I have had a whole day off.
It is five o’clock, and I have only just come out to work.
I feel renewed, refreshed and pleased with myself. It has been splendid.
I have done all sorts of things. I have replaced the button on Mark’s shorts that burst off after too many puddings, and ordered Lucy’s new contact lenses, and sewn up the cushion that belongs to the dogs. They hunt and kill this regularly, and I have got fed up of picking the stuffing up off the carpet. So I shoved it all back in and mended the hole that they stick their noses in to drag all the stuffing out, ha ha, that will puzzle them.
The dogs seem to have gravitated to being Mark’s Dog and My Dog, because of whom they both love best. Mark’s dog is anxious and wants to lick everybody and have lots of reassuring petting. My dog is growly and doesn’t like visitors, especially children, and smiles when he is happy, which is the most hideous grimace imaginable involving curling his lips back to bare all his teeth, and which makes people who don’t know him snatch their hands away and back off hastily.
Both dogs went up to the farm with Mark and Oliver today, his dog bouncing delightedly and mine reluctantly dragging his paws because of his attachment to the comfortable spot under the desk in my office. Mark is still welding up the camper van and Oliver is shooting and in between they are giving Oliver driving lessons, which Mark says is an important thing for a boy.
I am not sorry that I am not there, because my nerves are not as steely as Mark’s, and also I can’t imagine how his feet can reach the pedals at the same time as him being able to see over the steering wheel, but Mark says he can look through it, which is fine. The dogs run after the car whilst he drives, which must be an interesting spectacle for walkers on the Dales Way footpath. It might turn out to be a sensible idea anyway, because if he doesn’t get in to Eton he can always be a taxi driver.
Once they had buzzed off and Lucy had gone to work I took myself off to the metropolis to do some shopping. I was supposed to be going to Marks & Spencer to buy some new jeans, but I started off by going to pay Mark’s bill at the auto place on the industrial estate, and then I went to Asda, and after that I had had enough and will have to go back tomorrow.
I did, however, buy one pair of new jeans in Asda, they were the cheap get-you-through sort that you buy in an emergency when you have run out, but which will do very nicely. Then I bought shampoo and toothpaste for the children to take back to school and tuck for Lucy and some pork pies and sausage rolls for Mark and Oliver to eat because I have been too lazy to cook anything much lately. After that I was worn out with all the excitement and thought that I had better go home and earn some more money.
Lucy helped me to unload the shopping and hang the washing on the line, and I took her back to work and went off to the taxi rank, feeling as though some of my worries had been eased.
The summer is ending. The trees are starting to show the faintest hint of yellowing, and this morning I smelled autumn on the air. The season is shifting, and before very long we have got to have all our harvest in and the children packed off tidily to school, and then we can organise ourselves ready for the long winter. I don’t have to bottle fruit and make cheese and pack carrots in sand these days, about which I have got no regrets at all: nowadays the harvest is cash and timber, but it needs bringing in all the same, and once the children are gone there will be some cheerful days in the last chilly sunshine hauling timber back home.
Winter is scary, which I suppose is the way that it is supposed to be. We have got to stay warm and fed and pay the mortgage and the school fees, but there is only the barest scraping of a living to be made.
I love the challenge of it. If it were not scary nobody would ever have invented Gods.
The most exciting times are yet to come.
