Mark was installing rural broadband today, so I had to take the camper van for its MOT.
This would have been all right if it hadn’t been for the small difficulty that the driver’s seat is set in the position for Mark to drive.
It can, obviously, be adjusted, but only by two people. One person sits in the seat and holds the bar up whilst the other person levers the seat forward with a length of two by two.
Mark went out in something of a hurry and we forgot to do this.
His legs are about a foot longer than mine.
I stuffed a cushion behind me but it did not help much.
I had to perch on the front of the seat all the way to Kendal.
This made it very difficult. The camper van is not exactly an easy drive anyway, even though Mark fixed the brakes again after work last night and they work like a dream again now. The nice sort of dream, that is, not the sort where you have lost all of your clothes and are being chased through your child’s parents’ evening by a giant spider.
It is left hand drive, which means that occasionally your left hand flaps about uselessly and bashes against the door when you are trying to put the handbrake on, and its gearbox is a sort of independently functioning entity all by itself. Second gear is not properly made of nicely predictable atoms like everything else on the planet, but entirely out of those particles which are called quarks. It flashes in and out of existence unexpectedly, mostly in scary moments on hills.
All of the gears are in exactly the wrong place anyway, and when you want first gear you have to jam the gearstick backwards and towards you. You might still find that it finishes up in second gear anyway. Second gear appears all of the time, unless you are in first gear and want to go faster. Then it vanishes, to lurk enticingly just out of sight, like the ghost of a much-missed cat.
Also it does not have power steering. After driving the camper van I cannot commend power steering enough as an innovation, what a magnificent idea. It lurches and sways and billows like a sailing ship on a choppy sea, and all in all it is quite exciting enough even when your feet will reach the pedals. When you are balancing on the edge of your seat and stretching your legs and holding on to the steering wheel for purchase it becomes an exciting Motoring Challenge.
Sometimes an important wire comes out as well and the engine just goes off. You have got to know which wire it is. I do know, but fortunately that did not happen to me today.
Mark does not seem perturbed by all of these little eccentricities, and when he is at the wheel it is as if the gale has suddenly blown itself out and the buffeting seas have eased themselves into tranquility.
When it is me it is as if the captain has been washed overboard leaving the bosun in charge of managing things. It all gets done, somehow, but it is neither seamless nor streamlined. It is Panic On The High Seas.
I drove it cautiously to Kendal, ignoring the line of impatient vehicles behind me, there were no taxis in it so it did not matter. I navigated my way around the sharp bends and through the traffic lights and finally eased through the gate of the MOT garage.
It was a relief to sit in the sun and telephone insurance companies whilst the chap faffed about with it. I heard him swear when he sounded the horn, which is of course one of those classic horns beloved of circus clown cars.
He failed it anyway, because, to my surprise and profound irritation, the tyres purchased from the giant in Morecambe were the wrong size. You cannot have differently sized tyres on the same axle, and these were the wrong size. They were different from the ones on the other side of the camper van.
There was also a problem with the headlights, which are not bright enough.
I rang Mark and told him, and then rang the giant and complained. He was moderately indifferent and offered to sell me some of the right size ones at cost price, but Mark said that he would just swap them round so that he had the same sized ones on each axle. He also said that he would clean out the headlights which would probably help.
I hope that he will be able to move the seat forward as well, since I am going to have to drive it back tomorrow.
I was going to attach a picture of the camper van, but Number Two Daughter sent me a message this morning with the uplifting news that she and her Other Half have finished their jigsaw. She attached a picture, so I have included it here. It looks like a very difficult jigsaw. It has kept them busy for ages.
What a roister-doister she has become.
LATER NOTE: I have some bad news.
Shortly after I put this entry online some customers stole my iPad from my taxi. Some wicked, horrible teenagers from Liverpool carefully extracted it from the central box between the seats whilst I was driving down a dark road, and now it is gone. It was the most pointless crime, because the computer was locked, is now wiped, and is useless. It isn’t even much good for parts, it dates back to 2012, was bent anyway, and painfully, desperately slow.
All the same, I do not have an iPad any more. Obviously I still have the large Mac computer in the house, but I can no longer write from my taxi. We will have to save up a bit before we can replace it, so it might be like this for a while.
This will almost certainly make it very difficult to write these pages. Please bear with me. I can only write from home now, and I hardly ever do this. I write my diary in the taxi, between customers, it is the only time when I have got enough leisure.
There may not be much diary for a while. If you look and it is missing, look again a day or two later. I am so sorry. It will be there whenever I can.
