A nice thing happened this morning.
We were just stirring when the post arrived.
It was a square parcel.
Since the only thing I have ordered lately has been some flip-flops, to replace the ones that Roger Poopy accidentally ate during an anxious moment, this was puzzling.
I blinked at it stupidly for a little while before I remembered that I could always open it.
It turned out to be some photographs of Ritalin Boy, one framed in a rather tasteful frame, and the rest loose.
They were his school photographs, and they were jolly good.
Somebody had obviously collared him first and wiped off all of the sticky, and brushed his hair as well. This is no easy task, I can tell you, you have to have him in a good grip.
We admired them over coffee, and then had to plough on with the day’s stuff.
I am still busy filling my bucket with the endless list of things to be done before I go. Today’s was to bath the dogs.
Obviously I won’t be able to bath the dogs when I am not here, and you might expect that I wouldn’t care.
I don’t care very much. That is, I don’t care if they are lying around humming gently when I am not here, because I won’t be able to smell them: but I do not want to come back to a house that smells of unwashed dog.
They were very smelly indeed, and did not enjoy being bathed. The water went yellow and the plug hole blocked up. Dogs are horrible creatures.
I shall wash the sofa covers tomorrow.
They did not want to go outside after they had been bathed. It has been a bright, clear day, but terrifically cold, with an ice wind sliding in sharply from the northern fells. Mark put his jacket and a jersey on and went to carry on with his garden activities, which today seemed to involve balancing water tanks on platforms.
I joined him for a little while. He was too busy to pay any attention to what I was doing, so I hastily planted the delphinium seeds and then chucked the packet in the dustbin. I would like to say that they will be a surprise when they come up in the springtime, but to be honest if I told him they were just a variety of sweet pea he would probably just nod vaguely and think no more of it.
In the end I had planted all of my seeds and the cold soil had frozen my fingers into fumbling blackened stubs, like the sort that Ranulf Fiennes leaves behind when he takes his gloves off. I retreated into the house, where the sunshine was making it bitterly plain that I needed to clean the windows, so I did, grumpily, or at any rate I cleaned the one on which the sun was shining.
After that it was ironing. We have been smartly dressed all week, and there is a price to be paid for this. There were shirts and blouses and trousers and handkerchiefs, and then all of the sheets which we had stripped out of the camper van.
I know that I could probably manage without ironing these, but it is nice to get into crisp sheets, and helps me pretend that I am in a smart hotel really.
It took ages, but at the end there was a tidy pile of lavender-scented linen and smooth trousers and fresh shirts. I shoved these into the wardrobe, which is too full at the moment, being on the cusp of winter and summer clothes, so probably they will need ironing all over again when get them out, but it is the thought that counts.
After that it was time for work. We left the children carving features into Oliver’s pumpkin and went to sit on the taxi rank.
Slowly, slowly, I am making my way down my bucket list.
We might get a frost tonight.
