I discovered this morning that Lucy reads these pages occasionally, but only if she looks at the title and thinks that it sounds interesting.
It is lovely having her home, not least because the dogs have completely disappeared from our lives and into her bedroom, where they are spending their entire days waiting adoringly for any small token of favour that might drop from her fingers. We can barely entice them out to the Library Gardens to be emptied. They are her devoted slaves, possibly, we thought this morning, because she is a puppy herself in her soul, just one who unfortunately happens to have GCSEs to do.
We have not seen Number Two Daughter at all today. She has been in a cross-fit competition, and sloped off out into the dawn this morning with her friend Jade before we surfaced.
We have been breathless with excitement in her behalf all day, and she has kept us updated by phone at intervals. In the end she has done rather well. She has only been doing cross fit for three months, and in that time she has risen to be just outside the top half of the contestants.
We were very impressed, and not a little surprised, cross fit is a difficult sport which tends to be practised by barking obsessives, and to have got so far in such a short time is a jolly good effort. It is certainly far more effort than I have ever put into getting fit. This is why she can now lift heavy weights and run to the shops and do press ups, and I can’t.
In between anxious sporting live updates we have spent the rest of the day doing our usual Saturday thing of getting ready for work.
It wasn’t quite as concentrated as normal, because I had got the exciting new dresser to faff about with. I didn’t want to go to work at all, because of there being so many exciting things to do at home, who ever would want to go to work when they could fold napkins into smooth white piles in new drawers?
Of course I didn’t have time to do any of the things that I really wanted to do, although I thought about them a lot, and planned them in my head. I have quite decided what is going to go in the end drawer, and probably the middle one as well, but am not quite certain what would be the best thing to do with the third drawer, whether it should be for tea towels or cutlery. It is so very nice to have important issues to occupy my musings.
I love this time of the year, love it I think best of all, except maybe Christmas or possibly bluebell time, or the hottest midsummers. It is so exciting to feel the dark evenings creeping in, to smell the rich ochre scents of the steadily falling leaves.
I abstracted the two pound coin collection this morning whilst Mark was busy mending the saving-up box. It isn’t all that long since the last time I raided it, so there wasn’t very much, but there was enough to dive into the florist’s shop across the road. I like the florist. She is clear-eyed and laughs easily, and has the amazing gift of being able to make even a handful of mossy sticks look magically lovely.
She helped me choose, and I bought an armful of glorious heavy blooming flowers in the richest of colours, vivid orange, and flame colour, and dark, dark red.
Mark brought some greenery when he came back from the farm, and I filled all of our vases. There were some leafy branches left, so I twisted sprigs of green around the solid orange pumpkins that I have plonked seasonably in corners. Maybe by next year we will have grown our own pumpkins if only we can stop being so disorganised about the allotment.
There are so many ace things to be done with life. It is a good job I have got to go to work or I would be so busy doing interesting things that I would never have time to write this.
Dear Lucy, I know this is a bit of a dull read, and much resembles Jane Austen’s work in that neither of us have written much about vampires or sex.
My experience of vampires is a bit limited. As far as the latter goes, you might console yourself with the thought that there are worse things than being bored.
Kindly get on with your prep and stop wasting time.
Love, Mum xxxxx
