I did not die.
I wasn’t even unwell.
Actually, apart from some faint rumblings of indigestion I was perfectly all right.
I had not expected this. Further more, I started the day with the rather disconcerting experience of glancing over these pages to discover that I had no recollection of writing a single word of last night’s entry.
It was like being one of my own readers. I was mildly amused by myself whilst being vaguely irritated by my incompetence.
When we looked at the debris this morning I was astonished to think how very drunk we had actually been. Three and a half empty wine bottles between four people can hardly be considered incorrigible toperism: but I had been so completely intoxicated that I could barely climb the stairs, and Mark had been no better. We had tidied up and emptied the dogs and written these pages, and yet remembered almost none of it.
I suppose it might be age related. This might be the source of greater wealth in the elderly, that after a couple of small sherries they are able to party like buffoons and have a rip-roaring time at very little cost to themselves. I do hope so. If this turns out to be the case I am going to have a very happy retirement.
We got up early, and Mark went off to work leaving me in charge of the household, which at that time in the morning consisted of the dogs, because none of the children tend to stir until around lunchtime.
This was not the best start to the day. I am beginning to think that I may not be an animal lover.
I came to this conclusion some time after they had all clowned their way around the Library Gardens, barking at children going to school and chasing squirrels. This insight occurred to me whilst scrubbing dog vomit out of the doormat.
Before anybody gets self righteous about dogs who are ill because they have eaten chocolate, which everybody knows should not be given to dogs, let me say two things. First, I have not given them chocolate, they are all accomplished thieves. Second, there was no chocolate in the vomit. It was made up almost entirely of Oliver’s prize conkers, once treasured, and now stolen and devoured and regurgitated into the carpet.
I do not know which dog did it. There are several suspects. Curiously enough, I have exactly the same list of suspects in the frame for the muddy paw prints all over the clean white sheets on our bed.
Also I have been trying to pack for our Manchester trip next week. The suitcases are in the office, which is the only place I have got room for them, and I have spent much of my morning making purposeful trips between the office and everybody’s bedroom and the loft, laden with armfuls of clothes, and muttering anxiously to myself.
To my irritation, on several of these trips I have returned to an open suitcase, neatly laid with all our best polished clothes, to find a hairy dog blissfully snoring on the top of them. I didn’t get really cross about this until I caught Roger Poopy crunching up his bone in one. That was not his finest hour.
I have got myself into a flappy and hopeless tizz about it all. There are clothes and swimming costumes and different flavours of aftershave lying about all over the place. I had one terrible year when I forgot to pack any clean underpants for Mark. In consequence of this disaster, I remembered so many times today that I needed to pack underpants that when I checked at the end I realised I had put twelve pairs in this year’s suitcase, so he will be all right even if he gets dysentery.
I do not really think he will get dysentery. I might take some out.
I will be very pleased to be going away. Quite apart from anything else it will mean that I do not need to worry any more about packing, tidying up, or dogs.
It is going to be brilliant.
