Well, I have got my happy ever after.
Mark is home, and everything is going very contentedly.
We have resumed our habit of morning coffee in bed. This takes up far more of the day than it should, but I really don’t care. We like it, and it makes the dogs very pleased, because they are allowed to join us on the bed, albeit on top of a very large Dog Towel, in order that our bed does not accidentally acquire the gentle scent of a couple of creatures who regularly eat cow dung and occasionally wee on themselves or each other.
It is a very happy way of starting the day.
We did not actually get out of bed until twelve today, partly this was because we did not get into it until after four, but, it felt wonderfully idle and hedonistic anyway. We have been occupying ourselves with camper van plans.
We have been watching some videos on You Tube called Ridiculously Luxurious Motorhomes, which feature the motorhomes employed by people like Leonardo di Caprio, and which would cost you a couple of million quid to purchase if you were so inclined, which we are not. One of them even had a helicopter landing pad on its roof, which we thought we might not need, and anyway Mark said it was stupid because the rotors would have blown all of the champagne out of the glass from which the inevitable pretty girl was nonchalantly sipping as the helicopter landed as couple of yards behind her.
We have been underimpressed by these motorhomes, because we think that they will not be as nice as ours is going to be, but we have looked at them very closely anyway, in case you get any really brilliant design ideas for your million quid, which it turns out that you don’t. Most of the design ideas were ones that we have had already, and some of them were absolutely rubbish, they looked very pretty but would have been awful to live with, so ours will be better.
What you get for your million quid is not terribly well designed stuff that is all upholstered in cream Italian leather. We didn’t feel any great need for that either, see the end of the third paragraph above for the obvious explanation.
We wanted ideas because we were re-designing the living room bit of ours, which has got to do duty as a dining room, a film-watching room, and potentially a bedroom if we have visitors. We have seen lots of ideas but none of them were right, and in the end we thrashed our idea until we had bashed it into a shape that we knew would work, and it is going to be much better than anything Leonardo di Caprio has got, especially if we manage to work out how to do upholstery properly.
Anyway, we designed and designed and designed, in between hauling a trailer load of firewood back from the farm and sawing it all up yesterday, and then today we went over to the van.
This was so exciting I can hardly tell you. We drove it out into the daylight and started investigating some of the bits we have not yet explored, being the large boxes underneath it where the diesel heater and the electrical inverter are living.
We are going to sell these and purchase new ones, because they are twenty four volt and we are going to run the van on twelve volt. I do not know what on earth this means but keep nodding sagely and going Yes, Absolutely, You Are Right, I Think So Too, which seems to be sufficient comment, fortunately.
Mark is going to cut the boxes out and build bigger ones, and we are going to put the batteries in them instead of under the bathroom floor, which is where they would be if we left them where they were. There is a big box there but I don’t think we will be able to use it without digging a hole in the shower every time.
We emptied everything out of it except the new welder which is too heavy to move and can be used from where it is anyway, and stacked it all neatly at the back of the shed. Then Mark carried on investigating the underneath of the van whilst I started taking the boards off the walls inside it, because we have decided that we are going to strip the whole thing out and start again from scratch, which will be easier than trying to build around somebody else’s probably puzzling decisions.
I had to be careful, because obviously we are saving the boards to put back again when we start rebuilding. They had been both screwed and glued on, and the screw heads had been filled with glue, so they did not come off very easily. So far I have got three off, with considerable help from Mark in the end, and loosened a few more. Behind them there is a couple of layers of insulation, which we are also saving, and then we are down to the aluminium.
In the end we had to abandon it, because of having to get ready for work, but it does not matter. We are making a start, and it is unspeakably exciting.
I am looking forward to tomorrow very much indeed.
