Mark’s tiresome dog is starting to come into season.
Normally this would be very good news. We have been hoping very much that the two dogs would fall in love and become parents together, and so far they have been entirely unsuccessful in this endeavour, at least as far as the latter is concerned. However, they are falling in love at the moment, rather enthusiastically.
You may remember that we are having some visitors for dinner next week, whom we have not met before, and who we would very much like to believe that we are civilised human beings.
I invite you to consider the conversation-halting potential of two small, scruffy, but entirely enthusiastic canines, both of whom have got walking difficulties, suddenly deciding to consummate their relationship whilst I am trying to be middle class over the shepherd’s pie.
Just to make matters worse any congress is likely to be clumsy and somewhat impeded by the problem that they have only got six fully-functioning legs between them, and therefore unlikely to be discreet and private.
Mark has suggested that we give Number Two Daughter a fiver to take them to the pictures for the night, or something, in order not to put anybody off their shepherd’s pie. I am feeling downhearted about the whole affair, we are going to have to give our guests an awful lot of French red if we don’t want them to notice the dogs shagging under the table.
I wonder if this ever happens to the Queen.
However having guests is a long way in the future at the moment. Right now it is still this weekend and I am at work raising the funds for the mortgage.
We worked very late last night. Mark had an entertaining episode when he took a gentleman and his wife back to an hotel in Windermere. When they got to the hotel the wife got out but the husband hung about arguing about paying the fare, so Mark promptly set off again and returned him to the place where he had found him in the first place, much to the chap’s astonishment. Mark does not like people who think that it is all right to be rude and shouty in a taxi.
I had a fairly peaceful night apart from the usual collection of tiresomely inebriated people, there was one group of over-excited young men who suggested that I returned to their house with them where they described fairly graphically the things they would teach me to do.
I explained that I have not got to fifty years old without having some exciting adventures, and with respect, thought it unlikely that gentlemen of such relative inexperience would be able to teach me anything of any interest whatsoever, now would they please pay up and get out? which they did. One of them waved goodbye to me as I drove off with a bit of him that wasn’t his hand, which made me laugh.
We slept late this morning and started the day with coffee at around twelve: which didn’t give us very much time for doing interesting things before we had to get our act together and go to work.
I used the bit of time we had to make laundry soap, which turned out perfectly. This was a relief, the last lot went wrong because I got distracted and failed to pay proper attention during the mixing process. This lot is beautiful, creamy and thick and soft, just right for making clothes smell and feel nice, and I was pleased with it for a pre-work achievement.
Mark brought the logs in and glued a bit of the worktop that has got chipped, and then we made our picnic. I took a photograph of the soap to show you, but am having real difficulties with uploading photographs on to this at the moment. They show on the rough drafts of the text but not on Facebook or on mobile versions of the site. I have not got the first idea what the problem is.
I phoned the host to try and sort it out the other night, but that was a bit of a disaster because of people wanting to get in the taxi. My call was going through to a call centre, and I kept having to give up and go to the back of the telephone queueing system and then start explaining all over again to some politely uncomprehending Indian. In the end I thought I would try from the house phone on Monday, so maybe with any luck we will be back to an illustrated diary by then.
See you on Monday.
