Mark is home.
He arrived last night, late, although not so late I had finished work, but I abandoned the taxi rank anyway and went home to say hello.
I did not really need to say hello, since we have spent much of our free time on the telephone to one another every day for the last three weeks, there was not anything we needed to catch up on, but it was nice to have an excuse for an early shirk, and so I did.
We celebrated our reunion with a glass of Calvados, very small because there was only a tiny dribble left in the bottle, but Calvados is one of the places we are going to go to look at houses, and we thought that we might give ourselves a small, anticipatory taste of France.
Calvados is brandy made from apples and pears. It is very nice, much nicer than the only other pear-based spirit that I have drunk. This is also
It was not enough to make me regret it even mildly this morning, and I went off over the fells with the dogs whilst Mark took my car to bits. It has got an MOT tomorrow, and it has an assortment of problems, not least that the engine is packing up.
There was not very much that Mark could do about that, since he didn’t have a spare engine secreted anywhere about his person, although fortunately he did have a spare bottom ball joint, and so he replaced that.
I hope it passes. It will lose its licence if it doesn’t, and we can’t do very much about it since next week we are going to be away, so I might come home to find myself unemployed.
We will just have to hope.
You might note that the last statement was mildly ambiguous. I am not exactly sure what I might hope for. If I did not have a job I could do all sorts of other things.
Tiresomely, the cash comes in really handy.
Whilst Mark was thus occupied I sawed up some more firewood, we will have to go over to the farm for some more before we go to France, because of course Oliver will be keeping the home fires burning in our absence. After that I made some chocolate biscuits.
Mostly these are going to be left behind to make sure that Oliver does not starve to death whilst left to his own, non-food-focussed devices, although we might take one or two with us to keep company with our home-brewed tea.
I do not know if it will be a good idea to take chocolate. According to the mighty Internet it is ten degrees warmer in Normandy than it is here at the moment.
This sounds blissful, although I am a bit concerned about what I might wear. I have got both summer dresses and shorts, but we are going to be traipsing around lakes and farmyards, and I am most likely to need boots. We don’t have a camper van any more, since the new one is not built yet, and so I can’t just pile everything I can think of into the wardrobe and decide what to wear when I get up.
I can hardly say how much I am longing for the camper van at this moment. It would have made our lives so very much easier. It was always there, patiently waiting for us, ready-packed and polished, fresh beds made up and enormous towels laundered and ready for an adventure. We have not booked any hotels, We are just going to find places to stay when we get there, and the camper van would have made life so much less troubling.
I miss it more than I can say.
Packing is still in the contemplative state at the moment, by which I mean that I have made several frantic lists and then done nothing about any of the things featured therein, apart from retrieving my passport. I was pleased with this, reflecting that it really doesn’t matter very much if I forget all of the rest of our luggage.
France, as I recall, features shops as well as port blockades, haughty Parisians and Disneyland.
I am sure we would manage perfectly well.
