An adrenaline workout

The weather's not been kind so not much has happened for a few days. Today, though, the windows have arrived ready to fit to the van, so Gareth and I pulled ourselves together and snatched a space of dry - if windy and cold! - weather to do this job.

I'd chosen my window size on the basis of (a) being big enough to see through but (b) not big enough for a whippet or fox terrier to escape through. The result was 700mm by 300mm, which also happened to be a nice size on the Seitz window size chart from O'Briens. They had a good clear website and when I phoned yesterday they were very helpful and quick - and I can't say anything bad about the delivery time, either! Overnight delivery from Salisbury to Aberdeen is pretty impressive.

The idea of taking a jigsaw and hacking holes in perfectly good walls had me biting my nails somewhat but having worked our way through the instructions there was only one way to find out how thick the walls of the van actually were - I had my fingers crossed for 26mm so the windows would fit exactly, but having drilled a hole in the wall big enough to fit the tape measure through, our luck was out. 20mm exactly - so we trotted off to B&Q (yet again) to try and find some suitable wood to fit the space.

We returned with 6mm pine stripwood, which was perfect, and having measured and cut it to fit the interior frames of the windows, we marked out the spaces on the walls for the two windows to fit.

Having marked out the spaces, however, we had to bite the bullet and start cutting the van up. Holes drilled in the corners was a start, then the jigsaw blade was inserted and Gareth vanished as the noise began. By the time I'd cut half the first hole, my head was ringing and I went in search of more ear protection - the reverberation chamber effect of the van's interior having kicked in nicely again.

With cotton wool stuffed in both ears, ear muffs and a woollen hat pulled well down, the job was completed without further trouble and we offered up the first window to its hole. Amazingly it fitted straight in and we had it screwed into place, weathertight and looking smart within minutes!

Hole number 2 was duly hacked into the van, window number two inserted and.... it didn't fit. Somehow the hole was smaller at one end than the other. Quite how, given every line had been measured by me several times, all angles drawn with a set square and then double-checked by Gareth, is a mystery but some more work with the jigsaw fixed the problem and we got the second window in and secure at length.