Alas, we did not get a single thing done to the camper van.
Mark’s car needed to have an MOT, which occupied most off the morning.
There actually was a morning as well, a real morning, like other people have, because of not being at work last night. To my complete astonishment we woke up at a quarter to seven.
It was a good job that we did because it took ages.
Mark had done all of the repairy things that needed to be done, but the last bits, like cleaning it, were still glaringly neglected, and worse, when he looked, he realised that one of the tyres had worn down almost to its limit.
He has replaced two tyres this week already, and was not pleased to find another one shining at him.
It seemed a long way to go to Morecambe for a tyre when we had so many other things to do, so we phoned a chap in Kendal, who said cheerfully that he had got a tyre and would fit it at half past eleven.
Mark took his car away to clean it and I stayed at home to organise our lives and empty the dogs.
After a little while he telephoned in a state of desperate frustration.
The tyre man had said that the tyre he wanted to put on was a different sort to the tyres already on the car, and he would put two on or none at all.
Mark said that he jolly well wouldn’t, and that he had been driving around for his entire life with different sorts of tyres, and kindly just to sell him the tyre that he wanted.
The tyre man said that it was two tyres or nothing, so Mark took the latter option and dashed back to the shed where he thought he probably had some tyres.
He found one and put it on. I do not know if it was the same sort as the tyres that are on the car already. What I know for absolutely certain is that neither us, nor the MOT man later, cared in the least, because the car passed without any difficulty.
I came to the MOT station to collect him, and we went back to the shed, where Elspeth’s minibus was looming large.
We had been obliged to leave the minibus in the shed overnight because of it being jacked up on axle stands, and the poor camper van had to sit and shiver outside in the yard.
Alas, it had rained.
This might not seem like such a tragedy until you remember that we have taken all of the roof windows out.
It has got four massive holes in the roof.
We had hopefully stretched a sheet over them, but it had flapped about, and when we got there today the whole van was sodden.
I mean really sodden, and it was still raining.
There wasn’t a single thing we could do about it. We had got to get the minibus finished before we could get the poor van back inside, and so we just had to carry on, occasionally looking up helplessly as the rain lashed down in savage torrents and the thunder rolled malevolently around the yard, soaking the van and everything in it.
It took us all the rest of the day.
It was after six by the time we finished, and we lowered the bus from its axle stands just as the sun came out.
We can’t even get in the camper without getting wet now, because of course you get into it by climbing up in the place where the steps will be one day. This means that you have got to kneel on the floor, and there is a flood which has sloshed out over the whole carpet.
Every time you go in or out your trousers get wet.
We did not have the heart to try and do anything to it when we had finished the bus, merely looked wearily at it and sighed.
We have got to go back to work tomorrow.
I suppose it might give it time to dry out a bit.
