I have had a tiresome evening.
I sat on the taxi rank and wrote several hundred words of diary which has now vanished utterly into the ether, and I can’t find it anywhere.
I can’t even remember what I said now, because I have been swimming since I wrote it, and then had an unexpectedly busy time driving seventeen very nice Indians with thick Yorkshire accents up the hill in the rain, and I became so thoroughly distracted that absolutely nothing remained to trigger my memory and so I am going to have to make a whole new beginning.
The really irritating thing is that it has been a fairly uneventful day, and I think I was doing very well to have found enough to say about it to use up a couple of hundred words.
Today I have ironed the last bits of Oliver’s school uniform and scrubbed the grass stains out of his cricket whites, and made Lucy a tuna fish sandwich, and emptied the dogs a couple of times, and bought some olives in Booths, and then spent the rest of the day sitting on the taxi rank sewing name labels in school uniform and ordering new fitted sheets on Amazon, because one of Lucy’s has gone missing at school, and the one on our bed doesn’t fit properly and is always coming off.
Lucy has been at work and Mark has been tiddling about in his shed trying to build his hydrogen engine, which made me cross, because he was supposed to be at the farm sawing up firewood and welding up the holes in the camper.
My brother issued dire warnings that if he succeeded then the CIA would come and shoot him with a polonium dart out of an umbrella, but they can stand in the queue behind me, and if he makes something explosive then probably they can stand in a queue behind me and all our neighbours.
The top and bottom of the Hydrogen Engine issue is that I am now cross with him and do not at all want to write cheerful things about how very interesting it will be to have a small explosive device attached to our vehicle and how pleased with it I am, because actually I am jolly well not. Actually I just wish he would get the rest of the camper welded up because my Whole Soul is longing for a holiday.
It seems to have been grey and gloomy here for weeks. Some things are nice, the baby crows are fluttering ineptly about covered in fluff, and the sweet peas have climbed almost to the top of the wall and are giving off the most glorious scent: but despite these very pleasing moments the general state of affairs in the English Lake District is a bit damp and discouraging, especially when I am trying to get the washing dry. Also somebody in the taxi said that we ought to be worried because if we don’t get some sun soon then we would very probably all catch Vitamin D deficiency and most likely die of rickets before Christmas.
I thought that this was alarming, and looked it up. I found that this is indeed what happens if the sun doesn’t shine, so I made everybody tuna fish sandwiches as a sort of emergency back-up measure, which is what the Internet suggested, a bit like Protect & Survive: so I am passing the handy information on here: if the sun goes out then you need tuna fish. Egg is the other thing, and handily I had got some mayonnaise that I made with egg, and mustard, and the oil out of some dried tomatoes, so I mashed that in so we should be okay now.
Despite having taken sensible precautions I would still very much like to have some sunshine. Number One Son-In-Law has sent some splendid pictures of Oliver and Ritalin Boy charging about in their shorts in the deep South, and I have looked longingly at them several times now.
I have been wearing two jumpers this evening but am back down to one now that I am in the house. I would much rather have sunshine than tuna fish.
As soon as the camper van is fixed…
