The Tale of the Campervan, Chapter XII, approximately

Chapters I-XI are about why/how/WHAT??? I have a campervan, yes, a campervan, what was I THINKING, that I bought a campervan*??  Well, so, in medias res here.  I have this campervan, poor thing, which I rarely use, because rather than my four-wheeled other self, which Wolfgang was, she’s One More Thing & . . . my last post is about how the end of every day keeps coming a whole lot sooner than I’m expecting it to?**  My neglected campervan is always on tomorrow’s list, having got bumped off today’s.  Again.  Oh, & yes she has a name—Kinsukey—but that’s part of Chapters I-XI, so never mind that now. 

My sainted stepson, whom for the moment at least I’m going to call Jerome, because St Jerome is really tiresomely erudite***, keeps an eye on me. He feels responsible for the fact that I live here now.  It’s true he is responsible, but from my perspective I find this saintly & worth being grateful for, as opposed to a pain in the neck, which must inevitably be more what his view is, although he’s much too kind to say so.†  Anyway.  He’s aware that my relationship with Kinsukey is not flourishing, so he suggested we have a nice drive into the wilderness†† and take the dogs for a walk†††.  This part of the plan went very well.  It was a perfect day for a walk, & in spite of it being Saturday we weren’t run down by mobs of ravening off-lead dogs or flaming-eyed devil horses ridden by whip-cracking goblins, or any of the things that happen to you on a beautiful weekend afternoon in the wilderness.‡

Then on the way home we stopped at a convenience store‡‡.  I spent the 5 minutes Jerome was in the shop‡‡‡ trying to figure out a few more of the arcane symbols on the above-my-pay-grade frelling dashboard.  Which I assume is where the trouble began, the inchoate poking of enigmatic symbology, which I’m pretty sure isn’t a word but it should be, although neither Jerome nor I could figure out which particular prod had been the calamitous one.  Because he came back, climbed§ into the passenger seat, I turned the key, the engine fired up . . . & instantly turned off as soon as I put her in drive.§§  & again.  & again.  Meanwhile every time I took the brake off & put my foot on the pedal & nothing happened, we rolled ominously a few more feet toward the road . . . Granted only a few feet, the convenience store is on a relatively flat piece of ground in this very hilly little town.  But it doesn’t take long to roll too far on a small convenience store’s access road.

Nobody died.  & Kinsukey still has a dent-free front end.  BUT IT WASN’T A FUN TIME.  Jerome couldn’t figure out what was going on either—he’s not a Car Man nor particularly techie, but he’s a lot more plugged into the real world than I am—so after a lot of faffing around, & muffled screaming on my part§§§, we figured out how to disengage the whatever so Jerome & a friendly random clerk from the shop could push her into what would pass for a parking space while I attempted to steer, & the random clerk said she’d be fine there, he’d make a note so no one would have her towed. 

I spent Saturday evening & all of Sunday racing Genghis up the hill every few hours to check that she was still there, which she was.   As Jerome said, if you’re going to have a breakdown—late on a Saturday afternoon when your garage is closed—let it be somewhere that has CCTV & lights on all night.  This hadn’t even occurred to me yet.  I was busy hyperventilating at the idea of having driven her home by myself & parked on the grievous hill where I live & . . . .  Last year they took the tree out behind the place where I usually park.  Maybe because too many people were running into it.  I hadn’t run into it.  Yet.  But its absence means there’s nothing behind me but the next unfortunate parked car, & you gain momentum fast on a steep hill.  

Do I have even to tell you that when the imported-from-the-nearest-BIG-town person with the flatbed trailer—because my small local garage doesn’t have a recovery service, let’s not think about what all of this will finally cost me—showed up this morning, KINSUKEY STARTED IMMEDIATELY & RAN PERFECTLY???

I refuse to declare that this means I shouldn’t have a campervan.  After all, she broke down, or whatever it is that she did ɸ, on a reassuringly almost-flat surface, where furthermore there was CCTV & lights on all night.  Okay?  Yes????ɸɸ

* * *

* & golly the little squirrels cost.  I think I’ve already told you that renovations on this house went waaaaaaay over budget^.  They hadn’t finished going WILDLY over budget when Wolfgang died only a year after I moved up here & I was still under the impression that I was relatively flush.  Relatively.

