I almost didn’t get my exercise this evening.
The stupid, stupid, PamperMe HealthyLiving LoveYourBody Spa has got a new manager.
She has decided to close at eight o’ clock every night.
Since I never get there before half past seven this is a jolly inconvenient nuisance.
Worse, she hasn’t actually told anybody. As it happened I managed to get there early tonight. Had I just turned up at my usual time I would have found the door locked, because the last entry is at seven, and a go-away notice stuck to it.
To say that I am cross is an underannouncement. I am jolly cross with bells on.
I am on the taxi rank until three in the morning tonight. This will mean that I will have more than enough time to finish writing to you and then to compose a long and vitriolic missive to the management of the hotel chain to which it belongs. Not that they will take any notice, because they never do. I have complained to them before.
I should not mind this really, because when I ran a large taxi company I always ignored complaints as well. People would get cross and threaten not to use us again, which never worried me in the least. We had absorbed several smaller companies and kept their phone numbers and taxi cards, so even though people thought they were vengefully using a different company they probably weren’t. They never noticed.
Fortunately I managed to get in my full complement of rushing pointlessly along the treadmill and rowing nowhere, before the gym closed, and now I am sitting on the taxi rank.
I seem to have been dashing about all day. I made a resolution this morning to do all of the things that I absolutely least wanted to do, so that they would be done and I would know myself a Good Person.
This meant that after the usual day’s start of walk and paying takings into the bank I gave the dogs a bath.
They were revoltingly dirty.
It is some time since their last ablutions, and since then they have rushed up and down the fell side with me every morning. Unlike me they do not try and avoid muddy puddles, and Roger Poopy takes the occasional flying leap into the splashy middle of them, for reasons best known to himself.
Add to that the allure of badger poo, and their incurable affection for patches of wee, and the result is not fragrant.
The bath was black and gritty by the time I had finished.
They both need a proper haircut, but it is still too cold. It is not kind to make dogs bald when there is still ice in the watering can. Instead I borrowed Mark’s beard-trimming scissors, since he wasn’t in, and snipped away all their remaining dreadlocks. I cut the hair around their paws and their undersides, in order that they would not collect mud in quite such startling quantities. They were traumatised by this. When I had finished they looked ridiculous but might function better.
The dogs curled up on the sofa, shivering in melancholy self-pity, and I went to clean the bathroom.
I would have preferred the sofa and the self-pity.
When I had cleaned our bathroom I went upstairs to the children’s floor. They have both departed now, leaving behind them the child-detritus of crumbs and used tissues and sweet wrappings and toenail clippings.
It is amazing how much longer the soap lasts in their bathrooms than it does in ours. We bought Oliver some soap for Christmas. At current rate of usage it is going to be another couple of years before we need to repeat the purchase.
I scrubbed and wiped and grumbled, but of course finished it in the end. Then I heaved all of their linens into the laundry basket and congratulated myself on my orderly life.
I am going to leave you on that note of domestic perfection and compose my thoughts into complaint-writing order.
The picture is the view from the fell this morning. All the valleys were filled with clouds. It was nice to be over the top of them for a while.
