I suppose it’s not that surprising that I’ve decided against becoming a white van driver. 

Recently I’ve felt rather desirous of a white van to put all the vast quantities of stuff I find myself shifting about these days. My functional and (before I owned it) well-kept family car is now a total tip, scarred with the detritus I have taken away from the building site. It has got to the stage that, rather than having derogatory thoughts about white van drivers (from long experiences of cycle commuting) when one passes by, my heart goes all a flutter. 

Well today I hired one. A van of my own. And I couldn’t stop smiling as I drove it away (until I stalled almost immediately, right in front of a cyclist on Dunbarton Road). It’s not white though, it’s a charming shade of red to match the kitchen. 

I collected a sofa bed from the Salvation Army (my last-minute solution to the twin problems of nothing to sit on at Christmas and nothing for the agèd parents to sleep on at Christmas). 

And while I was there bought another leather sofa (£50!) and four gorgeous chairs (£40!) simply because I CAN. Because I now have a VAN. And you simply never know when you will next have a van to transport your Salvation Army bargains about in. And that was when I got the parking ticket. 
Then I went to collect the bed and other charity-shop furniture that I have been stockpiling.  Looking back at the blog I can see that I have had that bed stacked against the window of our bedroom since March 2013 (that’s 2 years and 9 months). In 2013 I must have had a rather unrealistic idea of how long it actually takes to build a house. With the bed packed into the van, life is transformed with space to walk round to my side of the bed AND a view out of the window (and I found a few long lost items as a bonus). 

It’s a good job that it is really nice bed, or it would have been rather irritating to have it clogging up our life for so long. 

And then the van was full and all the other stuff needed for a Christmas at the house had to be somehow levered into tiny spaces and crammed into the front seats. 

I eventually set off after 8pm from Glasgow and made good progress through torrential rain. I managed to find Radio 4 (are transit drivers allowed to listen to Radio 4?) and was just about to turn off at Tarbert when I came across a police roadblock. There’s often a roadblock there and they’ve never stopped me but this time they waved me over. 

They looked at the huge pile of bags and crockery and glasses and presents on the front seats and I said “it looks similar in the back”. “I think we’d better have a look through it then” said one of them, which was swiftly clarified as a joke when they saw my alarmed face. They let me go after letting me know one of the head-lights was out on the van. 

All was well until ballachulish where I passed another police car parked at the side of the road. About 5 minutes later I saw blindingly bright flashing lights behind me. It was then I learnt what the speed limit for a van is and, was sent on my way, contrite and grateful for understanding and charming policemen, this time driving like a tourist in a rented camper taking in the scenery and searching for a likely lay-by. 

So, I declare my glorious, and extremely short-lived career as a white van driver officially over, having had more scrapes with authority in a three hour period than in the past three years put together. But, as the annoying saying goes, where one door shuts another will open, and at my day-job I’ve been working on a project on that fabulous, rare and internationally important habitat, the western Atlantic woodlands. It’s those damp, dripping, mossy, lichenous broadleaf woodlands you get in this part of the world. They have more species of mosses, bryophyte and lichens than the rainforests and they positively drip with atmosphere and life. 

While creating a map for the project area I couldn’t help but notice that Cuil Bay happens to be roughly in the middle of the area (funny that), surrounded by some lovely examples of woodland. In fact the cycle route Ballachullish to Oban takes you though some particularly lovely examples of woodland, and pulling out baby rhododendrons has provided some surprisingly good therapy to me while on difficult phone calls regarding the house. So it is certainly a great project to be working on and one which I plan to stay involved with in the future. We’ll see where that leads.