Month: June 2018

We collected our beautiful shiny new Wolfie yesterday from Mercedes in Newbury, the shop where R saw a camper van in the window on the way past and decided to do a U turn on the main road so he could go in and see it.  Ours is nicer than the display one because it is blue and it sparkles in the sunshine.  We put petrol in it, collected my Mother and drove to an industrial estate on Hayling Island.  An inspired first trip.

R is completing on the shop which means that today is his last day as a business owner, he will work for the weekend handing over but today is his actual last day and he left so early I wasn’t properly awake to appreciate the moment.

We have put the camper van away so it doesn’t get dirty and will have to drive our ordinary crappy cars for work but on Tuesday we are taking it to show the Blonde Bombshell in Cornwall, we’ll fill him with alcohol and take him on his first proper drive.  We won’t be sleeping in him, just in case we hate it and want to change our minds, we will leave that until we arrive in France, or Belgium,  we haven’t mapped out the trip yet, I think that will be the first major row. Hopefully J will be able to help us get organised, after all he is king of the itinerary!

Mother is repaired and I have returned to the FG having had a particularly chaotic week culminating in a Father’s Day visit to my darling dad who didn’t know who I was.  Next week shall be better.

I don’t want to jinx anything but we are so very nearly on single digits until the shop completes and Wolfie arrives.  We have bought almost everything we need now but we aren’t going to sleep in him until we actually go, just in case we hate it!

This week I got  my new glasses, they’re varifocals so feeling slightly nauseous and walking funny which I’m assured will only last three weeks.  Hopefully they won’t make my travel sickness worse (which I’ve not mentioned).

Starting to get excited now…

Kurt shall now be called Wolfgang, Wolfi for short.  The reason for the change is that we are not having our original van,  we can’t wait until November, we have a different one.  I’m not sure that I quite understand what the issue was but there was a queue and we jumped it.  The chassis number of the new van is WOF and some numbers so Wolfi it is.

He shall arrive on the 14th of June but we won’t collect him until the shop is sold. This being an exciting and fitting way to celebrate the beginning of our next chapter, I bought a duvet and am given to understand that it can stay on the bed when the roof is closed, R bought a frying pan and spent two hours watching youtube videos to learn how to use it.

I on the other hand am planning to learn how to use this computer properly so that I can post pictures of our journey and show off the crocheted bunting my friend Sarah is making me.

Things seem to be moving at last, Kurt – well a new updated version of Kurt will arrive in four weeks.  It would appear that the factory have an almost ready van that we can have next month.  Ok so it will be a bit different from the Kurt we ordered; it will have black leather seats, not cream, a darker floor and a tow bar  for the yacht (not a toe bar as Lucky thought, for us to have our nails painted before getting on said yacht). We don’t have a yacht but now that we will have the tow bar it seems only reasonable that we should get one.  It will also have a water heater so we can shower with hot water, hopefully it will not matter that it’s an outdoor shower.

We shall go to the nice man at the shop and sign another piece of paper but only if he promises it will be ready. I shall still call him Herr Kurt because he will be even more austere with his black interior. I am currently looking for cushions with tassels to decorate him.

I lost a dear friend on Sunday, she was 93 and lovely and would sing to me when she was having her hair done,  I will miss her.

Ema had her little boy yesterday so big congratulations are owed to her, I can’t wait to meet him and spoil him rotten!

 

I often forgot to press send on text  messages and last week I thought I had  organised my work for this morning.  I thought it was a little strange that she didn’t reply but didn’t bother to look until nine a.m. when I realised that the message hadn’t been sent which meant I didn’t work today.

The sun was out and my mother needed an airing having been confined to quarters for a month, so on a whim I bundled her into the car, packed up the dogs and dragged them all to the seaside.  Where else do you take someone with a newly constructed hip other than to trot across sand dunes in the blazing heat?  She managed remarkably well considering.

I thought it would be good to get the little ferry across from Mudeford Quay  where we parked on double yellow lines because the place was packed and were the only people without a picnic.  We had managed to leave the water and sausages we bought for the dogs (at a garage on the way) in the car and totally unprepared we made it up and down the dunes and even managed to get an ice cream.  Sunny still won’t swim, I know he should so I’m going to get him a life jacket and teach him properly.

We had a lovely day without a parking fine and I didn’t moan about Kurt’s delay once!

 

So all was going swimmingly, diet is fine, mother recovering nicely, walking dogs with step tracker, managing to work and even coping with us all living in separate places.

Until today; Kurt will probably not be ready until NOVEMBER! What do we do?  We are supposed to be leaving in September, taking a couple of months travelling across Europe finally arriving in Corfu in time for the winter.  We aren’t supposed to be sitting on our arses waiting for some geriatric gnome in Germany to put Kurt together single handedly, I thought they had a factory, a well oiled and efficient machine of a factory, how can it take SIX months to make a van?

What do we do, we have no house, no contingency plan and I, at least, have to be in the UK on the 20th December, I won’t even have unpacked before I have to come home.  I’m pretty sure it won’t be as easy to camp in the winter and there won’t be any direct ferries to Greece, Santander or even Bilbao.

I’m sitting looking at the ever increasing pile of things we have for the van and now I’m planning to cancel him and drive there in three days in the truck.

Why can’t things be easy?  Here’s hoping the nice man at the shop can persuade them to hurry up…