Another short entry, I’m afraid, this time merely because of the lack of newsworthy events in the Ibbetson household today.
This is partly because we decided yesterday that the best way to occupy Saturday would be to spend as much of it as possible in bed.
I can heartily recommend this as a form of weekend entertainment. We only slept until ten, when Mark made coffee and brought it back to bed, and then we had a lovely meditative hour, comfortably enveloped in our soft dressing gowns, leaning on big feather pillows, drinking coffee and talking on the phone to Number One Daughter, and considering our plans for the week ahead.
After that we had to get up because of emptying the dogs, who had got bored with loafing about in bed, and doing getting-ready-for-work things like making sandwiches and little tubs of olives: then we went back to bed.
We did not go back to bed to have another little snooze, although it might have been a good idea. We put some big towels on the bed and Mark gave me a thorough back rub, the sort with coconut oil, hence the towels.
I once declared to a full rank of taxi drivers that I would never have another boyfriend until I met a mechanic who could do massage, which was when Mark, who had just started driving a taxi that week to raise a bit of extra cash, did a quick inventory of his skills and realised he was fully qualified for the vacant position.
I have felt rubbish this week, with headaches and toothache and a stiff neck, and earache and an excessive quantity of self-pity and drugs. Mark said that a massage would be the very thing to sort the job out a bit.
Do not, readers, be imagining the sort of massage that goes on in womens’ magazines with candlelight and gently soothing strokes and Enya in the background. Mark is of the opinion that massage is not effective unless the patient is saying ‘ow’ often, which I did, and he is a firm believer in the healing powers of vigorous pummelling. I can promise you that the following hour would have left Christian Grey wincing in sympathetic horror and suggesting a gentler approach.
I had a long and blissful shower afterwards to get rid of the coconut oil, and also to stand under the water feeling myself becoming hotter and pinker until I was approximately medium rare. Once dried and dressed, we took the dogs for another quick trot around the park, and I felt very splendid indeed, as though I had had a wash from the inside out and all the creases shaken away.
Of course, being Saturday, that was the end of the lazing around, because as you know, Saturdays are our busiest working day. Instead of going back to bed again, which secretly I would have liked to do, because of feeling relaxed and uncrumpled and sleepy, we had to leave the dogs to take undisturbed occupation of the bed.
We took our flask of tea, and our ham and hummus sandwiches off to the taxi rank to set about raising money for school fees and insurance, where I instantly fell asleep.
In fact I have spent the remainder of the day alternately snoozing between customers in the taxi and waking up with a jump to find myself setting off to Ambleside.
The massage seems to have triggered my ‘nod off now’ button.
…so I think I shall…
