The picture was taken on this day last year.
It was described on these pages as not looking nearly as bad as it actually was. By the time we finished this day last year we were covered in filthy horrible spores from rotten wood, in dust from cut metal and rust and decay, and just the memory makes me itch.
What a long way we have come in a year.
I meant to take a picture from the same angle today, so that you could see the difference, but of course I forgot all about it. In any case, you know how it is all changed. We are now a million miles away from that time, how things have improved, thank goodness.
The timbers have been replaced and the floor has been replaced. The axle has been replaced and the door has been replaced. The hole in the side has gone for ever, and Mark has fitted an LPG tank instead of Calor gas, so that we can just keep topping it up instead of having to get out of bed to change gas bottles in the middle of the night.
Obviously I never did that, it is a definite man thing, not at all something that a helpless girl might do.
It has been the most massive project. It has taken over a year, and it isn’t finished.
We are still on with it, every available minute, and sooner or later we will be able to drive it out of the yard. Maybe even sooner, if we get on with it.
With this in mind, we got out of bed early to go to the farm this morning.
We put the coffee in the flask instead of loafing about to drink it in bed, and were there almost before sunrise, at about half past ten. We were very pleased with this achievement, and sat in our deckchairs drinking coffee and congratulating ourselves for ages.
Eventually we got fed up of being jumped on by the dogs, and got on with our labours.
I have talked about these so much over the last few days that I am quite sure you do not wish to hear further rhapsodies about my painting twee pictures on the side and Mark creating a new dashboard out of old tin cans and table legs. However, we have got a very high boredom threshold, and so that was what we did, all day, stopping only for cups of tea and to bellow at the over-excited pack of rampaging dogs whenever they were being tiresome.
We milled about happily until the middle of the evening, when we had got to go, because Mark had got another appointment with the doctor.
This was with our own doctor, not the pretty teenager we saw last time.
Our own doctor is our favourite because he is the same age as us and appreciates that as one gets older, exercise distresses the knees and wine is a perfect remedy for stress.
He looked at Mark and sniffed disapprovingly, changed everything that he was prescribed last time except the antibiotics, and prescribed some other things that he said would work better. He said that he thought whatever is the matter with Mark is being made worse by sunlight. Given that the only bits of him that are bright red and itchy are the bits that stick out of his clothes, this was a reasonable deduction.
This has caused us some despondency as we have always hopefully imagined that we will retire into the sun one day, which is partly why we have been redoing the camper van.
Mark said that we should not worry about it, and if the worst came to the worst he would get a burqa.
We went home and lit the fire and ate huge quantities of pasta.
This is the nicest feeling in the world after a busy day outside. It is lovely to be warm and full and sleepy.
I am halfway down a glass of wine as well.
Things don’t get better than this.
