The children volunteered to help with the camper van today.
By volunteer, I mean in the military sense of the word, and indeed they displayed all of the enthusiasm of the conscript.
Oliver was the most reluctant as his whole being is occupied with the project of building an hotel in Minecraft at the moment, and he can think and talk of nothing else. He has regaled us with intricate details of catering and sleeping arrangements, and also appears to be constructing a wall around the perimeter to exclude zombies, which I might suggest to the Midland next time we visit.
He did not at all wish to be dragged away from this activity, and complained vociferously, on the somewhat unimpressive grounds that Harry is building an hotel next door, and he wishes to maintain some commercial advantage.
Lucy was rather more resigned to her fate, reserving her comments to the usual display of eye-rolling and groaning, which we ignored, and of course as is the usual way of this sort of thing, once they had got going they enjoyed themselves hugely, giggling and poking one another and getting underneath our feet.
We had made an early start to the day, because of the postman ringing the doorbell about half an hour after we had gone to bed. We got up anyway, and then wasted half of the morning staggering about sleepily trying to remember what it was that we were supposed to be doing.
We brought the puppies down to clean their smelly box out, with the exception of one enthusiastic adventurer who had already made a bid for freedom and fallen down the stairs. They can get out of their box now if they are determined enough, and when Mark went down to make coffee he discovered him sitting at the bottom of the stairs, looking a bit dazed and astonished at the surprising turn the world had taken.
We released them all to wee on the living room carpet whilst I cleaned their box out, and they enjoyed themselves enormously chasing people’s toes and staggering about on their new legs. Then we mashed up some dog food and milk, and they had their first ever real food, with one puppy enjoying it so much he flopped down on the top of it and excitedly ate his way backwards so that nobody else could get at his bit.
After that they were all so tired they collapsed in small puppy-heaps all over the living room, and we had to scoop up handfuls of snoring puppies to replace them in their box to be taken to the farm.
At the farm we had all got our own things to do. Top of the list, of course, was the new shelves, which we entrusted to Lucy and Oliver, who were very nervous at such a huge responsibility, and tried very hard.
They covered the backboard of the shelves with the pretty flowered vinyl, and then oiled the wood: and actually despite a great deal of giggling and sticking vinyl to themselves they did a pretty good job. I can tell you that the shelves look brilliant. The children were both very oily by the time they had finished.
We stopped for coffee then, and dragged out the old mattress to sit on, and we were so sleepy that it wasn’t long before we had all stopped sitting around drinking coffee and were just having a little rest. We might actually have had a proper afternoon sleep had it not been for Oliver, who kept tickling everybody’s feet until in the end we had to stop thinking about snoozing and beat him up instead.
We were still making Oliver regret his wickedness when the phone rang and it was Lucy’s boss wanting her to come in to work early: so the afternoon had to come to a hasty close because of dashing back home to try and get the oil off.
I took Lucy to work and went to sit on the taxi rank, because I would very much like to have more money than I have got at the moment. There are so many things I would like to do, and they all seem to be so expensive.
Mark is still working on the camper van, so making our fortunes tonight is down to me. I am hoping hard for a busy night.
You just never know. I might be rich by morning.
Fingers crossed.