^ that would be The Tale of the House That Needed More Renovating Than You or I Could Imagine, Chapters I-MMMXX & still awaiting a conclusion, or merely a denouement, any possibility of conclusion still being of the uncut Gordian variety—& which indeed I failed to imagine, & me a fantasy writer & all, I should be ashamed of myself.  Well, yes, okay, I am, but I still spent GEYSERS+ of money on this house.  & I bought a campervan.  & while I’d much rather be writing more stories than not, the truth is that I can’t afford to retire, which I realise I repeat kind of a lot, but it is so good to be writing again I can’t help myself.

+ the giant drowning Yellowstone kind of geyser, not the little hot water thingy that your plumber installs, if you live in Britain & are unlucky.  There are a variety of British habits & usages I have never adapted to.  One of them is the educational system.#  Another is the PLUMBING.

# Don’t get me started.  Let me just mention as an aside that a public school is actually what any sane American would call a private school, ie you have to pass an exam or have an interview, or both, to get in & then you have to pay money to stay.  Eton is a public school. ~

~ warming the mug before you make your tea in it, however, that’s a good one.  (Peter, of course.  He was horrified that I called myself a tea drinker & didn’t do this.)

** I will probably drone on about this more later.  There actually are reasons why I keep losing hours, besides the staring-at-the-blank page thing.  I do too many things, one might almost say cranky things if one were in a punny mood, & I’m slow at all of them.

*** Just like his dad.  Arrrgh.  My stepson, I mean. I don’t know if St Jerome’s dad was erudite or not.

† I have to say, how did I luck into a family who feels that second wives, you know, count? 

†† This isn’t the Highlands & the wilderness is not half an hour from my front door in any direction.^  But it feels like the wilderness to someone who is failing to adjust to a strange new vehicle in a strange new countryside, even five years later. Kinsukey is an ordinary-van sized van, despite her fancy insides, but she still feels twice the size of Wolfgang AND I have no sense of direction.  Which malign amalgam is the fundamental problem. 

^ Except maybe straight out to sea, which isn’t the plan here.

††† Have I named their dog yet?  Hmm.  Let’s call her Francoise, in spite of my current lack of an available c with a squiggle under it, which is another story, this another one about THE HORRORS OF TECHNOLOGY, which I seriously don’t want to get into now.  Seriously.^

^ &, speaking of seriously, & not getting into technology, what are the chances that the blog post tech wouldn’t let me use it even if I had it?  A TRIAL FOR ANOTHER DAY.  Probably including Blogdad.

‡ This view of wilderness may be being influenced by Story in Progress, but I’m still not telling you about that, so never mind that either. 

‡‡ VERY UNROMANTIC.^  Small towns in Scotland shouldn’t have convenience stores, they should have farmers’ markets & bagpipers.  Because I’m organic-from-scratch I sneer at convenience stores, but Jerome still believes in food that comes in plastic packets.^^

^ High Romantic, I mean.  Walter Scott & Robbie Burns.  Not kissy kissy.  Although you certainly see teenagers grappling with each other in convenience store car parks. 

^^ It’s probably a good thing he has some weaknesses or he’d be unbearable.

‡‡‡ Buying sinister misleadingly-food-shaped items

§ Crinklingly.  Those plastic packets, you know

§§ She’s an automatic.  Apparently you can’t get a juggle-the-gears-yourself campervan.  AAAAAAUGH.

§§§ & a surprising number of people blowing their horns & yelling at us.  WTF?!  We’re obviously broken down, & yes we’re in an inconvenient spot, when did anyone ever break down in a convenient spot??  But they could get around us.  Yo, angry jerk in car, what is your deal?! 

§§§§ on a gearshift car, you just frelling put it out of gear & it free-rolls fine.  In an automatic it says, no, no, dear, naughty-naughty, mustn’t do that. It’ll roll freely WHEN YOU DON’T WANT IT TO, but you can’t put it out of gear.

ɸ I have a WITNESS!!  JEROME was there too!!!

ɸɸ Because, with reference to how much this is all eventually going to cost me, yes I am still going to have the garage take a look at her, & they’re BOOKED UP TILL THE END OF SEPTEMBER.^  Which meant I drove her home & parked her on this hill, & I’m not thinking about what happens the next time I turn her on, take the emergency brake off & put my foot on the go-forward pedal . . .

^ It’s not September, of course, not yet.  It’s July, I think.  Time.  Ugh.