Morning

My dressing gown is absolutely my favourite thing to wear. We bought matching dressing gowns in Covent Garden when we first got married, and they were the most expensive garments we had ever bought, and were worth every single penny. They are warm and rich and gorgeous, and I like wearing mine better than anything.

Everyone else was still asleep when I put my dressing gown on and tiptoed downstairs really quietly this morning.

Mark had worked the nightclub shift and was snoring. Oliver and Harry had been having an unsupervised game of Savage Bloodbath Cursed Zombies Meet Small Excited Boys until the middle of the night, and Lucy never emerges before lunchtime anyway.

The dog got up with me and padded along in case I decided to have a ginger biscuit or something, and needed him to help out with finishing it. Actually he isn’t one of nature’s shining morning faces either, quite often I have to forcibly eject him from the bed when I want to make it, he lies with his nose buried and his eyes tightly shut until the last possible minute when he gets tipped off because I want to shake the quilt.

The house was as still as still, muffled and silent in a completely different, heavier way from the quiet of being alone. I breathed in the echoes of all their smells and pulled the curtains back to let some daylight in.

I made the curtains myself as my contribution when Mark was rebuilding the house, and I love the fabrics, golds and greens and russets. They are double-lined and weighty and when they are drawn together not a chink of light comes in, and when they are pulled back the thick folds feel almost like tangible wealth, beautiful and densely woven and warm.

The kettle warms on the wood stove all night, so that in the morning you can just put it on the gas and it boils in a moment. We have our own favourite mugs that nobody else ever uses, mine is delicate flowers painted on Royal Albert china, it is curved and elegant and sits perfectly in my hand: and Mark’s is deep blue and white and gold leaf.

Once the kettle is on the next thing is to rake the fire through and sweep the hearth. We stack the logs next to the stove, and in the mornings they smell sharp and dry. Opening the firebox door lets a rush of air in, and the charcoal logs that have been smouldering all night burst satisfyingly into flame.

With the fire going nicely I filled it up with dry logs and ran the brush over the shiny red tiles in the hearth until they were clean, and closed the air vents down again until it had stopped roaring and was just radiating a steady glow. I make strong, milky coffee in the mornings, and the bitter smell mixes with the woodsmoke just the way it must have done when Dryden and Swift and Alexander Pope sat by coffeehouse fires to be witty and cynical and urbane.

The rocking chair used to belong to Mark’s grandfather, and stands next to the fireplace the way it presumably has done for the last eighty years. I like to sit in it in the mornings, with the early light flooding in through the glass doors at my back, and my feet warm on the hearth, and nobody to disturb my thoughts. The dog gave up on the biscuit and turned round a few times and settled down on the rug  with a sigh, and I rocked gently and listened to the creaks of the quiet house.

The house slept. I was alone with my quiet thoughts. I thought about the years gone by, because it is one of the last times I will wear my splendid dressing gown. Number One Daughter and Son In Law put a down payment on some new ones for Christmas, and we have decided to save up the balance as a wedding anniversary present for ourselves, and soon the old ones will be laundered and pressed and hung in the spare room to be lovely for guests to wear. The new ones are beautiful, champagne and cream coloured, to celebrate a lot of years together, and I am looking forward to them very much.

This morning, though I wrapped myself in my comfortable, soft old dressing gown, and drank coffee in the rocking chair in front of the fire, and thought how very lovely life was.

How fortunate I am.

LATER NOTE: I have been asked twice now. They are from www.bathrobe.co.uk