Well, that’s it, I quit.
Again.
Not a job this time, just the effort of trying to get things sorted. We’re going to head on up to Nelson and around the north part of the island for a few days before we (that is to say, I) need to start work again. Will I know what to do still ? Can I still even type ? I have no idea, but am quite looking forward to it, for the first time in a long time.
We have decided to spend the next five days in the confined space of a camper van and rough it for a bit. Well, it won’t really be that rough of course because we’re both a bit soft, but we will be down to just one bathroom. There will be a microwave in there for some reason, even though the fridge is not big enough to hold more than a couple of bottles of beer and who wants them microwaved ?
I’ll have to sort out a suitable playlist on the iPod that catches the mood of the open road, blue skies and an optimistic feeling in my water. Something by Morrisey or Joy Division perhaps. Oh how I miss the jaunty ditties of my time wasted in Manchester as and undergraduate alcoholic. “Oh Manchester, so much to answer for”, as one of your more famous sons once scribed (it was Morrisey if you have not guessed).
Maybe a bit of John Denver. “Sunshine on my shoulders” perhaps … though if he had lived in New Zealand rather than Colorado, he may have written “Sunshine on my shoulders, bastard hot, giving me skin cancer” and that was never going to be a big seller.
We’re quite looking forward to a bit of posh camping; it should stand us in good stead when Paul starts talking about the great outdoors in Scotland and we can at least recognise some of the things that he’s talking about – we should be able to see some of them from the van I expect.
If Nelson is as beautiful as is has been described, then we should be able to get some more photos up when we get back. I have heard Nelson described as “a long and beautiful expanse, thrust out from the middle, where few men have been seen and the most frequently spotted mammal is a sheep”. Hang on, that might have been Nelson’s wife talking about something completely different.
I won’t do the joke with “Belsen” as the punch line …
Better go before the wine starts to take effect. Or the wife starts to take the wine. Or the wife’s whine starts to take effect.