I am feeling pleased with my world.
I have spent much of my working week trying to put together sufficient funding to fuel the camper van for Mark to come home, and I have succeeded. He is on his way back down across the endless Scottish miles, and will be home in a few hours.
I am not at home, which is not exactly a terrible thing, because it means I will miss having to hoover the van out. I find that being instantly faced with cleaning somebody else’s bathroom and scrubbing down their sink rather dilutes my pleasure in greeting them. Hence I have left him to do it himself and I am back on the taxi rank, trying to earn enough cash for him to go back on Monday. I could also do with raising the cash to fill my taxi up as well, the fuel needle is dipping woefully.
It is all really happening. Number One Son-In-Law sent me a message today telling me that he has seen the helicopter list for Tuesday morning, and Mark’s name is on it. The office has sent his contract, and it has been duly signed and returned. It is really and truly happening.
In a very few weeks time we will have paid off the credit card.
Such an outcome is truly splendid, especially since I have flattened it yet again this week with all the things Mark is going to need on an oil rig. He needs, amongst lots of other things, a special hat to go under his helmet, and a wristwatch like a proper grown-up boy, because you are not allowed to take your telephone into the working bits of the oil rig, a tubular scarf that will not blow away and some headphones for listening to bedtime stories without disturbing the chap in the next bunk.
I have attached a picture, taken by Number One Son-In-Law, of somebody doing the job that Mark will be doing next week, which is called a Plater. I do not know what a Plater does, and I am no wiser after seeing the picture, although I am sure it is very clever. It all looks very impressive although at first when I saw the picture I thought it was a moodily-lit octopus exploring the Titanic, and had to put my glasses on before I could work it out.
Having realised that Mark was coming home today, this morning I had another fridge-related crisis, that is to say, there was nothing in it. I have found life perfectly acceptable on a diet of chocolate and bananas, with the odd peanut butter and jam sandwich as an occasional main course. This seems to me to have covered most of the main food groups, and has made for quite a pleasant nutritional week. Obviously this will not do to nourish a working man however, and Mark is going to have to work this weekend because he has promised to do something for one of our neighbours, and if he does not finish it now it is going to be weeks and weeks.
Hence I trudged out to Sainsbury’s and bought some of the things Mark likes to eat. Tiresomely, this stuff all needs cooking, and so I was obliged to occupy a good deal of the day in the production of biscuits and bread, chocolate shortbread and sausages.
I ate a left-behind sausage the other day, in a desperate moment. It was quite surprisingly nice, I can see the appeal.
Once the fridge had been refilled a bit, I dashed outside to renew my acquaintance with the blackbird and to saw up some more firewood. Rather surprisingly it does not seem to mind the deafening racket of the saw at all, and stands on the wall behind my head singing all the time. Curiously, however, if I talk to it, it will stop singing and listen, eyeing me up speculatively. I suppose it thinks my noises are quite rubbish in comparison to its own liquid warble. It is quite astonishingly brave.
Mark has called. He has arrived safe and well.
The camper van has made it yet again.
Another six hundred miles under its fan-belt.
