I love our house when we have got visitors in the evening.
It is a gorgeous feeling. We have candle light and firelight and all the lovely smells of cooking and flowers and in the background there is always the dark outdoor smell of the logs stacked by the stove.
Of course because we work at nights we are not often in the house in the evenings, and it has all the slightly magical bubbly feeling of a holiday, a special event.
It was so nice to have people to come and see us. I like having visitors: new stories and laughter and wine all without having to leave our own hearth, it doesn’t get any better than that.
The day was fine and dry. When our visitors had gone we took the dogs to be emptied in the Library Gardens, and stared up at the night sky, crystal-sharp stars in black silence, wheeling across infinity so that we felt dizzy and small. Being full of red wine and dinner helped with this happy sensation.
We washed up and blew out the candles and crawled sleepily to bed.
We slept late, which was a good thing, because of working all night on Fridays, and woke up to clear skies and sunshine. Mark said that since we already had a tidy house and no pressing chores we should go to the allotment and make a start shifting the stones from it.
This particular job has been haunting me for ages, because it is so completely uninspiring. I like gardening very much indeed, and like the idea of an allotment, however the bits of gardening that I like best involve sunshine, and having a cup of coffee in one hand and very occasionally a trowel in the other whilst I plant creative things that are going to become beautiful and smell nice. I do not at all want to spend at least two or three days wheelbarrowing away tons of small sharp stones that some complete idiot dumped all over the whole thing before I can even see the soil, never mind plant anything in it.
I explained this to Mark, who was not in the least sympathetic. He said that it would not take too long if we got on with it, and that we just needed to bite the bullet and make a start.
He even generously said that he would do it by himself if I really did not want to and that he would clear the whole thing so that I could come and be creative when it was ready. I would have very much have liked to accept this offer, but of course I couldn’t, because of not wanting to be a wicked idle human being married to a hard working pillar of virtuous goodness, so I declined and said through gritted teeth that of course I would help.
We took the dogs for a walk and sent Oliver his ruler and hung the washing up, and we were just getting ready to set out to the allotment when the skies blackened ferociously and hurled down buckets and buckets of horrible sleety rain.
Even Mark did not want to go out then.
I am not usually glad to see rain, but it made me grin completely stupidly until Mark poked me in the ribs and said that we would go as soon as the sun comes out at weekend.
Instead of going to the allotment we ate an enormous lunch made of leftovers from last night’s dinner. One of the things that I made for dinner was an emergency pudding, in case nobody liked the raspberry one. This was an impromptu recipe which consisted of Christmas fruit buns squished into the bottom of a dish with the end of the cognac-drenched fruit poured over the top. I pressed this lot together so that it was soaked, and spread caramel sauce over the top, baked it in the oven and served it with cream whipped with yoghurt and honey, and home made ice cream.
The thing was that after everything else we had eaten nobody wanted emergency pudding as well as the other puddings, and there was loads left, so we had it for lunch and I can tell you it was jolly nice, just the way Christmas pudding absolutely ought to taste and never has. I will be making it again, if you fancy trying it for next Christmas put your fruit in to soak in your cognac now. Not just raisins, make sure you have got plenty of dried pineapple and mango and apricots and nice things. Put it in a large bowl and fill it with rum or cognac or whatever you like the idea of. Cover it with cling film. Top it up and give it a stir in August. Do not tell visiting daughters where it is. It can be your next Christmas present to yourself, how pleased you will be when you find it.
You will not be surprised to discover that after eating that we fell asleep, where we stayed until it was time to go to work.
I took the photograph in the summer. It looks worse than that now because there are more thistles and mud.
I can hardly wait.
