Lazy

Sunday, and a lengthy lie in, followed by coffee in bed and extreme reluctance to get up.

Sunshine and the necessity to empty the dog drove us out of bed in the end, and we strolled round the Library Gardens remarking on the niceness of the advancing springtime, whilst the dog charged around being excited to welcome all the new dogs who had come to the Lake District for their holidays.

It is so very difficult to make Sunday productive, even staying in bed until half past ten still only added up to five hours of sleep, and we were slow, and lazy, and not very enthusiastic.

We decided that what we would do would be to wheelbarrow bags of farm manure and topsoil from the waiting pile in the back garden round to the front of the house, and fill up the new flower bed. We could empty the old one which has just become a mixture of stones and people’s cigarette ends and fill that as well and then plant lots of the little seedlings in there.

This seemed like a really good idea, because it is something that has needed doing for ages, and the little seedlings in pots are ready to be planted outside now: but despite trying really hard to get up out of our rocking chairs somehow it just didn’t happen. We got as far as standing in the back garden, where we yawned and enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine.

One of our neighbours came past, who had just managed to persuade the builders at Number Sixteen to let him have a look inside to see what is going on in there, which is a matter for very much curiosity on our street, so we were very interested to see him emerging and hear what he had got to say. All our houses are identical in structure, with no supporting walls inside, so everybody knocks different bits out and has different ideas, and so we are endlessly nosy to see what each other has done.

We had a pleasing half hour comparing stories of lofts and hallways and porches then, and when he had gone we renewed our resolution to knock the back of our living room down and have a conservatory instead of a shed. This might have to wait until the children have left home but which is an exciting plan all the same. Mark says that he doesn’t really feel like knocking the bottom of the house down without some advice from somebody who has done it before, on account of the rest of the house being piled on top of it, so it will turn out to be more expensive than our usual DIY projects and hence not something that we can do at the same time as school fees: but one day they will be grown up, and we can have a conservatory to be elderly in with slippers and library books and jasmine in pots.

The difficulty with daydreaming and idle chatting is that it takes up a considerable amount of time and is difficult to stop once you have started, and after a while we became uncomfortably aware that we were not putting heavy sacks in the wheelbarrow and shoving it up the hill round to the front of the house, so we didn’t do it at all, and went to drink enormous glasses of wine and share a pizza at the bistro across the road instead.

This was lovely. It was sunny, and they helpfully put the heaters on to make sure that the cool April breeze didn’t make us feel uncomfortable, and we leaned back in comfortable chairs with the dog curled up at our feet and watched the world being on holiday in the sunshine around us, and drank rich fruity Merlot, and ate excellent pizza.

We were so happy with it all that we left a massive tip and on our way back across the road we bought some hand made rose flavoured soap at the new soap shop that has opened up next to the Co-op, although I don’t think I like it anywhere near as much as the bluebell, and it is not in the same league as the Chanel, but worth a try anyway because it is right outside our house. Then we went home and back to bed and slept contentedly for the afternoon instead of doing anything constructive or effortful at all.

We felt guilty about this when we woke up and thought we might go for a swim to freshen up and get some exercise: but we didn’t. Instead we took the dog for a walk, and cooked some spiced prawns in oil, and curled up on the sofa to dip bread in spicy oil and watch an absolutely brilliant DVD called The Wolf of Wall Street, which had got Leonardo Di Caprio in it, and made us think it is probably nicer to be poor and idle than rich and terribly uptight. We watched the second half of the film with steaming bedtime mugs of hot chocolate, made by melting a big slab of dark chocolate in hot milk and sugar and then pouring double cream over the top, which made us feel so happy that we didn’t at all envy the film’s lifestyle of cocaine and sex parties and champagne, possibly because we are getting old: and then somehow it managed to be bedtime again.

Lazy is just lovely.