I am feeling very, very contented with my world.
We have spent the whole day at the camper van.
We have arrived home just after nine this evening, and were obliged to dive into the shower before we touched our sat on anything, because we were utterly filthy, worse than the dogs after a night of heavy rain followed by some spirited gambolling in a field recently occupied by indigestion-plagued cows.
Apart from having been thoroughly overheated , we were covered in grinder dust and saw dust. It was not even the sort of benevolent saw dust you get when you have been cutting up wood. I had been sawing up aluminium, the dust from which sprayed me liberally, and mingled with warm July sweat to cause long, gritty, grey smears every time I wiped my face.
It is almost ten o’clock now, and our plan for the rest of the evening is to cook a curry. I prudently remembered to remove this from the freezer this morning, which was a happy moment when we returned home, somebody cared about us, so we are going to eat it whilst loafing about watching Jeremy Clarkson finding farming incomprehensibly difficult.
I have some sympathy. I have not-at-all fond memories of chasing recalcitrant sheep around uphill fields. My experience since has been that it is far less exhausting for sheep to associate you permanently and indelibly with a sack of molasses-flavoured feedstuff. That way all you need to do is turn up with a bag, any bag will do, and they will all come belting towards you bleating their beads off.
I digress.
As I think I might have explained, it has been the most glorious, fantastic day, sunny and stickily hot. I looked at the mountains as we drove back to Windermere, hazy and purple in the evening sun, and thought how beautiful the Lake District is, and how fortunate we are to gaze on such a magnificent view every night of our lives..
Probably this was because I have finally managed to restock my Vitamin D and have now got a natural trickle of internal dopamine.
The only natural trickle I have had during the long months of winter has been nose-related. I am so glad the summer is here.
I expect the trickle to be a dopamine fountain in no time at all.
Mark has been welding up the holes in the van roof where we removed the old windows, and I have been creating the holes for the new ones. This caused some difficulty to begin with because the first step in this process was to hoist the welder into the van.
The welder weighs about as much as a small pallet of bricks.
The van is waist height.
There was a very great deal of heaving and swearing, in the thirty degree heat. This did not help the rest of the day to go with an energetic swing.
We got it in eventually, and fed the leads out through the hole in the roof, where Mark perched on the top to fill the holes in.
His bald patch has become very sunburned.
I balanced on the wobbly ladder to saw through the aluminium roof joists and to build the frame for the bathroom window, and I am pleased to tell you that it is done, the very first hole for a new roof window is now ready to be cut out.
We have not cut it out yet because there are several house martens’ nests in the roof above the van, and they are terribly incontinent. There are long, white guano dribbles and the remnants of eggshells splattered all over the windscreen, probably they will rot through it in the end. The windows will have to wait a little longer until the chicks have properly fledged and they have all flapped away.
Oliver turned up eventually, bearing the surprising news that his car had passed its MOT, so that is a problem solved for a whole year.
We are going to go back tomorrow. It will be a shortened day because of working tomorrow night, but every day moves it along a little bit more.
I am so pleased with it.
It is more exciting than I can even begin to explain.
I might have a dopamine fountain starting already
