I am on the third glass of wine and a second night off.
This is a glorious feeling and I don’t care if it is reckless and idle.
I don’t care anyway because on Tuesday we sat on the taxi rank for eight hours and earned just less than fourteen pounds between us.
This was depressing because on Wednesday morning an invitation popped through the letterbox. It was an offer of tickets to a midsummer ball. A lot of people we know will be attending this. We won’t be going because the tickets were a hundred pounds each, not including champagne. Even the raffle tickets were out of our price range.
Fortunately it is on a Friday night when we will have to be at work so we have pointed out to ourselves that we wouldn’t be able to go anyway. I was sorry about this, because it sounds like a lot more fun than driving a taxi, and if we had won the lottery we would do things like that every single night. Imagine beautiful narrow high heels and sophisticated perfume and shimmering lipstick and a discreet orchestra and wonderfully bubbly champagne and late night sunset and Mark in his dinner jacket instead of his taxi driver’s flat cap.
I had probably better not imagine any of that, since we haven’t won the lottery.
The wonderfully happy side of our financial misfortune is that tonight we might just as well stay at home now with a completely clear conscience.
I have had a brilliant day. I have spent the whole day going through my story and rewriting and editing and thinking and polishing. I have enjoyed this very much indeed.
The sun has shone in, and I have had all of the windows open. I opened the back door and let the cool fresh air breathe the springtime into the house. I lit a scented candle and filled everywhere with perfume and fresh air, and felt gorgeously, gloriously contented with my world.
It has been especially nice because I haven’t had anything else that I needed to do. We had a visitor last night, so we put the dishwasher on instead of washing up, and we hadn’t been to work so there were no pots left over from picnics. I had done all of the washing, and nothing was really dirty enough to need cleaning. We have got a cupboard full of biscuits and cake and sausages and dinners: and I could sit in front of my computer with a completely clear conscience.
This is the best feeling in the world. I like to sit and write more than I like to do absolutely anything else. I drank three enormous pots of fragrant tea and ate some cherry shortbread. After drinking six pints of tea I had to have fairly regular visits to the bathroom, but it didn’t matter because it gave me thinking time in between bits of story.
I am rewriting the final chapter. I am doing this because the ending has happened too quickly, I have changed my mind about it, and also I want to start on a sequel even if nobody wants to buy it yet. It has been the happiest and most absorbing of experiences, and I have been glued to the computer all day.
I was writing much more than that but got completely distracted by endless whitterings on Facebook. Whilst I was pondering those I accidentally drank another two glasses of wine, and now I think I probably need to go to bed.
I am sure you won’t miss anything I have got to say now, because the wine is making things just a touch fuzzy: and in any case I can always say things again tomorrow.
I would just like you to know that I have had a splendid, happy, springtime day, and that life is jolly good.
Until the headache in the morning, that is.
Have a picture of the newly painted lid for the camper van engine. This is the inside. Outside to follow…
