We were sitting contentedly in bed having an idle cup of coffee this morning, when we realised that there were two young people coming up the garden path to the front door.
One of them had got an ear ring situated in the middle of her face, so we thought it was fairly safe to assume that they weren’t the bailiffs or people come to investigate the destination of our eternal souls.
I opened the door in my dressing gown.
It was Number Two Daughter’s girlfriend who was on holiday from Canada, and another friend. They were on a trip to the Lake District, and had popped round to bring us some maple syrup sent by Number Two Daughter as a present.
Of course we were very pleased indeed. Lucy was at work, so we dispatched them downstairs with Oliver for company and got dressed hastily. It is never easy to explain to complete strangers why you are still in bed at eleven o’ clock on a Monday morning, so on the whole we don’t bother and just let people think that we are degenerates.
We had more coffee and a very cheerful hour, whilst they told us young person stories, and we told them all about our philosophy of life and showed them some pictures of the camper van. They were very polite about these.
When they had gone we thought how very brave they had been. We have not met Number Two Daughter’s girlfriend before, and we thought that it takes some jolly splendid courage just to bound up to some strange foreigners and introduce yourself. We liked them both very much, and wished that instead of dropping in for an hour, they had had time to spend an evening and a couple of bottles of wine. They both promised that they would do this next time, and I do hope that they remember, it was a happy start to the day.
After that we pegged the several basket loads of washing still left from yesterday on to the line and went to the farm.
I have been dying to do this for days, because of the half finished octopus which has been playing on my mind.
Mark had got to get on with resolving his brake issue. I am not really sure what this has been about, except that it has involved a lot of hammering and grinding and some resigned grumbling. I have contributed encouraging noises, which may have helped.
I was very pleased indeed to get back to the octopus. It is red and yellow, because octopuses really do go this colour.
I know about calling them octopi, but think I like the incorrect version better.
It is quite hard to do. I am struggling to fit all of its arms in, and there is a vent across the middle of the bonnet which gets in the way. I have just painted over this anyway.
Oliver thought he would like it to look like him, but that was a bit of a tall order, so I compromised by giving it wiggling eyebrows, which is Oliver’s chief life achievement so far. I have painted it looking at a better looking octopus in a mirror.
It was tiresome to paint because I had to keep waiting for bits to dry before I could paint the next layer over the top. On the rest of the van I have just got on with painting something else whilst I have waited for things drying, but I have only got the doors left to do, and I haven’t yet decided what I want to paint on them.
I didn’t finish it. We were suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness and went back home for another sleep before work.
There was a text from Number Two Daughter appreciating us being less embarrassing than usual, which was a nice compliment. We thanked her for the maple syrup, which we like very much.
It is the last night of the weekend. We are not going to work tomorrow night. We are going to go and have dinner with our friend Twiglet from across the road.
Also we are going to sleep for just as long as we like.
I am really looking forward to that.
