You will be pleased to hear that today I am feeling rather better.
I had every intention of taking some time off, but in the event decided that I would, after all, go out to work.
I took Oliver’s new swimming trunks with me and sewed the name labels in and adjusted the waistbands in between customers. They say Age Five on them but clearly mean Age Five And Very Porky, because they are far too large.
All trousers are too large on Oliver who has the figure of Mowgli in the Jungle book, anything that is long enough to reach down as far as his ankles is probably going to finish up there anyway, because they will be far too big around the waist and he lacks the sort of bottom that will hold them up.
Unfortunately this is not a problem that I have.
I had a small-scale tantrum last night about becoming idle and unfit due to not having any time to go swimming in the evenings. There are a lot of tourists here at the moment, and I am spending the entire time plonked fatly on the taxi rank, trying to encourage them to do less health giving exercise as well, and instead to swell my coffers by going home in a taxi.
Mark listened fairly patiently and we decided that I needed to be able to find an hour to go swimming again instead of sitting on the taxi rank right through from lunchtime until bed time. He does not need to exercise quite as badly, because of working at the farm all day, but I am getting cramped and tired and grumpy, and need to do something about it.
We thought that if I went during the quiet time of the evening when everybody is in restaurants eating their dinner we probably would not lose any money really, because after all I would be saving the cost of the electricity I would use having a shower when I got home. Also nobody likes me when I am being grumpy, even the customers, so I don’t get any tips.
This was an encouraging outcome, and so I took advantage of the moment to tell him about all the other things that are going wrong in my life that need attention, like having got no trousers left because all the zips have broken or they have been torn or otherwise rendered not entirely decent for a person of my advanced years. Torn trousers appear to have become fashionable at the moment, but I think that this is only if they have artfully placed designer tears, not huge draughty three cornered rips where they have got caught on sticking out nails on the wood shed.
He conceded that I needed some new trousers, which is just as well because I am down to a pair of cut off jeans and some shorts at the moment, and I will not look lovely in December with blue mottled legs. We agreed that I would save some of today’s takings and then go to Marks & Spencer tomorrow, which is, as you will now understand, why I went to work after all.
We both thought that we were getting tired and fed up because the summer had gone on for a very long time, and in a moment of optimism looked at London on the Internet to see if we could afford to go there and take the children to the theatre in the last week of their holidays.
Oliver has got to do a project about Shakespeare this summer, you will not be surprised to hear that he has not written a single word of it, and actually I suspect that he does not have the first idea who or what Shakespeare was. We considered that we might go down to the Globe and divest him of his ignorance in a family friendly way, but it turned out that the camper van is not allowed in London, and the train was three hundred quid and an hotel would have been another three hundred quid, which was a bit of a sticking point, and did not in any case include the actual cost of going to the theatre.
Mark firmly vetoed use of his credit card, because if we don’t pay it straight away it has got twenty nine percent interest on it, and pointed out that most divorces are caused by debt. I thought this was reassuring because I might be grumpy and forget to take his wallet out of his pocket before I wash his trousers sometimes, but at least we are not in debt so there is still hope for a golden wedding anniversary one day.
In any case when we floated the idea hopefully past the children they both groaned and rolled their eyes and said that history, Shakespeare, Lord of the Dance, Buckingham Palace, Harrods and everything else I wanted to see in London was boring and suitable only for the very elderly and not at all relevant to the young and happening hip generation, so in the end we settled on a couple of days in the camper van on the beach in Blackpool, which will be nice because of a long flat space to cycle and a decent Waterstones and doughnuts, and since they don’t like the Pleasure Beach: inexpensive.
We are going to save up for London and go next year. This is no use for Oliver and his project but he will just have to look it up online or go to the library or ask Lucy.
I have decided to remember that ignorance, after all, is not only bliss, but also cheap.
