I am in the most splendidly cheerful frame of mind.
Partly this is because I have been to the gym, and so I have got serotonin. This is a nice thing to have. Also, when I came out of the gym I should have gone to work, but Mark was at work already, and said that his hourly rate so far had been less than nothing an hour, because of being at work for two hours and running the engine, so we came home and ate pasta instead.
Mark has been at work for the last couple of nights whilst I have been gallivanting all over the Midlands. He has made thirty quid, which we put in the bank today towards the cost of the fuel that I used. We were pleased about this. We have got two bank accounts, and we have got fifty pence in both of them. We are solvent. Hurrah.
I don’t mind this in the least, mostly because of the serotonin, but also because it is always rubbish in March, and very soon it will be better. We are through the worst of the winter now, and we are still here, and so far the bailiffs have not been round. Spring is on its way, and will bring daffodils and primroses and tourists, all of which help the serotonin along as well as the bank balance. Things are starting to look up.
We thought about this when we got up this morning. We made a long list of all of the things that we would like to buy when the tourists come back again. This was exciting, because it suddenly made it feel a little bit possible. Whilst things are grim in the winter I don’t even think about new socks, because of knowing that we will not have any money for absolutely ages, but today we thought about new socks and jeans and jumpers and knew that they would come true in the end.
Because of the winter being almost over I have dug out some new books to read. I bought these when we went to see Frankenstein last year, which was last April, and I have been saving them ever since.
I did this because there is absolutely no nicer feeling in the whole world than looking forward to reading a book, it is almost as nice as starting to read it. Getting towards the end of it is a little bit sad, and finishing it is hugely satisfying mixed with regret for a joy that has come to an end.
Anyway, I have got some wonderful new books that I have been saving for ages, so that even in the middle of the dark winter despair, I still had a tiny secret glow of recollection that I had got some good books, waiting, to cheer up a dark moment. Obviously I have had other books since, because I got lots of them for Christmas, but I just dived in and read those, like eating a tin of Quality Street all at once. These have been specially saved for the winter, and the time has come when they can be read.
They are going to go in my taxi bag for tomorrow night, so that I will be entirely happy and feel wealthy even if I don’t have any customers.
Whilst we were making our list we became irritated by the tiresome noise that the fridge was making. It has been doing this for ages. It was a loud buzzing noise. Mostly we ignore this, but sometimes it just gets too irritating.
Today it got too irritating.
We put some sing-along music on to encourage ourselves, and emptied the fridge and the freezer and dragged it out. Mark took the back off it, and then took the inside to bits.
I took all of the shelves out and scrubbed them. This needed bleach. They might have had e-coli in the corners. I don’t know what e-coli looks like, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was brown and sticky with a slightly nasty whiff. We are all jolly lucky not to be dead.
It took absolutely ages, and when we had finished it positively gleamed.
Also the horrid noise had stopped. It turned out that it had been caused by an earth wire touching against a vibrating bit of pipe. Mark trapped it out of the way, and the kitchen became blissfully silent.
We decided that we would have a purge of things that we did not want, and threw away the fish fingers that Oliver used to like and then stopped liking, and after that they smelled of freezer. We threw away the ice lolly that had melted a bit once, and then re-froze into the shape of its packet. We threw away some saved things left over from cooking, and we threw away absolutely everything that might have e-coli. Mostly this was a quarter of a cauliflower that I had forgotten about in the bottom of the fridge, and half a jar of Thai sauce that had a 2015 sell by date, but there were some dead strawberries and a shrivelled black carrot as well. You can’t be too careful.
We have now got a fridge that could be used in an advertisement for margarine. When we have got some cash after the weekend we are going to buy olives and lovely things to put in it. We didn’t have any cash today, so I made some mayonnaise instead. This is ace in the new mixer, thick and creamy and satisfying.
I am going to take my serotonin to bed.
