The things we do

Today was the very splendid day set aside for doing as we pleased.

That wasn’t really all that different from any other day, because mostly we do what we like anyway. Today we did what we liked but in a clean house, which was lovely.

Once we had emptied the dogs we went into the garden to cut back all the dead sticks left behind in it after last summer’s vegetation riot. The grape vine was the worst. I can’t now remember what we were doing last summer, but quite clearly it wasn’t taking care of the garden. The grape vine had grown out all over the place, reaching its tendrils into every corner and tenderly throttling all of the little plants.

We hacked it back savagely, until it was bare and defenceless against the wall. We cut back the rose and the lavender and the mint-sticks, and the eight foot tall monster which had been the fennel last year.

When we had finished the garden was startlingly lighter, and we could see dozens of new little green shoots starting to poke their way up through the soil. This was splendidly exciting, sudden assurance that the world has not given up. The sun is coming back, even to the Lake District.

When we went back indoors there were various tiresome things that needed doing, like washing up and hand washing and feeding Mark. Mark needs feeding with monotonous regularity, otherwise he just grinds to a halt, like a clockwork toy that has run round in circles until the key falls out. We fed him, and tidied up, and then at last our day was our own.

I kidnapped the teapot and went rushing upstairs. Mark covered the table with the various bits and pieces he is using to make a solar panel. There is a lot of peculiar flat wire involved. We know that it works because he showed me with a flat bit called a cell. He put a little machine on it and showed me how the numbers changed when the light was on. He said that the cell made a quarter of a volt in the kitchen.

I knew I should be impressed, so of course I was, because I do think it is all very clever even though I don’t exactly know what he is doing. I left him to get on with it and went to write my book, which is being very difficult today.

I have got to a bit where I have got to choose what happens next. I have got several endings that I might choose and they are all perfectly possible, only I don’t know which one is my favourite.

I have got to decide before I finish writing this chapter.

This is not at all easy, because sometimes I think I like one idea, and then sometimes I think I would prefer something else. Life and death is in my hands.

I sat in front of the computer and wrote a bit, then deleted it and then wrote it again. I did this a lot of times.

I got very stuck with one bit because the thing that my characters obviously want to do is not at all the thing that I want them to do, and we are not pleased with one another. So far I have left them doing it but I am going to have to have some serious words with them, or about them, however it happens.

I was relieved when it was time to go to work.
Whilst writing this I had a message from Number One Daughter who has been having photographs taken. They are going to be put on Army posters to persuade girls that it is not only boys who can be turned into terrifying slabs of muscle. I am very impressed indeed with this and hence have attached one of the  photographs to this entry to show you. Next time you happen to pop by your local Army careers office do have a look. Well, not next time, obviously, because it is the Army and it will take them ages to get the photos printed and then put on paper and then stuck on the walls.

In a year or two, maybe.