We have had what amounted to a day off.
That is to say, we didn’t head off out to work until half past five in the evening, and we are going to knock off at half past eleven.
It was such a short working day it wasn’t worth packing sandwiches, and we just took some sesame prawn toast that we made the other day, and some spiced fried chicken, both of which were jolly good and made us think smugly that we were very clever to have made such nice things in our kitchen out of the genuinely slippery and smelly raw materials that you have got to start with when you do not buy your chicken pre-cooked and flavoured and coated with breadcrumbs the way the children insist on eating it.
Up until going to work it was a busy sort of day, finishing off things we hadn’t done, like the dogs’ haircuts, and doing other domestic chores, like going shopping and to the bank. Then Mark stayed at home doing things in his shed, and I went over to see my friend Elspeth, who wants some help in her office getting her books ready for the Inland Revenue, and for some reason I can’t even begin to imagine, thought that I would be the man for the job.
Never one to refuse a challenge I have enthusiastically accepted, although I am not without my own challenges in that department at the moment, having myself had a letter this very week from the Inland Revenue.
It reminded me that I had not paid the £237 that they had agreed that I did not, after all, owe them, and threatened court proceedings unless I did something about it. I was completely unable to think of anything that I should do about it, as I have already tried letters and telephone calls, without success, and so have decided that I shall ignore it and see what happens next, which is a course of action which usually manages to grab their attention sooner or later. The only other option is to pay it and wait for them to slowly grind through their paperwork until the point when they realise the error of their ways and issue a refund: but I am far too principled to do that and anyway when it comes to the relationship between me and the Inland Revenue I am a firm believer that all the indebtedness should be one-way only.
Anyway, Elspeth has clearly been impressed enough by my book-keeping expertise to request my help, which will no doubt surprise my accountant, who I think reads these pages occasionally, and who has never been even a little bit impressed by my book-keeping abilities, other than to be incredulous that I ever manage to produce anything even faintly resembling an income and expenditure account, which actually I don’t really, from the pile of oily and disordered shreds of paper that I drag out of my old margarine tub for his inspection every year.
In any case I had a pleasant afternoon drinking coffee at Elspeth’s house and listening to stories of her adventures: and when I got home Mark had finished his day’s jobs and was just washing up.
We went to work then, and for a swim halfway through the evening, and I felt very pleased with my world, because it has been a happy day.
The picture is of my kitchen window. It is of a probably by now third or fourth generation immigrant spider. When we came back from France one or two of the spiders from the French house stowed away in our furniture, and have populated our house ever since. They are tiny and harmless, except to flies and similar, and being French don’t seem to do much except make amorous advances towards one another. Anyway, there are quite a few of them now, and the picture shows one which caught a wasp this afternoon, after a dreadful and upsetting death-struggle.
I have included it just because it triggered so many different feelings. I felt terribly sorry for the poor desperate wasp, meeting such a horrible end: but then I was pleased for the poor hungry spider, which has had a lean time and an empty web for ages, and fought so hard and so determinedly to hang on to its dinner. It made me remember that the world is full of lots of little stories, unfolding all around us unnoticed every day, anguish and triumph and relief and despair.
There isn’t a hidden meaning. I just wanted to share it with you.
