meant that we could not fill the water tank. We would have had to travel without water.
In the end we decided that it was just too difficult to manage the camper van without being able to wash things. I do not wish to visit the bathroom without hand-washing facilities, and we were entirely united in our preference for having a shower before bed. It would have meant nowhere to wash up if we cooked, and generally it would have been a complete nuisance.
Mark can fix it, of course, but not today.
We have decided that we are going to get up early and drive up and back in Mark’s taxi tomorrow. This is not especially troubling, because it has just passed an MOT and we think it will probably get there and back without too many troubles. Of course you never can tell with these things, all sorts of perils lie in wait for unwary travellers on the road north. I do not wish to be too confident, in case the Gods are listening and bored. It will take a jolly long time, but not so long as going in the camper van, so that will be all right.
Instead of worrying about tomorrow, which is, after all, another day, I am going to tell you about today. Actually it isn’t, it is tomorrow already, I am going to hurry up and finish this then I can go to bed.
We have finished the loft. That isn’t at all true, there is still loads and loads left to do: but it is warm and clean and liveable and entirely presentable. Well, moderately presentable. There are books on the shelves and a rail with our smart clothes, there is a desk and a lamp and a bed in case Ritalin Boy comes to see us. Mark took a picture out of the window. I have attached it so you can see it, it felt rather magical, as if Dick Van Dyke was going to come bouncing across the rooftops, singing.
We dashed and rushed and fought and now we are both so tired that we could hardly make our way up the stairs. I found a curry in the freezer, and we were going to take it in the camper van, but we ate it instead, at quarter past eleven tonight. It was our breakfast. I do not know if it was nice or not. It was a bit like eating spicy sawdust. Even the cup of tea tasted like sawdust. It is the first time we have eaten hot food for as long as I can think about, but it is finished.
I am finished as well. I will see you the day after tomorrow. Indeed, I am hoping that tomorrow will be too dull to bother you with the details, a long and uneventful trail across the Scottish mountains is what I would like best.
Uneventful. That’s the important bit.
