When we woke up this morning the weather was so comprehensively uninspiring that we thought perhaps we might stay in bed.
It wasn’t very early anyway, because of working last night. Mark made coffee and we propped ourselves up on pillows and gazed out of the window at the steadily falling snow.
The problem with keeping livestock is that you can’t actually stay in bed all day. Not only did the dogs think that it would be lovely to join us in bed, which was not actually lovely, because they had just come in from the snowy garden, after a while their next idea was that they might want to go and dash about outside.
In the end we got fed up of them standing on the bed and barking out of the window, and had got to get up. We wrapped ourselves up in big coats and scarves and hats, and took the dogs for a prolonged walk up to the park and around the cricket pitch. This is not a very long walk, but it was quite long enough under the chilly circumstances.
I liked getting back to our warm house. It is partly built under the ground, and it feels very like a burrow on dark days. The kettle was humming nicely on the wood stove when we came in. When we had peeled our wet things off and hung them to dry, we made tea and lit candles, and sat contentedly in the quiet kitchen, watching the snow slowly drifting down.
Mark painted the camper van wardrobe door again, just to make sure I knew that he still loves me even though he has got a job and is not doing anything useful any more. I washed clothes and dishes and made picnics for work.
I did not go to the gym.
It would have been difficult to do this without admitting to Mark that I have got to become thin and fit before Thursday. There are some things that are better kept to oneself.
Despite this regrettable neglect I am feeling encouraged about it all. Elspeth telephoned last night to tell me that she has been to the gym. She said that she felt inspired by Number One Daughter and also by being too fat to get off the sofa. She has now lost lots and lots of weight, and assured me that three visits to the gym is more than enough to create muscle definition, and that she can now get on and off the sofa whenever she likes.
This cheered me up very much. It sounds as if I could probably manage to become reasonably lean and muscular if I go to the gym on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, or at least fit enough to get off the sofa without assistance. Armed with this insider knowledge I have stopped worrying about it. I shall go tomorrow when Mark is safely at work.
When we had finished pottering about we ate an enormous breakfast of ham and cheese scrambled eggs on thick slices of almond bread. I favour the James Bond recipe for scrambled eggs, which has got a lot of butter and cream in it. Somebody on a radio cookery programme once explained that if James Bond had actually eaten all the things that the books said he ate, he would have been dreadfully obese, and presumably stuck on his sofa. I have got no ambitions to be an international secret agent, so I don’t mind risking the occasional scrambled egg whipped up with melted butter and double cream, but I had better not do it again if I am going to be thin before Thursday.
After the egg breakfast we were so wonderfully replete and sleepy that we went back to bed again until it was time to go to work, which is of course where we are now. It has stopped snowing, and the roads are all clear, which is handy, and we have even had some customers, which is even better.
It has been a jolly nice day, so much so that I don’t mind that Mark has got to go off to work again tomorrow.
Once he has gone I shall get fit.
