The lady in the garage last night asked me about my perfume.
She said I always smelled like summer coming in, which made me feel very cheerful. I explained about it being the lovely Penhaligon’s bluebell perfume, and that you can get it at the designer outlet in York.
She was very pleased, because she said that as it happened she was going to York next week, so she would be sure and look for some, and I went away feeling very happy about life, how splendid to smell of summer. Of course once you have been wearing a perfume for a while you don’t really smell it any more, so it is ace to know that it stays on and is still there later on in the evening for the garage lady to notice. I was pleased because secretly I am always a bit worried in case I smell like smoked fish sandwiches and dogs.
On the subject of personal appearance and sandwiches I think that I might be getting a bit fatter.
In fact I don’t mind about this at all, because I can never see any difference at all when I look in the mirror: but if I am fatter I find that my trousers stay up better. This is very handy, and it is this clue which is making me believe that I might have had a small increase in portliness: it is either that or the slightly hotter setting on the washing machine is making my trousers shrink. My personal suspicions are directed at the fudge, I have made an excellent double batch this week, with peanut butter and cream which has turned out very nicely indeed, but which is not the stuff of which slim waistlines are fashioned.
I have had a very lovely day. Mark buzzed off to take the taxi in for its MOT which it failed because of a ball joint. He called in at Autoparts to buy another one on his way home and is fitting it as I write, which is all right, because it is very quiet on the taxi rank tonight.
Anyway, whilst he was out I had a very nice time planting the last of the lupins and poppies into their forever home in the flowerbed, and redoing the hanging baskets.
It was made extra nice because a couple of weeks ago we discovered that we had collected some things called Nectar Points which we get when we buy diesel for the taxis. We had got so many that we could have a ten pounds voucher for eBay, so I spent it.
I spent it on a brilliant double CD called The Sherman Brothers’ Songbook, which made Mark laugh a very great deal when he saw it.
For those who don’t know, the Sherman Brothers are ace songwriters who wrote for Disney for a while, but wrote lots of other things as well. The nice thing about having no taste whatsoever is that I can like exactly what I want, and I absolutely love their music. They wrote lots of fantastic songs that I like very much, and the CD had got sixty of them.
As well as their own songs the CD had lots of the songs that everybody knows from the films. There was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and The Ugly Bug Ball, and A Spoonful Of Sugar, and lots more.
Some of them are gorgeous melodies, there is one from The Jungle Book, the little girl sings it, all about when she is grown up: and of course there is the lovely Feed The Birds.
I had the happiest afternoon, planting things and dancing in the garden. When Mark called back home he joined me, and we waltzed around the lawn for a while until he had got to go and finish mending the car, and I had to get ready for work.
The garden is looking lovely, it keeps raining on and off, and everything is damp, and newly green, and heavy-scented, smelling of earth and blossom and springtime, it is such a joy to stand there and drink in the colours after the dreary mud of winter.
After the garden I went to work, and it rained, which I didn’t mind in the least because it has been such a lovely sunny day, and a thoroughly wet night is exactly what the newly-planted things need.
It isn’t bad for taxi drivers either.
