This is likely to be a two-part composition.
We have invited friends for dinner this evening, and I have started writing in the little window of time after my shower and before they arrive, because I think it is very difficult to write things after a couple of bottles of French red. I have to try and read it back very carefully because of spelling mistakes, also there is the problem that when I am drunk I tend to be terribly indiscreet. This is all right when you are talking to other drunk people, but not at all all right when you are writing things that people are going to read, soberly, over their breakfast.
Anyway, I have started writing now, and when they get here I shall stop writing, which is polite, and then finish it when they have gone.
Of course having visitors always involves a lot more faffing about than you ever expect. I invited them in a joyous moment the other night, and have been looking forward to it very much. I wasn’t at all sure what to cook, because at first I thought I might just whisk something up in a jiffy and then go to the farm to paint more flowers on the camper van. Obviously when I thought about it over coffee this morning it was clear to both of us that I am not a whisking things up in a jiffy sort of person, I am an endlessly messing about and spilling things sort of person. In consequence I didn’t go to the farm at all today, Mark went off with the dogs, which was a relief, and I stayed at home to cook.
I had a very contented day pottering around the kitchen. I put a Radio Four play about Ruth Ellis on my computer that I missed when it was on the actual radio the other day, which was a happy event, not the play, obviously, which was grim and scary: but having something interesting to listen to.
I like cooking. I cooked a Turkish thing with lamb and eggs and cheese, and a chocolate-and-brandy-cake, and I made some bread rolls.
I was very pleased indeed with the bread rolls, because I made them by following the instructions on the bread maker. It turns out to be the sort of machine on which you have got to follow the instructions to the letter or things don’t work, as I have discovered to my cost. The bread maker doesn’t actually make bread rolls, but it does take them as far as the last rising stage, then you get the dough out and make it into rolls and put it to rise next to the fire. It was a bit difficult to manage this, because of having all of the washing draped about over the fire, but I did manage it, and the bread rolls were perfect, nicely risen and the sort of shade of brown that makes you feel hungry instead of the sort of brown that makes you feel disappointed and grumpy.
Of course I made far too much. Mark said that it doesn’t matter, and we will eat things in the taxis over the weekend, so it will be fine.
This is part two of the two-part composition.
I am very intoxicated indeed.
I have had the very loveliest time possible.
Our friends are so very nice, it has made me so happy. They are warm and kind and interested and interesting and friendly and also they brought lots of wine with them, and we drank all of it.
Goodness me I am drunk.
I am not going to be very welll tomorrow.
I am going to go to bedd now and I will worry about tomorrow in the morning.
What a beautiful world it is.
xxxxxx
