I have hardly done anything at all worth telling you about.
It is Saturday, in the middle of the summer, and so it is prime working-and-sleeping time. There has been no day left for anything else.
We were still having a sleepy cup of coffee in bed when Lucy came home from work at lunchtime. She was supercilious about this, in the manner of a person who has been up since seven, which was just after we went to bed, in fact.
We listened to her stories about work until she had to go back. There is a young man there occasionally who is the son of the owner, a year or so older than Lucy, and we wondered if she might condescend to like him.
In fact nothing could have turned out to be less likely. He is the first teenage boy of her acquaintance, and she is horrified by the species. They are, it appears, gawky and devoid of sensible intelligent conversation, and they get under the feet of females who are trying to get on with their day and achieve things.
She had some coffee and bravely went back to work to put up with him for a bit longer.
It was raining, warm, splashy summer rain, the sort that makes it difficult to get in and out of our garden, because everything becomes so wet and heavy that it sprawls out across the path. To get out we have got to push past the drooping lavender and fennel and tansy and bay, all of which smell fresh and glorious, but leave us soaked in seconds.
We got things ready for our own work this evening. Then we put on our wide brimmed hats and wax coats, and paddled around the Library Gardens with the dogs for a while. We went to the Co-op for waffles and pizzas, and then since Oliver was fully occupied shooting zombies with Harry, we fed them and then went back to bed.
Obviously we would have liked to go to the farm and do exciting camper van things, but it is weekend, and we had got to be at work by teatime, so there wasn’t time. Also we are not getting any younger, and had got to the stage where all conversations were being punctuated by yawning. This does not look good with customers in taxis. Nobody likes it when the driver starts to nod off at sixty miles an hour.
When Lucy came back from work in the evening we were just getting up for a second time.
She was not impressed.
We fed them all again and then went to work.
It is still raining, and we are busy. In between being busy with customers we are wiping steamed-up windows and trying to mop up the seats. Mark is reading my book about being a feminist and I am writing to you.
It has been a short and unremarkable day, but a contented one.
The picture is a blackbird in our garden who was catching worms to feed her young. She was calling to them with that piping cry that blackbirds use to their babies, reassuring them that she was still close by and looking after them.
It was a bit dreadful really, because the worms in her beak were still wriggling, pathetic little captives waiting to be eaten.
Sometimes it is a hard world.
