It is Friday the Thirteenth, and as always, no more ill-luck has happened to the world than on any other Friday.
Number Two Daughter was born on the thirteenth, which means that every now and again her birthday falls on a Friday, which always turns out to be a happily celebratory day.
When I started driving taxis for a company in Bowness, which is now very, very many years ago, they asked me what number I wanted for my call sign, and I said Thirteen, because I was a daring and rascally youth. The partner in the company said, a bit grudgingly, that she had thought about having that number but had thought it better not to tempt fate.
I was not at all sorry about the fate tempting in the end, because it turned out that Car Ten was a nice sort of chap, and we will be celebrating our silver wedding in a couple of years now, so Hurrah for thirteen.
It has certainly been a chilly sort of day. There is a lot of snow on the fells, and the vague promise that there might easily be more this week, and so Mark has decided that tomorrow will be spent hauling firewood.
Elspeth has buzzed off to Scotland to ski. I can’t ski and also have no particular inclination to spend my old age sliding down hills on a couple of recalcitrant planks, and so probably I will be helping with the firewood-hauling.
We have, however, spent today doing camper van things again, and I am pleased to say that it is coming along very nicely.
It is due for another go at its MOT on Monday, and so today has been occupied in making it ready.
This meant that we could not do anything really exciting. We have ordered the new windows to put in the roof, but of course could not start cutting the holes that they will go in, because it would not be at all nice to drive up to the MOT, which is in Maryport, in the snow, with a big hole in the roof through which the icy wind can bluster into the van.
We are excited about the windows, though. We sat in bed deliberating about them for hours and hours this morning, before sloshing out all the cash we could possibly rake together to order them online. This turned out to be so much that Barclays wouldn’t pay it and we had to telephone them to assure them that it honestly was us, just being reckless, and, rather less truthfully, that we could afford it, really.
We have emptied everything out of the van now, even Mark’s new welder, which involved some careful application of gravity, because it is very, very big and heavy. We had to drive the van up to a large tin box of Mark’s and carefully slide it out of the door and on to the top of the box.
We will get it off the box another day.
Still, the van is ready now for us to start hacking it to bits and putting new bits in. It is swept and clean and looking as though it might really turn into the Orient Express one day. Mark is spending all of his spare time frowning and thinking about cutting aluminium, and I have been researching the best way to make buttons, because I want to cover the bedroom walls with upholstered panels with buttons stuck on them, just like you might get in a sophisticated gentleman’s club.
I have never been in a sophisticated gentleman’s club, but I can imagine one perfectly, well, and probably they have worn leather sofas with matching buttons and tobacco smoke and waiters called George with white cloths over their arms.
I like that picture, and am determined to replicate it, apart from the tobacco smoke and the waiter called George.
To do this I will need a button making machine.
I am going to ask Mark if we can buy one.
All I will need then is about forty yards of fabric at thirty five quid a yard, some button kits, some sheets of foam, some upholstery needles and thread, and an overdraft.
I expect Barclays will have something to say about that lot as well.
