We have been consolidating.
By that I mean that although we would have liked very much to get up this morning and dash off to do things to the camper van, we did not.
We stayed at home and did all of the sensible responsible grown-up things that you are supposed to do when you are a sensible responsible grown-up.
This has made for a boringly uninspiring sort of day.
It has had a few interesting moments. I spoke to Oliver, who has got his Main Board interview for the Army in a few days, and who is busily trying to make himself look like a smartly-dressed about-to-be-officer might look.
This involved some discussion about ironing. He was even less enthusiastic on the subject than I usually am, which impressed me.
He is going to take everything to the dry cleaner.
I admire that sort of solution.
Mark has been fixing his car. It is due an MOT, also in a few days, so some testing times are up ahead. It had a broken something, maybe a bottom ball joint and a CV boot, and he had to take it to bits and start glueing it back together.
This has taken him all day, and there is still something else that is not working properly, so there is more crawling about underneath it and swearing still to be done, perhaps tomorrow.
I was not a participant in car-restoration activities, despite my newly acquired welding skills. I had some more windows to be cleaned and ivy to be cut back. I will not bother telling you about that, because it was exactly like the last time I had to balance on the windowsill and get covered in horrible sticky blackflies and Windowlene. I think probably it did not make for very interesting reading last time either, so I will draw a veil over that today.
I hoovered, and unblocked the hoover, and cleaned the bathroom in Lucy’s room, and put sheets on the bed. None of these things sound very exciting, and I can tell you that they weren’t. Then, and I thought this bit was exciting, I rushed up to the attic to do the thing I was wanting to do, which was to tidy it all up and make it all ready for making camper van curtains.
We do not need curtains yet, not least because there are no windows in it, but we will need them in the end, and so they might as well be made now. Despite this splendid intention, I could not have sewn a single thing in the attic, which is my sewing room, because I have been hurling things up there in a panic whenever I wanted the rest of the house to be tidy, and it was stuffed to overflowing with peculiar bits of clutter, like boiler suits and rubber gloves and dozens of superfluous towels and grip wire for upholstery and a massive roll of glorious blue velvet.
I tidied it all up and threw some of it away, and when I had finished I had a place in which I will be able to make curtains and cushions to my heart’s content.
We have been looking at more pictures of wonderful trains, and I have been wondering about making some tablecloths as well. I talked to Mark about this, and to his very great credit, he almost made his face manage to look interested. I explained that I really liked crisp white tablecloths just like in the pictures of sophisticated trains, but that I did not really want to have to keep washing and ironing them, certainly not if we had been drinking red wine and eating curry.
Mark listened patiently and said that the thing to do would be to make a very beautiful table so that it would not matter, and that we would see if we could make one that looks like marble, with white and gold epoxy resin, and then never need to bother with a tablecloth.
I like that idea very much.
I have been watching people making them on YouTube.
It doesn’t look very difficult at all.
Watch this space.
