Some young gentlemen got into my taxi after the nightclub closed late last night and requested that I put some “bangin’ tunes” on my stereo to accompany the journey home.
Of course I was happy to comply, and they were astounded to hear the undeniably banging tune of Supercalifragilistickexpialidocious bouncing around the taxi at full volume.
Once they had recovered from their astonishment, of course they remembered that they knew all of the words and joined me in singing them all the way back, and got out feeling that they had had a very happy, if unexpected, journey home.
We fell into bed and woke up this morning just before the phone rang announcing my parents’ fairly imminent arrival.
My father had rashly volunteered to help with some of the construction involved in the ongoing camper van project. Of course we accepted immediately, because of not in the least being the sort of people who ever say: “no, no, we couldn’t possibly,” and rang him back a few days later with a request for a plate rack and shelves for the kitchen.
My technical design skills are even more limited than my interior design abilities, and after a couple of phone calls where I tried to explain the vague outlines for the storage concepts I had in mind my father gave up trying to understand what I was going on about, and decided that he would come and look for himself.
Hence they arrived this morning, and after a cup of coffee we all trekked over to the farm to inspect the poor weary camper van which is still jacked up on its axle stands in the shed.
There was a silence which might best be described as horrified whilst they contemplated the enormous pieces of rusty machinery before them. There are several of these, not all of which have ever made it into the pages of this diary: such as the elderly digger which Mark has recently purchased with the intention of restoring it to working order, some time when he is not doing anything.
Since he has not had any time at all when he is not doing anything the digger is still sitting in a patch of yard where it is beginning to be overgrown with brambles. Of course he will get it working in the end, because a digger is a useful thing to have when you are trying to lift engines in and out of places, or for digging holes and things, but just at the moment it is not an inspiring sight.
When we had given them a short guided tour of the digger and the yard and the workshop and all of its hidden treasures we had a look in the camper van. After a contemplative moment my father very bravely balanced himself over the hole where the wheel arch used to be and measured the available shelf space.
We retreated back to our house, and then to the bistro across the road, where we sketched shelf plan after shelf plan, and my father finally came to understand that actually I didn’t have the first idea what I wanted and decided that he would work it out for himself and I could just put up with the shelves that would fit best in the hole.
This seemed to me to be a splendid idea, because of practical design being very difficult, so I explained that in my perfect world there would be room for the cups and the wine glasses and the tomato sauce, a rack for the plates: and the overall effect would be to look as though I had borrowed them from Mr. Tumpy. Anything inside those parameters would be perfect, and my father exchanged sympathetic glances with Mark and said kindly that he would see what he could do.
After that we had an ace lunch at the little bistro, where I was feeling so happy with my world that I felt brave enough to try something new, and had a chicken curry flavoured pizza, which was actually jolly nice. We had a glass of wine which might have been an error of judgement because of it being my breakfast, and I am afraid I got giggly and talked too loudly.
They left at teatime, and we were sorry to see them go, because of it being such a lovely day, but it was all right, because we immediately collapsed back into bed and slept until it was time to go to work.
I am at work now, feeling very pleased with the day. It is splendid to have so many clever people in my life who can build things and make things and design things and think of things.
We are going to have a beautiful camper van again in next to no time, and we will be able to have happy holidays again.
I have got such a very lovely feeling about it all, contented and excited all at once.
The picture is one my mother sent to me, because it turns out she still has the very book that inspired me so profoundly all those years ago. It is Mr. Tumpy and his dear little caravan. Of course it isn’t usually pulled by horses because it has got its own feet for walking, the horses are really waves to which he harnessed it magically when they went across the sea, presumably before they invented P & O.
