Things started off badly this morning.
We got up to find that one of the dogs had not been able to wait for us to start the day and had had a wee in front of the back door.
We were not impressed by this, especially since by then I was running a bit late, so I chucked some disinfectant over it and shouted a request to clean it up at Mark over my shoulder as I rushed off for my school run.
By the time I got back he had gone to work himself, and he had cleaned it up very efficiently, which was kind of him, so I forgot all about it, at least until I started washing up the pots and realised to my absolute unspeakable horror that the dishcloth was full of bits of doormat. This led to a domestic later on in the day.
After that Mark took Oliver and the dogs up to the farm to cut up logs and build walls and shoot things, and Lucy and I stayed at home to make the most of the peace and quiet. She has started reading Pride And Prejudice, which is on her GCSE syllabus, although so far it has failed to capture her imagination, possibly due to Jane Austen’s inexplicable failure to include any vampires or sex.
She has borrowed a copy of it from me, and in return pressed a copy of one of her books upon me for my entertainment and instruction in all things youthful. I may not have been paying proper attention but it sounds as though it might be about clockwork Victorian vampires, although I haven’t started it yet, it has got exciting looking pictures on the cover, I shall keep you posted.
I spent the rest of the day doing housework and baking some more biscuits, and intermittently carrying out an undignified telephone-and-e-mail squabble with my brother because sometimes I am still six and incapable of Rising Above such things like a proper sensible grown up.
I was amused partway through to discover that I was not the only one behaving like a tired toddler in a supermarket, and he had dealt with his frustrations by Unfriending me on Facebook. Then the doorbell rang, and it was some glorious Chanel soap arriving from him as a late birthday present, which was particularly surprising because he has already given me some. I felt guilty then and thought I might apologise soon. Well, I might.
I told Mark all about it when they got home, and it made him laugh, which made me feel much better. After that he emptied sawdust all over my clean carpets and spent the rest of the day tinkering about with his Invention in his shed.
I think that I have mentioned before that in his spare time he is busily inventing something to make the camper van run on water instead of diesel, it involves a battery and a coffee jar and an alarming fizzing noise, and he is very pleased about it.
He has explained it to me several times, but my capacity for understanding the issues involved in constructing a hydrogen engine is really not very great at all, and he might as well have been explaining the intricacies of foretelling the future from the way a goat’s intestines spill out when you take the first steps to turning it into curry.
I have asked him to promise that it won’t explode inconveniently, and he has looked a bit sheepish and said that he doesn’t think it will, probably: and usually he is right about that sort of thing, so I suppose I will have to trust him. It is an interesting idea, and if he manages to work out how to do it without exploding then he can fit one to my taxi, which cost me thirty pounds and a penny to put diesel in it this morning, and if I didn’t need to keep wasting money like that then we could do all sorts of things, or at the very least stay in bed later in the mornings.
It is ace having a husband who invents things.
The thing is, the shed is right next to the French windows.
It is a bit worrying.
