Game of Tables

As promised yesterday, the picture shows a sturdy wardrobe-climbing table with a rubbish bin inside it.

It is a new happiness. It can be shoved about all over the bedroom without falling over, and last night I stood on it and dusted all of the cobwebs down from the depressing corner between the walls and the ceiling. It is exactly what I wanted.

The revolting looking linen at the side of it is not related to my housewifely abilities. It is the dogs’ bed. They prefer it to smell predictable and also I do not want it in my nice clean washing machine. Every now and again I just throw it away and replace it with something else which has become too repellent for human use.

I have hardly been out of doors at all today, apart from briefly, this morning, to empty the coffee pot, and even then I met Mark halfway down the garden and gave it to him to tip into the flower bed.

Mark has been outside all day. He has taken the end off the flower bed and rebuilt it. I was impressed with this, although I have now got a lot of homeless crocus bulbs. I should have done something about them today, but outside it was windy, and damp, in the sort of way that makes you wish for more underwear. I had only got one vest, and a couple of jumpers, and that was for indoors by the fire.

Mark had his hurricane-proof boiler suit, and a woolly hat over his bald patch, so he said that he was all right. He is braver than I am. The skies were blue-grey, and cold, so you shivered when you looked at them. It made me think that today might be a really good day to stay inside and eat chocolate.

I didn’t eat chocolate, but I did stay inside and drink tea. I did lots of ringing people up, because that is a really good thing to do when you want to have achieved something, but don’t feel like making any effort.

I rang the gas board to discuss our tariff.

They told me that our electricity usage was much higher than the household average, and that we jolly well ought to do something about it.

I told them indignantly that our meter must be wrong, so they got me to explain the things that we had got plugged in.

It turned out that our meter wasn’t wrong, and so Mark and I had a Talk afterwards about electrical economy.

Mark pointed out that our electrical use might be high, but our usage of almost everything else was almost non-existent, and also that we had welding tools and all sorts of other useful appliances in regular use.

I reminded him that he forgot to switch the landing light off yesterday.

He was grateful for that insight.

He suggested that I stop encouraging Oliver to have a shower, since he doesn’t seem to mind being grubby.

I thought that I would go to the gym every single night, and shower there.

Unfortunately when it came to the time for going to the gym, I didn’t feel like it in the least.

Mark said that we had had an exhausting day and that the thing to do was not go to work, but to stay inside and eat chocolate.

When I came downstairs he had got the television out.

This is always really exciting, and it turned out to be the most brilliant thing. We had a plate of pasta and a glass of wine in front of the television. This felt gloriously, wonderfully, hedonistically decadent.

We watched A Game Of Thrones. We have finally got to Season Seven, which is the last one that has been made so far. There is another one coming out later on this year. That one will be the last.

I can hardly bear to watch this season, because I know that every episode we watch brings closer the terrible moment when there will be no more to watch, like feeling the unread part of a book getting smaller and smaller in your hands, even if you try to slow it down by reading bits twice.

It was so unspeakably thrilling I can hardly find the words. I had to watch lots of it through the gaps between my fingers. This is not easy to do when you have got a fork full of pasta in your hand.

Of course it is thrilling because we haven’t read this far in the books, because of them not being written yet. It is all new, and I can’t even flick forward to the end to see who is going to die.

It was the happiest evening.

How fortunate that I had made some coffee-and-cognac cream truffle chocolates as well.