I do not know if this will make it to your computer. I know I keep saying that, but really, really I don’t.
I became weary of trying to FTP myself, and rang the new web host and asked them to do it. They agreed that they would, and called me several times from a bemused mass of millions of diary entries, saying things like Err, it hasn’t downloaded yet, Err. Umm.
They promised that they would call me back when it was done, which they haven’t, so I am assuming that it isn’t.
In the meantime I have got no interest whatsoever in computers, and we went out.
We had planned a whole day doing things to the camper van, which of course didn’t happen because there are loads of other things that have got to be done with a day as well, like laundry and telephoning internet providers, but we managed to get ourselves off at around lunchtime.
I hung the washing in the garden, by the way, for the first time this year, and it almost dried, truly better times are approaching.
We are still busily demolishing the camper van. Mark has almost finished sawing out the bit of floor where the new steps are going to go, and bashed away at it cheerfully whilst I carried on hauling out the bit of ceiling remaining above the cab.
This proved to be problematic, because there was a skylight window in it.
This was screwed down tightly to the roof, reasonably enough, and had got to be removed. It had to be removed anyway, because it is going to be replaced by a new one which will be both a bit bigger and also in a very slightly different place, and two large solar panels.
Mark went on the roof and worked out how to unbolt it, which was not as simple as it sounds. The bolts had been secretively installed by somebody who thought that bolts were so embarrassing they should be kept very, very private.
Once it was unbolted it had to have the rivets drilled out and all of the screws removed. Then there was the glue.
The original window-fitters had meant business, I can tell you. They were taking absolutely no chances of their window falling off, not even if somebody bashed it with a hammer.
After a while I stood on the ladder inside the van whilst Mark sat on the roof outside the van, and I set fire to the glue with the blow torch whilst he scraped it away with a small cutting machine that we have always called the Jiggly Tool. I do not know what its actual name is.
In the end, by dint of fire and scraping and some prising with a wallpaper scraper, we got the glue off, and where the window had once been, in its place was a large and pleasing hole. This proved to be more satisfying than one might have expected, but that was because of inhaling lots of burning glue, which left me with a very pleasantly giddy sensation.
After that Mark went back to his hole in the floor whilst I went on the roof to unbolt the second one.
The roof of the camper van is very, very high up.
The ground is a long way below.
I am not good at high-up things, especially after inhaling a very lot of toxic fumes, and it was very windy.
I lay on the roof unbolting the rusty bolts and began to feel very dizzily unwell indeed.
I think Terrified might be a good word, and I had to be very self-controlled to carry on with the bolts and not just lie spread-eagled on the roof and shut my eyes.
I gave myself a stern ticking off, because of course Mark does high up things all of the time, and he does not grumble about the lack of proximity of the ground.
In the end I managed to get the bolts out. Then Mark came up the ladder inside the van to help whilst we set the roof on fire and scraped the glue off with the Jiggly Tool.
I did not mind the roof being on fire, even though I was sitting on it, but when it started to shake and vibrate with the Jiggly Tool my courage was at an end.
I requested to be allowed to climb back in through the window, and once this was accomplished, stood at the bottom of the ladder, trembling, and pretending that I wasn’t really frightened, just homesick for a lower altitude.
Mark laughed and laughed, but he went and sat on the roof in my place, because he is brave and heroic, whilst I stood cravenly on the inside ladder.
We scraped the second lot of glue off between us, and I inhaled a lot more, which cheered me up again.
We are going to go back and do the last ones next week.
I am determined to be braver.
Watch this space.
Let us hope it isn’t just a space.
