I am going to stop thinking of the camper van paint as John Deere or A-Plant Green and JCB Yellow.
It is those colours, which is the inevitable consequence of buying paint cheaply from the leftover bin at a farm supply merchant.
Nevertheless I think I prefer to consider them as Leprechaun Green and Saffron Yellow, both of which have a far more romantic echo than anything related to heavy plant machinery.
We spent today painting it, and it is finished.
It is lovely, the loveliest of lovely. It is a sort of Irish leprechaun-green and a beautiful yellow exactly like the saffron crocus, and I am very happy with it indeed.
We discussed for ages how it would be best to distribute the colours, and simply couldn’t decide. In the end we painted one side yellow with a green stripe and the other side green with a yellow stripe, and keep bobbing from one side to the other to see which is our favourite. I still can’t decide, both sides are ace, and it works really well to have such a different feeling depending on your point of view, as it were.
In between cooking I helped Mark paint. This is not at all easy as our ladder has got one leg shorter than the other, which makes balancing on it an adventure every single time. I got covered in paint due to a misadventure with a roller whilst trying not to accidentally paint over a window, and I had a very near miss when I overbalanced and almost dropped a tray full of green paint through a skylight hole in the roof into the newly-beautiful interior. I didn’t, though, so it all came out all right in the end.
I took the picture from the top of the ladder, it was a perfect September day, hot and still, and I wanted to try and capture some of the still, green-just-about-to-become-gold feeling about it. Actually what I managed to do was get a snapshot of a rusty dumper truck, so I shall not be planning a future for myself in photographic art at any time soon.
In between painting I cooked and fed breadcrumbs to our visiting robin. He is bold and brilliantly coloured, and must be feeling worried about something, because he is singing his heart out, which sounds ace but must be terribly hard work.
I made our picnic for work and swept and tidied the lovely borrowed camper-van-kitchen. This is making me extraordinarily happy. It is like being on holiday, only more fun because we have got something interesting to do.
Number Two Daughter dropped around with a present of some wild salmon, which I cooked in garlic and lemon to put into salad for our weekend picnics, and Mark’s sister and her husband popped along to be amused at our efforts, and in the end it was time to go.
We went swimming before work, and I am so tired I can barely move, all this exercise and healthy living is marvellous.
I am going to make this shorter than usual and save myself a thousand words with a couple of pictures. We have finished it all, except for the cab, which needs quite a bit of welding before we paint it, Mark is going to make a start on that next week. Afterwards we are going to paint it yellow with a green stripe.
Lucy is going to paint pictures on it when she comes home.
1 Comment
Nearly fell off my chair when I saw it. Is this trick photography? It surely cannot be the same old rusted, patched up heap that we have become accustomed to? I particularly like the multi-coloured aspect of it. Doing one side green and yellow, and the other side yellow and green is brilliant. And since both sides cannot be seen at the same time is undoubtedly going to cause some people to scratch their heads when they come to recall it – now, was it yellow and green, or green and yellow?
Wonderful!. All you need now is a cab, an engine and four wheels, and Blackpool here you come.
Ten out of ten, and a gold star!