I have just come from the gym and am feeling wonderfully glowing.
I am exercised and saunaed and hot-showered and cold-showered and scrubbed and perfumed and am feeling very pleased with myself.
Especially I am feeling pleased with myself because they reopen until the proper time tomorrow, and also because I made such an affronted middle-class fuss about the early closing that they have given me five weeks free membership in order to get me to shut up.
I wrote to the manager and to the Head Office and to the general manager and also complained vociferously in person, until the poor youth on the desk said that he wished they would reopen later as well, now would I please just stop telling him how tiresomely inconvenient it all was, because he couldn’t do anything about it.
Now that has all been sorted out to my satisfaction I am feeling contented with my world again, and tonight my post-swim glow has a special smug halo to it. I am on the taxi rank, but I am not going to stay late, because we are going to try to get some sleep.
It is Easter this weekend, and we are expecting to be busy. With this in mind we think that we will try and sleep as much as we can in advance. This is in order that we are refreshed and revitalised and ready to face the holiday-making hordes, or at least the ones who brave the predicted chilly weather.
So far we have had no success whatsoever in this objective. This is because Mark is doing two full-time jobs and I am doing one full-time job and everything else.
Tonight he has gone to his maths class. This has been expanded from one night a week to two nights, because it has been cancelled so often due to bad weather, and also it did not start until five weeks into the term.
Mark is finding this hard work. It is difficult enough to get home by six on one night in the week, and he certainly can’t manage two, so he is late most of the time and does not always get round to doing his homework. Mostly he does this in between customers in the taxi, but sometimes he says that his brain will not work properly and just reads a book or tries to learn about configuring internets instead.
I am busily trying to look after him, because he does not do very much that is helpful at home any more. Today was my day for baking. I baked an orange and ginger cake with almonds. Mark can work better if he is very well fed. It is helpful to have hot food and cakes and biscuits in your bag when you are working outside all the time.
His friend and business partner Ted is still on his yacht in the Mediterranean. This is because he does not have to pay school fees yet. He has been doing some repairs to the yacht because Mrs. Ted was coming out to join him today with the children. Mark spoke to him on the phone and explained that he must go to the Bricolage DIY supermarket before he collected them from the airport not afterwards, and that he should have food and comfortable tidy rooms ready, and also have a shower. This is because Mark has been married for a long time and knows how to avoid shouting.
Ted’s absence means that Mark is in sole charge of fitting internets to remote bits of Cumbria, so he does not work late in the taxi at nights. Last night he was supposed to be in bed by ten o’ clock, but he faffed about for ages and then rang me at eleven to say goodnight, which made me cross with him, as if he were six and would be tired and grumpy in the morning. He was tired but probably thought it was wiser not to be grumpy. I did not go to bed until almost two, so I was that.
I got up with him anyway, of course, because of cooking his dinner and making his flask, and once he had gone I unearthed the children out of their burrows and we went off up the fell.
Lucy did better today, which was good, perhaps she is starting to recover a bit. I am feeding both of them on expensively faddy microbe-laden yoghurts and fruit, which they are finding a bit troubling, we have never done anything healthy before. I went to Booths this morning for some ethical shopping, and Oliver said that he didn’t care what I bought as long as there were beef burgers and onion rings.
When I came back I cooked an enormous spiral of Cumberland sausage and a massive gammon joint, so that anybody who wants can eat cold meats for the rest of the holiday. I do not know if they have got microbes in them, but even if not I expect they will have plenty by this time next week, if they last that long.
Bring on the weekend.
