A short post because I am mildly intoxicated and very overheated.
It is almost midnight and we are waiting for a thunderstorm. The world is dark, and still, and very hot. We have got all doors and windows open and not a breath of air is stirring.
I think this is wonderful. I would be perfectly happy to spend our whole lives like this.
Nothing is moving. There are no voices, no traffic, no birds.
We have just taken the dogs out around the Library Gardens for their last empty before bed, and the air is dense with scent. It almost feels thick to move through it, as if the air is sticking to you just the tiniest bit.
We have had a small party this evening. Mark’s sister and her family came over for a slightly belated birthday celebration. I felt a bit guilty about this because I promised Oliver that we do not do exciting things when he is not here, but he will not be back for ages so I will have to just learn to live with my conscience: and it was a lovely, giggly, slightly tipsy night. I am trouser-loosening full, and just a bit more drunk than I ought to be.
We drank cocktails in the garden, made with champagne and cassis, because you are not fifty every day, and ordered absolutely everything that we could think of from the Chinese takeaway shop up the road. The owner is lovely and friendly, and sometimes we meet them at four in the morning, also emptying their dog in the Library Gardens, at the end of a night at work.
Lucy had declined our invitation to join us, but when her cousins unexpectedly turned up as well she changed her mind, and so it was a full house and we had to bring out the emergency chairs from the loft. These are there because they are the most rubbish ones, the sort that make you mildly anxious when you fidget, but they still worked all right and nobody went crashing to the ground, so it was fine.
Not cooking dinner when you have got visitors is absolutely brilliant, because you can relax and drink too much without realising too late that you have forgotten about the potatoes or run out of butter. Also there is loads left over and so we can have sweet and sour pork for breakfast if we like. We do not usually have sweet and sour pork for breakfast and so this will make tomorrow interesting as well, a sort of prolonged birthday.
The dogs are lying contentedly at my feet now, stuffed with rib bones and leftover rice.
Apart from that we have spent our day at the farm.
I am very happy to tell you that Mark has finally built the Guilty Conscience Wall, which is a relief. I should have helped, but he said that it would be all right if I just carried on painting so that things would be happening to the camper van as well, and I allowed myself to believe that he meant it. He was very hot when he had finished, but it is done, and we don’t need to change the subject whenever it gets perilously close to anything related to stones any more. It is true that virtue is its own reward.
I admired the wall very much indeed when he had done it, so I suppose I have contributed something.
My painting is at the top.
