Something lovely happened last night.
One of the taxi drivers very kindly brought us a bottle of red wine, as a present to drink during our week off.
Of course, when I say ‘week off’, I don’t mean ‘week of doing nothing’, but ‘week of only doing one job’. We are still driving taxis, at least for the next few days, but we think that we will stop even doing that after Monday night. Mark has his maths exam on Tuesday morning, and then we can be idle until Thursday.
I am very excited indeed.
We are going to stay in Kendal on Monday night. We have discovered that the reason the roads are so terribly overflowing is because there are no trains into Windermere any more. We knew about this really, but had not given it any thought. Northern Rail has cancelled every single train for at least a fortnight, and although they are running some buses, an awful lot of people are driving. Hundreds of children go to school in Kendal on the train, and of course people have got to get to work, and once somebody reminded us about it then we understood completely.
Anyway, we are not going to risk being late and upset again. We are going to drive across on Monday night and sleep in the road outside the school, just to be on the safe side.
Then on Tuesday night, once it is all over, we are going to drink our bottle of wine.
This was the kindest thing. Our taxi driver friend explained that he understood all about missing your partner when you had got separate jobs to do, and also about feeling burnt out, because just like us, he has worked his socks off to pay school fees for years and years. His children have left school now, so he is free, and he brought us a bottle of wine just to give us an encouraging moment.
This worked very well indeed. There is nothing like kindness to make you feel more cheerful. I have left the wine on the kitchen table, where I can see it and remember how nice people are.
We think that we might go to Morecambe for a night or two. It is years and years since I have been to Morecambe, apart from to get new tyres put on the car, and I think I would like to go there and park in the sea front and look at everything.
If we had some money then we would buy a house there. This is because it is very run down and poor at the moment, but there are plans to build some huge greenhouse domes there, like the ones in Cornwall, or maybe it is Devon. Then one day tourists will go there again and the houses will be worth vast fortunes and we would be wealthy and idle and live happily ever after.
We don’t have any money, though, so probably we shall just drink wine and walk on the beach.
Since we are going to have a proper holiday next week, we thought that today we would do some more camper van fixing things, in preparation for an adventure.
I stuck some foam and some fabric on ugly bits of bare wood, and Mark created a bit for the gas fire so that it works better.
The gas fire has been a difficult thing for the last twelve years. It has never worked properly in all the time we have had the camper van. We could not control the temperature, and we had to light it with a blow torch.
A few weeks ago Mark fixed the temperature control. He built some new valve bits and found some bits in a scrapyard, and made it work.
Now he has taken an igniter off an old gas fridge and painstakingly rebuilt the ignition system. We have not had time to try it yet, but he thinks it should work properly for the first time ever.
I don’t care even if he has messed up his maths GCSE when he was late and upset. I think he is very clever indeed.
I got in a muddle trying to put a curtain rail back up this afternoon and he had got to come and help me. Passing exams is not everything.
All in all we are starting to feel very encouraged. Apart from the bottle of wine, lovely things are happening. Number Two Daughter is home, and trying very hard to be helpful, which is ace. It is brilliant to get up and find that things have already been done. They have been walking the dogs and doing the washing and refilling the fridge, and another bit of the load has just slipped away.
Then next week we are going to go to Morecambe.
Life is ace.
