Childcare

I did make it back to bed after Mark set off this morning, only to be rather rudely awoken about twenty minutes later to the surprising discovery that somebody was carefully inserting the nozzle of a plastic revolver inside my left nostril, accompanied by a now-familiar high pitched giggle.

I requested, irritably and without much optimism, that he went back to bed, but got up about five minutes later when the series of misfortunate crashes from the kitchen suggested that he was trying to light the grill in order to make himself some toast.

Obviously all sleep was at an end from that point onwards, so I got dressed and cleared up the mess, and we took the dogs for a walk in the glorious sunshine around the Library gardens.

Ritalin Boy charged off ahead and I lost him. It took ages to find him, because it is not as easy as it sounds to manage two dogs in search of the very best site for a bathroom, and a small but speedy four year old. I looked under trees and bushes and around the library steps for quite some time before eventually hearing a small voice from the top of the gatepost explaining to some concerned people: “I wiv my Ganny. She’s the old lady over dere.”

It was a fairly high gatepost, considerably taller than him, but before I reached him he had launched himself off it, landing with a hip-jangling thud before shouting: “Ha ha!” and rushing off again.

I recaptured him with some difficulty, and we went home. He wanted sausages for breakfast, so we had to go to Morrisons, which puzzled him: he kept pointing at the assistants and asking which one was Morrison. I bought sausages, and he bought popcorn, which we thought would be as good a breakfast combination as anything else, although admittedly not one I have ever spotted on a breakfast buffet during an hotel visit.

We hadn’t been back home for very long when Mark came back from handing in his resignation at work, so when they had both finished eating things they went outside and washed the taxi so that I could file petrol receipts and tax the car without any help, which worked much better than the same exercise yesterday.

After that Mark went off to collect a huge stack of old floor joists that we had been given from a building site up the road, the idea was that we used them as firewood, which would be brilliant, but a lot of them are long and in splendid condition and thinks that perhaps he will build some things with them.

We haven’t quite thought what. I want a roof to stick out over the back door, so that he can install an outdoor heater, like the ones at the local bistro but powered by his new hydrogen engine so that it is cheap, and then I can sit outside whenever I like. He wants to build a garage at the farm, so that he can build hydrogen engines and mend the car in peace without being in trouble about the mess in the garden, or the oil on the carpets, or not doing his share of the housework.

I confess that I sloped off to work when he came back. Of course it is lovely to have Ritalin Boy to visit, but by this afternoon I was feeling a pressing need to earn some money and also to drink tea in the quiet haven of the taxi rank, and so I left Ritalin Boy doing some repairs to his bike with Grandad and quietly tiptoed off through the garden gate.

In the end Lucy took a turn at childcare, and we both went off to work. We came home at teatime and did the swings followed by his chosen evening meal of cucumber and pancakes. Fortunately by about nine o’clock he was completely exhausted, and once he had collapsed into bed we went back to work.

I am beginning to feel very elderly.

Mark finished my table stand today. Well, almost finished it, he ran out of grout just at the last bit and we agreed that there was no point in buying another bag to hang about cluttering our very small storage space until we are going to do some more tiling, so the last bit will have to wait, but it is lovely anyway, and I like it very much.

It has been a busy day.