Mark comes back on Saturday, and I am frantically trying to get everything on my List done before he arrived.
I have not finished yet, some things, like Wash The Towels, will have to wait until Saturday, because otherwise they will get used again and hence not be clean for his arrival after all, so I am hoping for a suitably blustery day with plenty of sunshine, because he would not like to have to dry himself on a damp bath towel after all those weeks of being properly looked after on an oil rig.
Hence the bath towels will have to wait. Instead, today I went to Booths to restock the rapidly-emptying cupboards, and then cooked a chicken.
Oliver will probably have eaten most of the chicken by the time Mark gets home, because he is still eating things with enthusiasm, but it is an Extra Large chicken and so hopefully there will still be some left.
He came with me on my walk again this morning, Oliver, not the chicken, obviously. It was not exactly a companionable experience. I was left puffing after him as he bounded off up the hillside, rucksack full of bricks on his back. Once or twice he came back for me and then bounded off again, so I was left to concentrate on my own thoughts and merely waved to him occasionally instead of bothering to make conversation. This was perfectly fine with me, mornings are not my very favourite time of day for being chatty. Indeed, my usual morning utterances rarely go much beyond Get Out Of The Mud, or Come Back Here You Clown, or They’re Only Cows They Probably Won’t Hurt You.
When we came home, he retreated to his room to eat a half a dozen eggs and drink some protein milkshake, and after organising my usual housework, I went off to visit the camper van.
I have missed it very much, and am regularly seized with painful pangs of camper-van longing, although I know perfectly well that it will have to stay where it is for a long time to come, not least because we have barely even started on its refurbishment surgery yet. This is because we have been distracted by earning a living and rebuilding the front garden, both of which really needed some attention first.
It was wonderful to be turning my attention to the camper van.
I only had an hour, because the master plan was to clear out everything we had pulled apart and take it to the tip, but of course as soon as I stepped through the door I did not want to leave.
Even though it is quaking and trembling in its rusty sadness, with half of its insides dragged out, hiding in an ancient shed, it is still the camper van, and I am absolutely longing to hack away all of its cancerous rotting bits and begin on the slow process of rebuilding it.
I spent as long as I could there, pulling down bits of crumbly ceiling and unscrewing light fittings, but it seemed like no time at all before the hour was up and I had to dash off to the tip before it closed.
I promised it that we had not forgotten it, and that we would be back, and we will.
If only there were more hours in the day.
I dumped the horrible bits of old ceiling and carpet at the tip, which took ages, because there were two women in the car in front of me who were faffing about as if they were donating things to a Women’s Institute jumble sale. They were carefully dividing everything up to go in its respective skips, to the point where they took the lid off an old biscuit tin, and painstakingly separated all its clutter into little handfuls and then one pottered gently to each skip with a handful at a time, whilst the other stood there, holding the tin and waiting.
This makes it sound as though they were doddery old ladies, but they weren’t. They were in their thirties, and being virtuously Green.
I consoled myself with the thought that the massive line of cars impatiently waiting behind them with their engines running was probably counteracting any virtue points they had managed to amass in Heaven, and when it was my turn simply hurled everything into the skip that said Non Recyclable.
I don’t suppose I will get to Heaven anyway.
In the old taxi driver joke, I will get to the Pearly Gates and Saint Peter will see me, look behind him and shout: Has anyone in here ordered a taxi?
