We are celebrating Valentine’s Day exactly as we usually do, by sitting on the taxi rank waiting for the romantically inclined to amble out of restaurants and across the road to give us their money.
This is all that we ever do. We do not send one another cards. I do not in the least need a card to remind me that Mark loves me. He gets out of bed and makes me a cup of coffee every single morning. I could not ask for more conclusive evidence than that.
It was a good job that he had done this today, because I did not hear the alarm go off at all, and my day did not start until fifteen minutes later when Mark opened the curtains and poured the coffee.
This sleeping disease must really have me in its clutches, because despite having slept during every available moment yesterday, I actually fell asleep again ten minutes later whilst sitting up in bed holding my cup of coffee. We have our morning coffee very strong indeed, but I had almost finished it today before my eyes actually came open.
Once Mark had gone off to work I left a note for the still-sleeping children and dashed off up the fell with the dogs for my morning exercise. I missed this yesterday, with the result that all of my aching muscles had subsided into virtual painlessness, and today I could trot up the hillside with enthusiasm.
This is getting easier, and I am even running up some of the less slippery bits. There was a hard frost this morning, which meant that my feet stayed dry, and the dogs stared in puzzlement at puddles which looked wet but which bumped their noses when they tried to drink.
I got cross with Roger Poopy this morning. He has become a bit too enthusiastic for his own good, and twice today he would not come back when I called him. He was charging about with another dog on the Rec, and ignored my increasingly grumpy yells.
When I finally caught him I was very cross indeed. I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shook him, and rolled him over on to his back in the snow. I held his nose and shouted at him until he looked suitably penitent and forlorn.
We do not put the dogs on leads, which means that we have got to be able to trust that they will do exactly what they are told. Of course sheep-chasing here is a capital crime for a dog, and put paid to Roger Poopy’s mother, who had developed an ineradicable taste for it before we got her. Roger Poopy has got to know that he must come back the second I shout him, no matter how exciting his occupation.
This is difficult with Roger Poopy’s father, who is old now, and deaf, and does not hear when I shout him. He is too arthritic to chase sheep, so this does not matter, but Roger Poopy copies him. Also, embarrassingly, Roger Poopy tries to mount him in an occasional excess of youthful hormones. This makes me wish desperately that we had given him a different name. It is the wrong thing to be yelling at him across the park under those circumstances.
He was very good indeed this morning after his naughty-dog shame, and trotted obediently at my side until I told him that he could go away, at which point he rushed up and down the fellside, barking at crows and feeling relieved to be forgiven. There are no sheep about up there at the moment, which is just as well until I can be sure he will do what he is told.
When we got home I wrote another note for the children telling them that now I had gone to Sainsbury’s. When I got back the chocolate brioche had disappeared and somebody had written ‘ok’ on the bottom of my note, so I knew that the children had survived yesterday’s skiing adventure after all.
I cleaned the bathroom and hoovered the stairs, and before I came to work I went to the gym. I am exhausted now.
We have been taking romantic couples back to their hotels all evening. Some of them were having arguments.
I am very glad that we celebrate the way that we do.
The picture is the view from the top of the fell this morning.
