Squared

I had a real holiday last night.

I had just finished writing in these pages when some customers came along. They weren’t going very far, they were the bad-leg variety, and not very clever at that. They had dithered around the taxi rank for ages wondering how you might get in a taxi, whilst we all watched them, disinclined to explain that you are simply supposed to come up to a taxi and get in.

Eventually, after an embarrassingly long time, and staring helplessly at each of us in turn, they worked it out, and I took them.

We got about a quarter of a mile along the road when my taxi died.

Attempts to get it going again proved vain.

I called Mark to take the customers the last two hundred yards to their destination, and eventually managed to persuade my taxi to chug home, slowly. It would only go as long as I did not touch the accelerator.

I managed to get home in the end, where I had to abandon all hopes of gainful employment for the evening.

I would be fibbing if I said that I was sorry about this, because I wasn’t. I sat down at my desk and painted Advent calendars until after midnight. Then I emptied the dogs and waited for Mark to come home.

He had had quite an astonishingly busy night, which was a relief, because we are going away tomorrow, and cash is always useful. Then we celebrated by spending half an hour gazing thoughtfully at the plan for the new camper van.

I have cut this out to scale on centimetre squared paper, along with lots of other little squared paper shapes, these ones in colour with things like Fridge and Cooker written on them, to indicate the objects that they represent, and which we have measured carefully.

Then I put it next to the plan for the old one, also on squared paper, and we both gazed at its colossal size in awe.

We are going to be able to fit so many things in it. It is huge. Really, really huge. It is nine meters long, and none of that is the engine, which is hidden underneath the floor in the front. The whole thing is van.

We went to bed talking excitedly about it, and then woke up and talked excitedly about it again. Do not come and see us at the moment. We are very boring indeed.

We are going to get a portable washing machine to go in it. You can get these contraptions, some have got pedals so that you spin them yourself, but since the new van is going to be equipped with a full complement of solar panels and some massive batteries, we are going to get the sort that you plug in.

We inspected these on Amazon over our coffee-in-bed, gazing with fascination at twin-tubs and spinners, and imagining having one in the shiny new Orient Express camper van. We will be able to do our own washing in quiet moments, so that we will not need to come home with depressing sacks of all our grubby clothes, sandy and smelling slightly of sea water, with muddy paw prints, and a slight odour of cow dung to suggest to the discerning olfactory sense that we are dog owners.

Later this afternoon I checked the dimensions of the machine that we liked and cut a little shape out of squared blue paper, which I stuck on the new plan in the space marked Bathroom.

In the end we had to stop talking and get on with the day. Mark went off to fix my car, and I went out with the dogs, and Oliver was stuck in his bedroom doing a Naughty Motorist course, having been caught speeding a few weeks ago.

You will be relieved to hear that Mark fixed my car, and I am on the taxi rank once again. I do not know what he did, although he explained it, but I am pleased to be able to tell you that it is now working magnificently well, and I am busily salting cash away to blow in Manchester tomorrow. Manchester will be quite exciting, although not nearly as exciting as a new camper van.

We had a cup of tea when he had finished, and moved squared coloured shapes about on the new plan, which is so big I had to stick four A4 sheets of squared paper together in a long line

It is huge.

We will be collecting it on Tuesday.

I can hardly wait.