Home Alone

Since Mark’s departure I seem to have become feral rather alarmingly quickly.

For breakfast I had half a peanut butter sandwich left over from last night, and this evening I had curry, eaten cold, from the pan, with my fingers. I have made another peanut butter sandwich ready for later, it will probably do until about lunchtime tomorrow if I eke it out a bit.

It is nice not to need to try at life. I did not put the clean washing away in the drawers, but left it on the floor and put it all on again this morning, and of course I could read in bed for as long as I liked. This turned out to be about three minutes, because of being tired, but the principle was sound.

The bit that was less wonderful was taking the dogs for their late-night emptying around the Library Gardens after I had spent the evening in the taxi reading a book about murderers.

This was supposed to be research for joining the Prison Service in November, but of course it wasn’t, it was a salacious page turner splattered with gore from countless slit throats. I tiptoed around the Library Gardens in the silent black night afterwards, imagining claw-hammer-clutching murderers hiding behind every neatly-trimmed shrub.

Of course I knew really that there weren’t any, because there never are, and because the dogs would have barked, and because it would be a pointless place for a murderer to hide. If I were a murderer I would go to somewhere filled with strolling solitary young women where I could leap out quite quickly. In the Library Gardens at night there is only ever the old chap from the Chinese restaurant, and sometimes one or two Lakeside taxi drivers on their way home, and me. You would have to hang about for ages waiting and getting cold and bored before you got the chance to murder any of us, and even then you would probably have to fight off the dogs as well. They would not take much fighting off but you would at least have to be careful not to trip over them.

For all of these reasons, probably, there were no murderers in the Library Gardens, and I made it home unmolested. Tonight I am reading the autobiography of a postman, though, to be on the safe side.

I am on the taxi rank now. Tonight, in between reading about high jinks in the sorting office, I am trying to raise more funds for Lucy’s endless driving lessons.

I had paid for all of this week’s lessons, and was feeling smugly solvent, when the instructor said today that she would benefit from a further three hours tomorrow.

This is another ninety quid.

She has got her test next Thursday morning, and so I suppose that he is right. Also I would not like to be teaching her to drive. Her driving instructor is a splendidly patient sort of chap, seeming to be completely impervious to teenage flappery and oozing jovial reassurance with every cheery bellow of laughter. If I had been trying to teach Lucy to drive I would have bitten my fingernails into shreds and hoisted my blood pressure into orbit. He is worth thirty quid an hour just to keep my alcohol consumption within acceptable limits.

Lucy’s driving lesson has been something of a feature of the day, because I have had to take her to Carnforth to meet her instructor. It takes almost an hour to get to Carnforth, but it is necessary, because her test is going to be in Heysham, which is near there on the coast, and the instructor says that she needs to spend as much time as possible driving around test routes.

When I had driven to Carnforth and back I set the alarm for the return trip and started taking the kitchen dresser apart.

I think I might have mentioned in these pages that the washing machine has been leaking.

It has leaked a lot, because Mark has been too busy to look at it, and so I just carried on using it.

When he finally did look at it, there was an enormous split in the door seal. The carpet was soaked, which I knew, but worse, the water had soaked the carpet, and the floor, and the floorboards and right through to the flags and the ground underneath. It was all black and smelly.

This is entirely my fault.

Mark has ordered a new door seal, and said that everything is going to have to come out of that corner of the kitchen and the carpet be taken up,

In order to do this I have had to empty the dresser, which was today’s job.

I have taken everything off it and washed it all and packed it into boxes. It is all piled up in the other corner of the living room now, the one without all of the children’s luggage in it.

I am beginning to feel a bit bleak about the living room.

Number Two Daughter has pointed out cheerfully that probably it won’t matter very much, because I have been hoping for some time that Mark will move the kitchen about. In fact, I want him to swap the kitchen and the living room around so that they are in each other’s spaces. He says that this will be possible but will take a lot of messing about.

I am troubled about this, because I know that he very much wants  to go on working with Ted and the rural broadband, and it would be awful if Ted told him to buzz off because of being too busy rebuilding our house to come to work. I said this to Mark, and he just rolled his eyes and said that we couldn’t have everything, which I thought was a bit negative.

I am considering moving the kitchen myself, it can’t possibly be that hard.

I had to use the washing machine again today as well, because of running out of clothes.

I don’t want to think about domestic things any more.

I am going to go and read about postmen.

Have a picture of the dresser. You have seen it before but I don’t suppose you will mind.