You will be pleased to hear that my toothache is slowly getting better.
I am regularly administering to myself a fairly thrilling combination of antibiotics and codeine and some Tramadol which the vet gave to us for the dog once, and in consequence think that the world is a lovely place in which to be alive and am floating around in a happy pain-free cloud of contentment. The swelling is going down and I can eat things again and life is lovely.
It has been a misty, still November day, wonderful, perfect weather for the time of year. We walked round the Library Gardens and listened to the silence, the world holding its breath apart from the occasional falling leaf and the noisy crunching when the tiresome dogs found the remains of somebody’s abandoned Chinese chicken picnic, at least I hope it was abandoned, it would have been awful if they had just popped round the corner to the loo or something.
I love this time of year. I have brought in the end of the gorgeous orange Chinese lanterns out of the garden, and our neighbour has left us a bag of apples. This morning we collected lots of pine cones which we are going to spray gold and make into Christmas decorations.
It is the perfect time of year for feeling creative.I have got lots and lots of ideas of things I would like to do for Christmas, like home made cards and things, Number One Daughter made us an advent calendar one year, it was brilliant, with photographs and chocolate and bits of ribbon, and I am quite sure that I could do things like that if only I put my mind to it. All I really need to do is get round to it, and I am sorry to admit that I probably won’t.
It is brilliant to have managed to liberate ourselves from the tyranny of the alarm clock. We have spent years and years working late and getting up early and sleeping in bits and pieces in between times, but now we don’t need to worry about school taxis we can sleep for as long as we like.
This is a blissful way of living. We like working at nights, we can go and sit on the taxi rank and read and write to you and drink tea and talk to one another, and then the last walk of the day is in the peaceful dark of the just-past-early morning before we go to bed. We didn’t wake up today until almost twelve, which was brilliant, we had a coffee in bed and didn’t need to rush about for anything, I can’t tell you how lovely that is.
Once we were up we spent the day getting the house tidied up a bit, We lit some candles so that the Gods would know how happy we were, and some joss sticks because they smelled nice, and emptied our chest of drawers and put the worst T shirts in a bag to be rags for Mark to use wiping up engine oil and diesel, and put the shorts out of the way at the back of the top shelf until next summer, and threw away the fleeces that were shabby or thin or didn’t fit properly. After that we cleaned the children’s bedrooms, and tidied up their drawers, and then it was time to get ready for work.
It is Tuesday, so we don’t work very late tonight, because not very many people want to do things like eat out or get drunk on Tuesday nights, and we went to have a swim in the quiet hour in the middle of the evening at eight o’ clock, when nobody ever seems to want to go anywhere in a taxi.
We have not been swimming for ages, unless you count the splashing about with the children in Paris, which you can’t really, because it wasn’t actual exercise, more like underwater wrestling, and it was wonderful to be able to stretch taxi-cramped muscles again.
We swam, and shrieked in the ice plunge, and then had hot showers before we went back to work. I drenched myself with Bluebell perfume and felt lovely, and we had a happy evening drinking our flask of tea and taking drugs and working: and indeed I am still here now.
Not for much longer, though, almost bed time now.
See you tomorrow.
