In training

Well, goodness, what a day it has been.

It has been such a whirlwind that I am relieved to be on the taxi rank where nothing much is happening, and I am very pleased indeed to have nothing to think about.

It started last night, when even after I had written to you telling you all about our camper van deliberations, we went to bed and talked even more about camper van things until half past three in the morning.

This meant that we did not feel very chirpy at all when the alarm went off reminding us that Mark had a morning meeting with a chap inside the computer to talk about oil rigs. I do not know what they were saying to one another, because I was still considering camper vans, and scowling thoughtfully.

The thing was that we had found a van on eBay that we liked very much. It was not a camper van, it was an old library van. We had decided, as I might have told you, that we did not think that we wanted a ready-made pre-built camper van because they are all rubbish, and we wanted our own ideas. The ones you see in shops are nothing like the Orient Express, which is our design theme.

We had found the library van and thought that it was splendid, more or less exactly what we wanted, it could be turned into a luxury train in a twinkling of a jiffy.

It was just a bit longer than our van, with a door in the middle, and lots of shelves because the lady had been using it as a farm shop. The pictures were very rubbish, mostly of the shelves, in which we were not in the least interested, because obviously we would take them all out straight away, so we thought we would try and speak to her.

Getting hold of her proved complicated, but eventually we managed to get a message to her and she promised to ring us at lunchtime, which she did.

We looked and looked at it, and as soon as we had finished our coffee in bed, we got up and had a cup of tea, and looked some more. We could, we thought, manage to get all of our planned redesign into it. It was perfectly big enough to become the Orient Express, and even had room for a few extra features like a sofa.

Then the lady rang.

We asked her lots of excited questions, and she told us all about it, and so we hunted out the credit card, which has been convalescing for a little while, and we bought it there and then.

That was so exciting that we could hardly contain ourselves. We would, we thought, strip the last useable bits out of our van and scrap it. Poor, poor camper van, after all of these valiant years of service, its day had finally come.

It had to come really, it was completely crumbly. There was not a single bit of it left that did not need repairing, not anything, not the floor nor the walls nor the outside nor the roof nor the engine nor the cab nor the windows nor the door. The only bit that we thought was pretty much all right was the windscreen. Everything else was thoroughly and deeply rotted.

We have had it for twenty years, and it was already twenty six years old when we bought it.

We were just busily making excited design plans when a text message came in.

It was the lady with the van.

She was terribly sorry, she said, but she had accidentally sold it to somebody else at weekend and forgotten. He had paid for it then so she would just refund our money, and she was sorry.

We were astonished.

Also we did not believe a word of it, since she would probably have noticed herself selling a camper van at the weekend. I can be hopelessly disorganised and I would have noticed, also presumably she had given the chap her bank details. Probably, we thought, crossly, he had just offered her more cash.

I sent her several unedifyingly unhappy messages, but of course it was no use, she had done it, and in the end of course I had to resign myself.

I also had to rush then, because Mark had got to go, and we had got up to a horrible wet mess on the stairs where Oliver’s shower had leaked, so he had to fix that first.

There had been a mess on the carpet as well because one of the tiresome dogs had been sick, which, incidentally has had several repeat performances since, so nobody is speaking to either of them.

Mark dashed round fixing leaks and packing whilst I was being doleful. I knew there were no other similar vans for sale because my searching had been very thorough indeed.

After that I took him to the station. He is doing this trip on the train, and then flying back to Manchester when he comes home, because we are going to the theatre and it is just less trouble.

The train was delayed, so we spent ten unhappy minutes searching for potential camper vans on the mighty Internet, to no avail, and we said our farewells. Mark said that the Gods had probably just not wanted us to have that one, and at least it had prodded us to make the decision about ours, which was true although not especially cheering.

I went home to clean my taxi. Several days of muddy dogs and of our own camper-cleaning operations in a filthy shed had left it a mere unrecognisable shadow of its former self, actually it was disgusting. I did not want to get in it even though I am not wearing my smart clothes.

I had just finished when the phone rang, and it was Mark.

He had found another van, he said, another van almost identical, a tiny bit bigger, a bit newer, and ready-stripped out by somebody who had wanted to make a camper van out of it but then lost interest. It had only just appeared on the mighty Internet, just that very night.

I looked at it, and he was right.

Better still, it was vastly cheaper and within our budget, not that we had a budget, what I actually mean is : within our credit card limit.

We bought it straight away.

We are going to have a new camper van.

I am completely exhausted with the whole adventure.