Our return to the taxi rank does not yet seem to have resulted in the vast wealth for which we were hoping.
We have been here for three hours now and so far have not quite made ten pounds between us.
This doesn’t matter much, because we don’t need anything urgently at the moment. I have got to go to get Lucy from school tomorrow, so some fuel money would be nice, and Mark wants to take my car for some tyres, so some tyre money would be nice, but we are well stocked with bread and butter and cheese and similar things, so it is not yet a crisis.
In fact it is quite pleasing really, because it means that we have not been hideously reckless in taking two nights off, quite the contrary, it would appear that we have probably saved money because of not sitting about on the taxi rank with the engines running to keep warm. This makes me feel as though in fact our little holiday has been a very prudent thing to have done. How jolly sensible of us.
Mark took the dogs and my taxi off to the farm today and I cleaned the house. We must have been Mr and Mrs Dust Adventure, because somehow the house seemed to be thick with it, wisps of grey fluff and dog hair all over everything. I had to empty the hoover when I had only got halfway round our bedroom, and then again when I had finished. I was not proud of myself, I can tell you. The bathroom was worse, because of dreadful things like spat out toothpaste and hair-encrusted soap splashed all over the dust.
My office may have been the most horrid of the lot. The dogs sleep underneath the desk if I am writing anything whilst they are in residence, and so under the desk was a greasy sort of nest of dog hair, whilst on top of the desk was an inky jumble of fountain pens and notes reminding me which agents I have pestered with my story. I have not heard anything about this yet, don’t worry, I will let you know the very second that I do. There was a rude letter from the Inland Revenue, and some receipts from Autoparts and an invitation to an expensive ball that we can’t afford to attend even if either of us could dance, and a lot more dust. All of this lot was liberally sprinkled with shortbread crumbs and spilt tea.
I cleaned it all. I changed sheets and scrubbed and polished and hoovered and washed absolutely everything. I cleaned windows and mirrors and corners and opened all of the windows. This turned out to have been a good idea anyway, because it drew my attention to the torrential rain that was slowly drenching the washing that I had optimistically pegged in the garden.
When I had done I made a sausagemeat risotto. This is not really a thing. It is what you make when you look in your fridge and freezer, and discover that you have got sausagemeat and rice and a couple of limp vegetables, and it turned out to be perfectly all right, probably because of the liberal splashing of red wine and garlic, which we have always, always got in stock. We had some for our picnic tonight, and I was entirely satisfied with the result, so if you ever finish up in such an emergency, I assure you that it can be done.
I finished just as Mark walked in through the door with the dogs. This negated the results a bit, because Mark was covered in oil and it had been muddy at the farm, but it didn’t matter because the house is still clean and fresh in my head. There are fresh daffodils everywhere, and scented candles in the bathroom and the only dust left is in places like under the bed where nobody goes anyway.
Have a picture of the blossom just starting to come out at the entrance to the library.
LATER NOTE: We did make just enough for tyres and fuel in the end. Hurrah.
