I am on the taxi rank, wishing that it would hurry up and go dark.
This is because we were rushing to get out to work, which we managed to do about an hour after we should have done, and I was in such a flap that I forgot to wash my face.
We have been over at the shed and I am filthy.
This will not matter when it is dark, but the magnificent British Summertime is upon us, and it is not.
I washed my hands, about half a dozen times, actually, on returning from the shed one needs to wash one’s hands before visiting the loo as well as afterwards, and scrub one’s fingernails as well, but I forgot my face. I meant to wash it, when I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, but I was in a hurry, and then I forgot.
We have been tidying up.
A couple of days of Elspeth’s minibus meant that every single tool was hurled into a huge heap, partly on the workbench and partly on the floor, and we no longer had even the faintest hope of finding anything in a hurry. It is important to be organised when you are building a camper van, otherwise you waste what must add up to days and days, wandering about trying to remember where you, or your other half, has thrown the tape measure, or the pen, or the hammer, or the size 10 spanner.
There seems to be a disproportionate number of size 10 nuts in the world. You always need the Size 10 spanner, and it is never there.
One day I am going to buy us a present of a pack of about twenty Size 10 spanners. We will have one lying about underneath every axle stand and box of drill bits.
I would not say that the shed is now tidy, it is very far from it, but we have got a reasonable idea where most of the things are that we are currently using, and even more, we have now got pairs of welding gloves instead of about a dozen left ones.
We moved the van out into the yard whilst we did it, and left all the doors open so that the wind would blow through it, and by the time we left it was beginning to dry out, which was a happy thought, a few more days and it will be fine again. We had left our collection of rag-towels in there, and we draped them about all over the yard to drip, and by the time we left they were not dry, but they were no longer sodden, sooner or later we will be able to wipe copper grease off our hands in comfort again.
We stopped to eat a very late breakfast, at about a quarter to four, and sat staring at the back of the van, trying to envision exactly how we might squeeze in a large door to the workshop-under-the-bed, a bicycle rack with two bicycles, and a couple of windows.
This has taken some contemplation.
At the moment there is a window-shaped hole in the back, the window for which is now fitted snugly into a hole in the front. This needs to be blocked up because the bed headboard will go there, some day in our glorious but distant future. Underneath our bed there will be a hideous black oily cavern where Mark will keep a collection of rusty things, accessible from outside only because obviously I do not want black footprints and rust trailing through our wonderful Orient Express camper van.
The windows are two tall, narrow affairs, one for either side of the bed head. AI dreamed those up, in a picture that was far larger than a real camper van, but I liked them and so Mark agreed that we would try and shoehorn them in somewhere..
We have also decided that since the van is so stupendously large, we are going to need to park it in places which are not terribly central, and then travel. We are not so far gone that we would drag a nasty little Smart Car behind us everywhere we went, and so we have decided that the obvious solution is bicycles, preferably the sort that will pedal themselves in an emergency. I think I am likely to have a lot of emergencies.
These will have to live somewhere, and the obvious storage space is on the back of the van.
The back of the van is not so big that all of this is easily facilitated. None of it can overlap any of the rest, and so some careful planning has been needed.
This has got to be done now whilst we are building the structure of the back of the van. Bicycles are heavy, and we spent quite a lot of time frowning hard whilst we considered it.
Just so you know, our current conclusion has been to stand the bicycles upright on their back wheels and attach them to one of the doors for the workshop, which will have two doors opening in the middle. We will have to reinforce the hinges and the upright to which they are fastened, but Mark thinks that we can do it.
It has gone dark now, thank goodness.
Have a picture.
