I am not going to write much tonight.
I have not gone to work, but you will be pleased to hear that I am not intoxicated.
In fact I am tired.
I might be a bit intoxicated as well, actually.
After I had taken Lucy back to school yesterday of course I went to work. This was a bit rubbish, because of there being nobody here. Mark went home at midnight, because of going to work this morning, and I stayed out.
I didn’t make very much money.
I might have made a bit more if I hadn’t chucked my last customers out instead of taking them home, but they were so astonishingly rude that even my huge quantities of forbearance were exhausted before they finished not managing to win the jackpot at the cash machine. I waited until I was quite sure that the last taxi in the village had gone past us on its way home, and then I explained to them that my sex life was perfectly adequate, thank you, despite their lurid and inaccurate imaginings to the contrary, and that I was going to go home and get on with it instead of taking them back to Grange Over Sands.
I hope it took them a jolly long time to walk.
Of course I didn’t go home and have a sex life, because of getting up early. I went home and fell instantly asleep, and it was a good job that Mark heard the alarm going off a couple of hours later, because I didn’t.
I got up with him anyway, because it was a terribly cold morning. I made him a hot dinner in a flask and some tea and slices of bannock to take with him in order that he would feel warmed and full of cooking all day. I had intended to go back to bed after that, but of course I didn’t. I have been so busy lately that I have hardly done anything in our poor dusty house, and so I set to polishing things and making everywhere smell nice.
I did two loads of washing in our splendid newly-upgraded washing machine, and cleaned everywhere. I brought the last of the flowers in from the garden and stacked the fireplace full of logs. Then I gritted my teeth and processed the last of the apples.
It wasn’t quite the last of the apples. There were a few left that were squishy and brown, and I just couldn’t be bothered to cut the good bits off them. I put them in the compost.
I made a dozen jars of jam, with blackberries, and another dozen jars of chutney, with garlic and onions and chillis. This takes absolutely ages, and is an awful lot of fiddling about, but Mark likes to eat huge doorsteps of bread in the mornings, and of course we use chutney all the time for picnics. I cut carrots and peppers into slices and make dips out of home made mayonnaise and chilli-apple chutney. This is really nice, and helps explain why I have become so rounded in my old age.
I was just finishing off when Mark came home, and I listened to him telling me about broadband whilst I finished splashing boiling chutney all over my fingers.
It is very odd to be doing things apart. We have done it before, but I can’t say that I like it.
The dogs miss not being able to go with him. They have been sad all day, and Roger Poopy kept going to look out of the back door, just in case.
So far he has been at work for one whole day and two hours yesterday, and already I have got reservations about it.
I am glad that he is enjoying it, and we need the money more badly than I like to think, but it is not quite all right.
I am sure we will work it out.
