We are in love at the moment.
This happens to us sometimes. Obviously when you are married you love each other all of the time, like a habit that you don’t really notice that you are doing. Mostly that love just translates as bringing the logs in for the stove when it is raining, and making fresh bread just before the other one comes home so that the house smells nice.
Being in love is different. It is when you think about one another all of the time, and can’t concentrate properly on anything else. It is a very nice feeling but a bit of a nuisance if you are trying to get anything sensible done.
It happens to us occasionally, and this is one of the occasions. We enjoy it while it lasts and then are secretly a bit relieved when it all goes away and we can think about laundry and brake pads again instead of constantly holding hands and smiling dopily at each other.
With this in mind we were very late getting up this morning. We sat blissfully in bed until lunchtime, drinking coffee and stroking the dogs, and thinking how lovely our lives are. We did not even want to get up at lunchtime really, but the dogs needed to be emptied and we had got things to do.
I had got quite a lot to do.
It is the last day of Lucy’s holidays. Tomorrow she will be gone, and Oliver soon afterwards. Most of her packing has been done, but there were still odds and ends of things lying about, and of course her prep.
In fact the imminent conclusion of the holidays has led to a Not Done Prep panic, for everybody.
I do not have any prep to do, and so I am able to make sympathetic noises with a clear conscience. Oliver spent the day sitting at the kitchen table, feverishly composing Complex Sentences and groaning. Lucy retreated to her bedroom to compose a hasty essay about attachment theory, and Mark fixed the back door.
He should have done this ages ago, but it turned out that the bit was broken and we had to order a new one. Because of this we have had a non-functioning back door for some time now. Either it would not open at all, or it swung open at the smallest provocation, either of which was tiresome.
It is working now. We can open and close it any time we like.
Life is splendid sometimes.
Whilst he was busy I went upstairs to order him some new trousers. Mark does not like wearing jeans. He wears a special sort of trousers, called mole skins, just like his father wore. These are thick and warm and comfortable for wearing outside. He has got eight pairs, four for getting covered in oil and glue, and four respectable ones. When the oily ones become too worn then he starts to wear the respectable ones for mending the car and I buy some new ones for him to be respectable in.
We buy them from a place called Hoggs Of Fife, which does the best moleskin trousers. They are very thick and they last an awful long time.
I could not be sure that I remembered what size he was, and so we measured him.
He was definitely a bigger size than we both remembered.
This was a depressing moment.
I considered measuring me as well to see if I had the same problem, but decided not to. There are some things that can be safely taken for granted.
We are going to have to think about eating a bit more carefully.
Over the last few weeks we have eaten and drunk a very great deal, and we have both become portly. This is because we have eaten such lovely things. It is hard to stop eating even when you are full if something tastes nice, and it is always hard to stop drinking.
We are going to have to try hard to address the issues of self control.
I am sure that will not surprise any readers.
We are going to swim and eat vegetables.
We can start tomorrow.
