Another domestic day today.
We got up at the hideously unspeakable hour of eight o’ clock, so that Mark could pull on his big boots and overalls and trudge off to Ambleside on his mission to restore order to flood-drenched cellars. He is not going to go again, we have got an awful lot of things we have got to do this week now, and so our commitment to community well-being is going to have to draw to a close.
The most tiresome thing that needs doing is that the wretched new boiler leaks and is going to have to be taken out and replaced. It actually leaks worse than the old one did. Mark says it has got a fault on one of the welded seams, which is ghastly, the hearth is flooded with horrible black sooty water all over again.
I phoned the boiler-making company up today and complained a great deal about it and they made concerned noises and promised that somebody would call me back tomorrow, so I gave them Mark’s phone number, they can talk to him. I told them that it had jolly well better be quick, because of Christmas, and it is all very well having a boiler leaking all over the place if it is because you haven’t got enough cash to buy a new one, but when you have just forked out four hundred quid you expect tranquil, trouble-free, radiant warmth and no puddles anywhere at all.
The girl on the other end of the phone made soothing noises and hung up as quickly as she decently could, and I sulked and indulged my inner Miserable Old Boot for a while, and then got on with the rest of the day.
I emptied my in-tray next. This was full of all sorts of tiresome things that needed doing but had not been either important or interesting enough to merit any actual effort, and so had been dumped in a papery clutter awaiting a day of exceptional internal tidying-upness.
There was a form from our stockbroker to declare that we didn’t live in America, and another one from our accountant to declare that we didn’t have any money, and one from the car insurance who wanted two valid pieces of evidence that we were taxi drivers, and one from the people who were employing Mark to empty water out of cellars, wanting him to sign a waiver to all of his rights under European Employment Law.
I wrote an irritable email in response to the last and told them that in response to their low-life unethical practices he would not be going back tomorrow, which cheered me up a bit.
After that I filled in an application to renew Oliver’s passport, which in the event took absolutely ages, because although of course he has had several passports before, technically he is foreign, having been born in France, and I had to fill in all sorts of tedious details that you don’t normally need to bother about for a straightforward renewal. I had to explain why I thought he might be British, and include my passport number, and Mark’s passport number, and the date and place we were married, and our dates and places of birth and our own claim to British citizenship.
Even after all that I still had to get somebody else to sign his passport photograph to say he was not a Syrian refugee. Harry’s dad kindly agreed to do that, so we will be able to get it sorted out quickly: but it was an unbelievable amount of messing about, and I can tell you that if you are a straightforward British citizen you should be grateful, because the paperwork involved in being an immigrant is an absolute nuisance.
I had some coffee to restore my spirits after that, and then went to the library, and then to the Post Office where I posted the last of my Overseas Christmas Mail. Then I ironed the first of Lucy’s vast quantity of laundry, and made a batch of Mark’s favourite coffee-and-cream flavoured Christmas chocolates for him to eat by himself, because the children don’t like them, and I never really want actually to eat them after I have made them, because of too much rich chocolate smell and sticky buttery fingers.
Mark came back at teatime, in good spirits because of having finished cleaning cellars, and we went to work then. In fact we are both feeling pleased with life, because it is almost Christmas, and we have done lots of things that we ought to do, and now we are All Right With The World.
What virtuous souls we are.
