We had a false start to the day when Roger the Poopy thought that he might like to visit the garden at half past seven this morning.
It turned out that Mark was still asleep and accidentally made coffee without thinking to check what time it was: so we drank it and went back to sleep until the far more civilised hour of half past ten. Even that is a bit early when you know perfectly well that it is an awfully long time away until the last reveller has been chucked out of the last nightclub to stumble into the last waiting taxi.
All the same we got up and went through the whole routine of dog-emptying and laundry, and I must tell you that we were feeling somewhat disorientated and out of sorts.
The season has begun to change, and it feels like it. Summer is slipping inexorably into Autumn, like most of the Cumbrian landscape into the rivers in the present weather: and the dreadful thing is that we are feeling uncomfortably as though we have simply not managed to achieve very much with it.
Usually I like the onset of Autumn, it has a harvesty feeling to it, everything being safely gathered in, and so on: but this year somehow it has appeared before I am ready for it.
When we considered the matter we thought that probably we had not at all managed to hit our chosen targets for the summer.
We have not managed to have thrilling holidays, nor earn a fortune, nor have family days out and Bonding Time with the children. We haven’t finished the camper van, nor scrubbed the upstairs carpets, nor done anything at all in the smallest bit to the allotment. We have become rotund and unfit due to spending too much time sitting in taxis and not enough time thrashing up and down the swimming pool. In short, there are an awful lot of things that we Have Not Done, and we felt cross with ourselves.
We thought that it was probably due to lack of organisation rather than lack of effort. We seem to have been fully occupied for every waking minute, although on reflection we couldn’t recollect at all exactly with what we had been quite so busily occupied all summer.
In any case we resolved to right the problem straight away. We spent the trip round the Library Gardens and the second coffee planning how we might reorganise our lives into greater productivity, after which Mark went outside and productively cleaned the cars and I went into the village and productively posted some letters.
I encouraged myself into further productivity by putting my computer on and listening to all of the thrilling episodes of The Archers that I have missed this week. This got all of the children’s newly-washed bedclothes ironed, most of the picnic made and the fridge cleaned out.
I felt very pleased with myself indeed, although was obliged to apologise afterwards to the rest of the household who had occasionally interrupted to be friendly or helpful and at whom I had growled discouragingly. The dog does this with the poopy when it gets a bit boisterous, and this afternoon I knew exactly how he felt.
It felt very strange to be going off to work without feeding children, and indeed we managed to be rather earlier than usual, possibly because of all the productivity awareness. In fact as it turned out it didn’t matter, because it was raining fit to wash away the sins of the world, and nobody was going anywhere at all: so we sat on the taxi rank and unproductively drank tea.
We are going to do better. On Monday we are going to go back to the camper van and make a new start on doing camper van things. Life is so very much nicer when we have got the camper van. I miss it terribly. Part of feeling that the summer has vanished is because of not having the camper to potter about in whenever we have got a bit of free time.
We will finish the camper. We will scrub the carpets. We will make a fortune. We will become streamlined and fit instead of portly and idle. All of these things are possible if only we are sensible and self-disciplined and organised.
Call it a late New Year Resolution.
I didn’t have a photograph, so I have added one of me and Number Two Daughter being unproductive in Blackpool.
