Tidy Face Day

I have had ever such a busy day.

I have packed and folded and sorted and smoothed and organised and counted: until this evening instead of a terrifying muddle of disorganised crumpled things there is a tidy arrangement of carefully filled bags, ready to go in the camper van.

We got out of bed rather earlier than we might have liked to, because we finished up working until about half past four, but when the postman rang the bell at nine o’clock with a parcel of books ordered by Lucy to take on holiday, we thought that perhaps we ought to think about getting on with things instead of burrowing back under the warm quilt again. Mark made coffee and once our eyes had steamed open, we got determinedly dressed.

The day started on a brilliantly high note, because last night we finally earned enough money to pay the end of the mortgage.

Having a week off means that obviously we won’t earn anything because we are loafing idly about somewhere else and not taking any drunk people home from nightclubs. Therefore as well as saving up for holiday expenses like French wine and – well, more French wine, we had to make an extra week’s money to pay our domestic bills whilst we are not here.

Last night, to our enormous excitement, we finally managed it, and our first job this morning was to trot round to the bank and settle all our liabilities in order to depart with a clear conscience.

This was a truly happy moment, because I don’t mind telling you I was very worried in case we didn’t make it: but we did in the end. Now our earnings tonight can be used to buy some diesel to get us to the port, and tomorrow night’s to go to Asda for milk and cheese to take with us, and dog food to leave for the tiresome dogs, so everything came out all right in the end after all, and we lit a jubilant candle to the Gods in appreciation before we went to bed.

Fortunately Mark’s dog seems to have more or less stopped leaking now, and for the first time the two dogs have decided to be interested in one another’s presence.

They are funny to watch at the moment, because to their surprise they have fallen head over heels in love with one another, which was what we had thought might happen, and they are bouncing about being very pleased with the world and with themselves. This is a very lovely happy thing to see, their eyes are bright and their tails are waving and they are playing like puppies let out into the garden.

I am relieved about this, because apart from anything else it means that they will probably not miss us much whilst we are away, because they will have their own concerns to think about, so that is yet another worry disappeared.

I was so pleased with the improvement in our circumstances that I decided to do some self-improvement to go with it, in time for the holiday, so I plucked my eyebrows. This is not easy, I can tell you, since my eyesight got so old-lady rubbish that I have got to keep my glasses on to do it, it is no mean feat to manage glasses and mirror and tweezers in such a manner that I can properly see what I am doing but do not accidentally poke myself in the eye.

It is so long since I have got round to doing this that I had forgotten what shape my eyebrows were supposed to be, although I was fairly sure it was not one long thick black Neanderthal line across the middle of my face. I improvised a bit but had to stop after a while, because the thing you invariably do is to take a bit off one, and then a bit off the other to match, but a bit too much, so you take more off the first one, and so on. Then suddenly you have no eyebrows left, just a throbbing pink stripe across the bottom of your forehead, and you have got to draw them back on with permanent marker or similar, and put up with looking stupid until they grow back, which they might not.

They looked all right, though, due to iron self-restraint, and I was so pleased with the success of the exercise I thought I might try the thing where you pull the hairs out of your top lip as well. Ladies do this in order not to look like Charlie Chaplin, especially once they get to a certain age. I am not sure what the qualifying age is, but fifty qualifies me for Saga magazine, so I imagined I must be getting close and thought I would give it a go.

I can absolutely tell you here and now that I will not be doing it again. To say it is excruciating in an understatement. I am astounded that beauticians are not qualified to give general anaesthetic. I could not believe the awfulness of it, it was so dreadful that I suggest you take my word for it and do not, under any circumstances, try it for yourselves. I decided there and then that even if I were regularly being mistaken for Adolf Hitler in the street I would just have to learn to live with it, fancy old ladies being brave enough to do that all these years and I never knew.

However I do now have a very tidy sort of face to take on my holidays, albeit possibly for the last time in my life, and I am quite pleased with myself.

When I reflect back on it, I have had a lovely day. All of yesterday’s anxieties have melted away like a bucket of ice in a sauna. I have packed almost everything, Mark has almost finished the camper van, the dogs will be too busy playing at Fifty Shades of Grey to miss us,we are not going to come home to bailiffs on the doorstep and I have got a tidy face.

Life is splendid.