It is late and I have accidentally drunk too much to write very sensibly.
It has taken me several goes and a lot of misprints to get this far.
I am hoping that somehow I will sober up enough to write something sensible, witty, inspiring and informative, but I haven’t managed to think of anything yet and so there is a distinct possibility that you may be subjected to some mildly drunken ramblings.
It is because we do not drink very much any more, at least, not compared to the amount that we used to drink when we used to run a company of taxi drivers, and over the last months my alcohol consumption has dwindled slowly to one glass every four or five nights. Tonight turned out to be the one glass, and also it turned out that I had forgotten about eating both lunch and dinner, with the result that after half a glass I felt lovely, but my conversation had become enthusiastic gibberish.
Unfortunately Mark was not around to take the conversational strain, which is what usually happens when I turn into a nit-wit, because he drinks less than I do: but tonight I was on my own with a guest and he was working.
Our guest was the very nice Romanian cleaning lady from the VitalityWellness Lifestyle and Beauty Health Spa where I swim, whom I have gradually befriended over the last few months and who needed some assistance in navigating her way through the arcane pathways of the Inland Revenue, in which field, as regular readers might recall, I am something of an expert. I leave it to you to imagine how ace I was at explaining the best way to approach HMRC, especially once I had got drunk. Suffice to say that after she had gone and I had sobered up a bit I started to wonder a bit guiltily whether I ought to apologise to her or to them first.
However it was very pleasant to have a visitor, and it was not the only bright spot to the day. You will be delighted to hear that I am the proud owner of my very own turquoise cotton jersey T-shirt.
I was smitten with a bout of gritted teeth determination this morning and cut the sleeves off it again, which has left it slightly bizarrely shaped round the armholes but if I don’t tell anybody no-one will notice. Then I pinned and checked it lots and lots of times before sewing everything on, and to my astonishment when I tried it on everything was the right way up and in approximately the right place: or at least there were no sleeves sewn into the neckline which was one of my previous nasty surprises, and it looked very much like an approximation of a shirt.
My appreciation of my own skills has known no bounds. I have tried it on at least six times since, with the predictable result that sometimes I thought that it was the most wonderful garment that I have ever owned, and other times I thought it a ghastly rag fit only for an overweight scarecrow and torn it off again. In the end I have come to the most sensible opinion that I can, which is that it is a T-shirt, it goes over my head and that the sleeves are roughly the same length. I don’t imagine that anybody will look any closer than that as most people are usually far too busy wondering if they can catch a quick glimpse of their own reflection in the shop window to notice anybody else, unless it is either very peculiar indeed or the same as something they happen to be wearing themselves, neither of which, in this case, fortunately, are likely to apply.
I think I am doing very well at this diary writing lark for a fairly inebriated person, and I hope you will be tolerant of any oddities in the style, as I am having to make a serious effort to keep going and tell you everything you might be curious to discover about the twenty four hours since the last time I wrote to you. You will also be relieved to hear that we have done very well with the various Challenges we set for ourselves to achieve today, but I can’t tell you how well as I am too drunk to remember what they were.
Suffice to say that we will be setting off tomorrow for our weekend of having to behave well and look respectable at the children’s schools, and as far as I can remember I think we have probably done most things that we needed to and if we have forgotten anything then I will either have a horrible hungover panic in the morning or continue to forget and get on without it.
I will tell you about it tomorrow.
In the meantime I am going to go and see if I can out-snore the dog.
