The Amazon marketing computer algorithm that watches your shopping, and then fills your pages with the things that it hopes you might like to buy, has very clearly not been outdoors lately. It has been busily offering me Next Day Delivery of urgent orders of things like cricket pads and flip flops.
In the end I bought some flip flops, unseasonable as this might sound, because I used to wear them in the house a lot, only Roger Poopy has a taste for flip flops, and has eaten them. In fact he has eaten everybody’s, except Mark’s, which are made out of something rigid and indigestible. Hence these have been left alone, apart from some teeth marks in the heel, where he sampled them and decided they were not to his taste. He has sampled them both, just to make sure.
Further expenditure was prevented by the arrival of the lodger for an afternoon visit. I was very pleased to see her, partly because it distracted me from increasing my overdraft with desirable but undoubtedly extravagant purchases, such as the laundry soap that I use for handwashing, or latex gloves for Mark to stop his hands becoming oil-blackened. These things can wait until the weather improves, we can manage perfectly well to be grubby until then.
We had coffee, and a very pleasantly idle afternoon chatting. I explained to her how to run her life better, and she told me all about working in a Chinese restaurant. This turns out to be no more exciting than working on a taxi rank at the moment, the people who are not getting in taxis are also not eating Chinese dinners.
We are on the taxi rank now, wrapped up so warmly that it has become difficult to move much. I am wearing an assortment of jumpers and scarves and complicated underwear, and am rather hoping that I don’t feel the need to visit the loo at any time during the night.
We have not been here as often as usual this week. This is because the weather has not inspired many people to come to the Lake District to have a little holiday. If nobody wants a taxi there is no point in sitting on a taxi rank with the engine running for six hours, so in the interests of the environment we thought it was far more responsible to stay at home and drink wine.
However, as always, weekend has come around and penury has driven us back out. Predictably, it is very quiet indeed. Of course, I do not mind this, it is peaceful and pleasant. I have got a good book and plenty of chai, and a pot full of my current favourite baby-poo dinner, which is a mix of liquidised fruit, spinach, coconut milk, and oats. It looks utterly disgusting but tastes splendid, and I can eat as much of it as I like with a completely clear conscience, because anything as hideous as that has got to be virtuous.
We went to the gym first. Mark finished work early and came with me, which was kind of him, because after a day nailing radio masts to posts in the cold, he can hardly have been in the mood for further exertions. However, he was brave, and cycled for miles on the go-nowhere cycling machine whilst I rowed up and down on the spot and pounded my self-pity inducing knee into howling agony on the running machine.
I was not sorry to come back to spend the rest of the evening in self-indulgent sloth on the taxi rank.
It is almost midnight, and so far I have done three jobs.
I do not care in the least.
Summer is coming.
