Nobody in the whole household stirred until noon today. I like having children who appreciate a nocturnal way of life.
In the end Mark extricated the dogs from Lucy’s bed and went downstairs to chuck them out into the garden whilst he made coffee.
Oliver appeared, yawning and sleepy, and said that he couldn’t wait for me to get my life together enough to make breakfast so he was going to get some crisps. Lucy did not appear at all until much later, at around three, when we were heading out to work.
We made the dreadful discovery that Mark has worn a hole in the elbow of his favourite tweed jacket. This is not at all something that can be neglected, so I insisted that he wore something else for a change, and brought it down to the taxi rank with me when we came to work. I patched it as well as I could with some corduroy that I had dug out from my sewing cupboard, but it is not anything like as good as new any more.
It is tiresome, because I am going to have to put a patch on the other elbow as well, so that the sleeves match one another even if they don’t look like the rest of the jacket any more, and even though that one hasn’t got a hole yet.
Worse than that, we know really that we are going to have to buy Mark a new jacket. Even the most relaxed of aristocrats does not turn up to school events in a patched jacket, especially one patched with leftover skirt material by an incompetent wife in a dark taxi. It is not going to be good news for the economy drive, I can tell you. It is good to have some scruffy clothes that can be worn for gardening, and indeed we have got lots: but even we know that you should not wear them to turn up to the theatre.
It has been a bit of a tiresome night, actually, I had to be rescued by Mark halfway through the evening, when I got an unexpected flat tyre. I had customers in with me, and so when Mark turned up I left him taking the wheel off and just loaded them all into his taxi and we carried on.
This was jolly brave of him, because it was terribly, bitterly cold, and just the few minutes I spent standing watching him when I got back left me chilled to the core. Fortunately I had been mending his jacket, so I wrapped that round my shoulders and made some encouraging noises, and we took the wheel across to the garage to get it blown up. It is leaking a bit around the rim, and I should have put some air in it last week, which I probably would have done if I hadn’t been married.
Once we were on the road again we returned to the taxi rank to drink tea and warm up a bit. We looked at jackets for sale on the computer. This is not a good thing to be doing on a quiet Sunday night, because the very fact of having a quiet hour to spare to do the looking is in itself evidence that we are probably not going to be able to afford one for some time.
It is late now, and we are still on the taxi rank, sitting peacefully watching the world make its way to bed. There is a covering of frost over everything, bright and deathly in the moonlight, and I shall be glad to be back home in the warm glow of the fire.
Even with all our jacket-related troubles I am still feeling very contented with the world.
I am quite sure that we will sort it out.
