Lucy came home from work last night, fell through the door and collapsed on the doormat.
It would appear that the You and Me is on two floors, and she had dashed up and down between the two with plates and cutlery and fried rice until her little feet ached.
I think it is absolutely brilliant. By the end of the summer she will have lost lots of weight and be as fit as a prima ballerina.
We all gathered in the kitchen to hear stories of her new working life, and I cooked us all some pasta, and we sat round the table captivated by her adventures. I don’t know how long it is going to last, though: she seems to have inherited my unemployability gene, her killer line to a departing customer was: “yes, lovely to see you, come again, you can bring the rest of my tip.”
Oliver was enchanted by stories of her efforts and got up early this morning to rush round the village begging the cafes to give him a job, which they all declined to do, much to his tearful disappointment. We phoned everybody we could think of who might be able to kindly pretend a need for an unemployed nine year old, but in the middle of the tourist season everybody is far too busy.
I offered to take him to Asda with me, but he growled and shook his head, and wasn’t comforted until Mark had played three or four games of Zombie Horror Nightmare Destruction with him, at which point Harry turned up and he remembered that maybe unemployment had its bright points.
After that Mark went to work and I went to Asda, which took ages. We have got friends coming to dinner on Wednesday and I wanted some wild salmon, which is not in season, but I don’t see why that should be a problem in a twenty first century global village, and told Asda’s apologetic fishmonger so.
I got Mark to ring every fishmonger on Google for me, but he said that unless I wanted to order it from America for sixty pounds an ounce, to be delivered in three weeks I could forget it, so we are going to have to put up with Scottish farmed salmon, which is not nearly as good and I feel Asda has failed in their civic duty.
I managed to get everything else that we needed, and then spent a contented hour or two unpacking it all in the kitchen and arranging the flowers and cooking the sausages, most of which Mark and Oliver and Harry ate before they were cool enough to take out of the baking tray: then my job of the day was to make some mincemeat for Christmas mince pies.
This is an important and very satisfying job. I made the first batch in December last year, and it has been stewing beautifully in a Kilner jar on top of the dresser ever since. However, domestic discussions in the interim period have raised the issue that the fifty mince pies made last year were not enough by the most unspeakably long chalk, and that I needed to make a lot more.
A few days ago I had the fortuitous recollection that I had once laid down some home grown pears to steep in a French home-distilled nightmare called Eau de Vie, for which you could be prosecuted under the Trades Descriptions Act as well as probably half a dozen other Acts designed to preserve public health, it might be better named Eau de Sudden Mort.
We unearthed them and I chopped them into pieces with lots of dried fruit and suet and brown sugar and cinnamon and cloves and ginger, added the first batch of mincemeat, then poured on the remaining Eau de Vie and a bottle of brandy, and spooned it all carefully into some more Kilner jars.
Last year the mince pies were so successful that they stayed alcoholic despite the cooking, which I felt was a hallmark of a complete triumph. Somebody explained to me why that had happened, but of course I failed to pay proper attention and so am still no wiser and will just have to hope I have replicated the conditions well enough to duplicate the results.
We stashed the Kilner jars back in the top of the dresser ready for December, and listened to a depressing radio programme about the effects on health of working at night before we went to work ourselves.
We have got full cupboards and sausages and mincemeat. I feel very pleased with the day.
