I am on the taxi rank trying to earn some money.
I am having some sporadic success with this, by which I mean that I have had one decent run, a couple of rubbish runs, and long periods of sitting around drinking tea and reading my book.
I should have started writing this ages ago, because time has marched on and I really like the idea of going home a bit sooner than usual tonight. The idea of a glass of wine and an early shower is very appealing indeed, mostly because we got up far sooner than we should have done. It has been the first day for ages that Mark did not need to go to work either at his non-paying broadband job, or in his taxi, and we wanted to do things with the day.
I am not at all keen on this morning arrangement, I don’t see how it has managed to catch on at all, why on earth do so many people do it?
Lunchtime is a good time to get up.
We couldn’t stay in bed until lunchtime today, because we had got lots to do. Now that Mark is working somewhere else all day, he hasn’t had any daylight time to do any of his usual things. I have been a virtuous Lake District Housewife, and have been bringing the logs in to the house and looking after the fire, but he has been worrying about the timber stacked over at our field.
This will not be any use for ages yet, wood has to dry for at least a year before it is any good for burning. The wood at the field had all been dumped weeks ago, in a huge disorderly pile of great tree trunks, some of which are almost four feet across. All of this needed to be split and neatly stacked under cover so that it could dry out.
Also we thought that a nice rural stack of firewood might help to camouflage the camper van, car, couple of trailers, horse box, crane and digger, as well as the depressing stack of steel bits and spare wheels that we are trying to store inconspicuously in the field.
Nobody seems to have noticed them yet.
Mark took his chainsaw and the dogs, who were so pleased to be going off to freedom that they bounced about as if they were auditioning for an oversized flea-circus.
They have been stuck in the house with me for ages. I have given them some shin bones from the butcher, as an attempt to banish my guilt at being a rubbish dog-owner, but it has not worked. They are not especially fond of the bones, but each dog is determined that nobody else will steal his, and so their lives have become very busily occupied with guarding and growling. This is a nuisance if I am trying to listen to the radio.
Once they had gone I hoovered up the piles of lethal white splinters that have burrowed their way into the carpets as a consequence of bone ownership. I was glad to have removed these, because they are not nice to find with bare feet.
After that I had got to take Oliver back to school. I fed him and Harry, ironed his uniform and cleaned his shoes, and we had to go.
Oliver said mournfully that it seemed to be ages until Christmas. I wish I could have agreed with him. He will be home again almost before I have had chance to clean his bathroom.
The picture is one of the log stacks. This one will probably keep us warm for about four or five weeks. It takes a lot of effort to get us through the winter.
Mark came out to work when he had finished stacking logs. He is jolly brave.
