I have been standing on the taxi rank with Mark, drinking Earl Grey tea, and chatting.
It occurred to me that in my distant youth I would have thought this a very exciting way to spend an evening.
I think perhaps I still do, it is very splendid to be outdoors at night, in the yellow street lighting, watching the world wagging past. Especially it is nice to have a cup of tea and a contented feeling. I would much rather be me, in my warm woolly hat and soft scarf, with my cup of tea, than I would like to be one of the over-excited squeaky girls who keep walking past me.
There are lots of them about tonight, tottering inexpertly about in heels which make their legs look long and beautiful but which they have got to take off before the end of the night and walk home barefoot because of the excruciating pain. Also not one of them appears to be wearing a vest or some warm socks. I am wearing both, it is lovely to be old.
In between standing about looking at things I have resumed knitting. I am making a tea cosy as a present for my instalment teapot when it arrives, which it won’t do for a while because of the instalments. However in the spirit of being prepared I have found a tea-cosy knitting pattern which has turned out to be more difficult than it looked, and I bought some wool in Age Concern this morning which has turned out not to be enough, so now I am going to have to look on the wonderful Internet for the product number and order some more.
In fact we felt a very great deal recovered today when we got up.
The sun was shining, and the world was a happy place. We took the dogs to be emptied in the Library Gardens and told Roger Poopy how very pleased we are that he has finally comprehended that this is The Emptying Place.
For somebody who is after all only four months old he does not do badly really, but he has got no self control whatsoever. He usually reaches bursting point at about four hours after we feed him, so we have to do careful calculations when we are going out to work and then feed him accordingly. If we get it wrong then he will have an accident. We know he has had an accident when we get home even if we have not found it, because he is hiding guiltily under the coffee table and looking sad.
When the dogs were thoroughly empty we went into the village to buy wool and then got ourselves ready for work, and by three o’clock we were sitting on the taxi rank, which I didn’t mind at all because of having a good book and some new knitting to do.
People keep getting into the taxi and asking what I am knitting, and then looking blank and a bit shifty when I say that it is a tea cosy. It is possible that some of the younger generation do not know what one is. It would have surprised my younger self very much to learn that one day I would become a person who was excited about knitting a tea cosy.
I have been so busy knitting that I have left the writing of this until very late, and it is now very late indeed. It is so late that I have become too sleepy to write any more.
I think I shall see if I can nod off without anybody noticing.
