I have spent the evening on the taxi rank trying very hard to be upbeat and happy despite the rain.
I reminded myself that I was dry and warm, and that it was quite all right to be looking out of the windows at a wet world, quite safe and reassuring, actually. I had got a flask of tea and a sliced melon and some chocolate from the Christmas tree, and a good library book, and really the world was a nice place.
Despite these cheering reminders, it was not easy not to feel a bit dispirited.
Oliver burst into tears last night and announced that he thought that he might be addicted to computer games. We listened for a while, and thought about all of the things he would really like to be doing, but can’t – going riding, playing paintball, swimming, playing football with Harry, shooting at the farm, and decided between us that the problem was not the irresistible appeal of the flat screen, but the impossibility of ploughing through the endless puddles and vile-smelling mud currently covering the Lake District up to knee-depth to do anything else. Except swimming, of course, which is just closed, until the flood damage is mended.
This cheered Oliver up, and he went back to Killer Nightmare Bloodbath Zombie Massacre with renewed heart and without further guilt.
Mark went to the farm, to tidy up and ponder the leaks in the shed roof. I did the ironing. After that we went to work, which is where we have been ever since, sitting on the taxi rank hoping that somebody would come along and want to go somewhere else.
I thought that I might like to go somewhere else. Fortunately the wifi in the taxi rank works quite well on rainy nights, so I could sit and encourage my daydreams with the help of my handy flat computer.
I looked up hotels in Egypt, which I thought, mistakenly, as it turned out, might have become affordable on a minute budget, in Morocco, which, as it turned out, is cold at the moment, and then, in a burst of realism, in York, Edinburgh and Manchester.
I discovered that there is almost no theatre on in the next couple of weeks that is close to home and that I would like to go and see, and not much, if I am honest, that I would like to see that is a long way away from home.
I discovered that although there are lots of museums that I would like to visit in York, the hotel there would cost more than twice as much as the lovely Midland in Manchester.
I thought hard about what I would like to do. This took an awful lot of time, and after a while I realised that I didn’t really want to do anything very much.
I thought that I might quite like to go and see a film at the cinema next week, which in fact I could do here if I decide not to mind the wobbly projector and the Wurlitzer organ. There is a film out called The Danish Girl which is not about a girl at all, but a man who would like to be a girl, the thought of which has intrigued me and if I tell Mark there are a lot of car chases I am sure he will want to go and see it as well, he never knows anything about what is on at the cinema, so that will be all right, and I can apologise afterwards.
I remembered as well that we are having friends over for dinner later on this week, which I am looking forward to very much, because they make me laugh a lot, and I can cook nice things to eat and we have got some champagne that Number One Daughter gave to us for Christmas that would be gorgeous to drink.
As well as that our next door neighbour has invited us round to share a bottle of his champagne. I try and avoid going round to his house when we have got to work the day afterwards, because he can party like nobody else I know, and we have lovely giggly times until we can hardly find our way back next door afterwards: but it is January and it really doesn’t make much difference if we go to work at all, so we might as well go and just enjoy ourselves.
I remembered then that I have got a new duvet cover and sheets that I bought earlier on in the year, and that I have been saving to put on the bed at a happy moment. They are very beautiful, silky smooth white Egyptian cotton, and much nicer than anything even in the Midland, and if I put them on the bed and light a bluebell candle in our bedroom it will smell lovely and feel like a celebration.
The gorgeous white lilies that I bought earlier on in the week have opened now. They are filling the middle floor with their scent, and I think that between the lilies and the log fire I am quite looking forward to having a few days at home.
What a good job I didn’t book an hotel in Egypt.
