Dear diary readers,
I regret to say that this really is going to be a condensed entry today.
This is because it is two o’clock in the morning of tomorrow and unfortunately I have had a very great deal to drink.
It is only unfortunate because of its effect on my literary abilities, the actual drinking has been the best fun in the world and I have had a magnificent evening.
However you have not opened these pages to read drunken ramblings and so I shall do my best to be coherent. I shall have to be quickly coherent, because I am absolutely longing to go to bed, it has been a very happy evening.
We worked really late last night, almost until everybody else was getting up, certainly after the milkman had made a start on his day. It is very tiresome to be a late night taxi in a hurry getting stuck behind a milk float.
In consequence you were very probably having your lunch by the time we got out of bed, indeed, if you have your lunch at twelve noon you had probably finished your lunch and were wishing you had time for a little sleep like the French do.
We got up about then, and Mark went off to the farm to haul logs and I stayed here to wash things and tidy things, and visit the bank and do other domestic things.
It was all very unhurried and peaceable because we had been invited out this evening.
Not having to go to work meant that we had no picnic to be organised and no need to dash about. I hung washing up and tidied things up and spent half an hour booking Lucy on to a course that she has been going on about. It is in February next year and is about learning how to be a merchant banker.
Number One Daughter says that if she gets a low cut top and a short skirt she will probably do fine without spending a hundred and twenty quid on a course, and I imagine that she is right, but since we are relying on the children to be our pension plan it is important that we take all steps to ensure their success, and so we are covering all of the bases, I have booked the course and also asked Number One Daughter to organise the skirt and low neck top for Christmas.
Not going to work was the most glorious luxury. We showered and put on some comfortable clothes and emptied the dogs and then walked down to our friends’ house.
We don’t do much walking and so I had terribly overestimated the time that it would take to get there, obviously a mile walk is going to take at least two hours.
We know now that it doesn’t, and so we were embarrassingly early. Our friends were very polite about this, despite still dashing about trying to get dressed, and they were of the gorgeous sort of friends who just fill up glasses and sit back and laugh, so after a few minutes we stopped feeling embarrassed and started feeling light headed and happy.
We had the nicest, nicest time. They had cooked an assortment of roast vegetables and venison in the richest of sauces, the smell flooded over us as we walked through the door.
We ate until we felt mildly unwell, it was so savoury and good that I could have carried on eating for most of the evening, but this is neither polite nor good for me, especially since I have already discovered my winter clothes to have unaccountably shrunk since last year.
We sat at their fireside and shared stories.
There is no happiness like good food and good company. These friends are warm and sensible and kindly. We were humbled by the massive effort they had made to organise our evening together, and I am going to bed tired and more contented with the world than I can tell you about. We are so fortunate to know such generous people, it was the loveliest, warmest of evenings.
We walked home in the snow. I took a picture of it to show you.
It is a beautiful world.
