We have had a day in the camper van, followed by the most enormous dinner of pasta, gin and chocolates, not all on the same plate, obviously, and now I have got indigestion and it is half past one in the morning.
I am very late starting this and hence not expecting to write very much before I run out of steam. I do not have much steam in the first place, it has been a difficult day of rot-discovery in the camper van.
We knew that the rot was there, of course, it was not surprising. Part of the reason that we had to strip all the furnishings out was so that we could get to the mouldy bits. We have done that, but the walls are still there. We will have to remove the boards, and then the upright struts which make the van’s framework. Some of these will not take very much removing because they have crumbled away already.
There have been some leaks. The problem is that on the outside of the van, where the roof is screwed to the sides, the screws have rusted away and water has been slowly seeping in through the tiny, rusty holes. It has made the timbers inside wet, and they have slowly rotted.
We are now contemplating our best outcome.
We have come up with several possible outcomes, the first was just to give up and purchase a new camper van, but we have just been looking at them on eBay and don’t like them at all, with the exception of one American one which Mark said had belonged to somebody who had got our taste but not our abilities, and so although it looked appealing, quite clearly it was a shocking bodge job and not to be touched.
We considered this carefully, but decided that we would not buy a camper van really, because factory-made camper vans are really just too ghastly to be contemplated. That made us think of another idea.
We might buy a library van, and build ourselves a camper van inside it.
There is one on eBay. We have been looking at it very thoughtfully.
The third option is just to carry on, which we might do. We have rebuilt it before, from a worse state than this.
Mark goes away tomorrow. I am going to miss him but probably it will be just as well, because I have eaten and drunk so much during the last two days that I am in danger of becoming the sort of size that could easily disappear through some of the more collapsing bits of camper van floor. This actually happened to me last time we did it up, and I made a surprise visit to the ground. This was more spectacular even than it sounded, because at the time it was not standing on its wheels, but a foot or so even higher, on blocks, and it was a long enough drop to have satisfied even Albert Pierrepoint.
The floor did not collapse today, although we found a hole in the wheel arch. Mark said this happened when the van was overloaded and rested on the tyre. If any policemen are reading this, of course such a thing could never possibly have happened and I just made it up.
It was a long, grubby sort of day. We have spent most of the evening scowling and considering it. It is not beyond our abilities to fix, but it is going to take us a very long time. We might be better to start again with something else.
We came home and tried to distract ourselves by watching a film about Napoleon, which I did not think was very accurate, but which entertainingly portrayed the English as rascally knaves and gave Napoleon an American accent,. so that you could tell he was meant to be a goodie.
It did not distract us, not even with two glasses of gin in our beautiful Cumbria Crystal glasses and half a box of chocolates.
It was only half a box because we ate the other half last night.
I am going to go to bed. Mark goes away tomorrow, and he has got a meeting in the computer at ten o’clock in the morning. It is three o’clock now, and so I had better leave you.
I am going to go to bed and carry on thinking about the camper van.
Goodnight.
