Talk

I have got paint all over my decent jeans.

This is because I am completely incapable of approaching any artistic materials without finishing up wearing them.

I have been painting leaves on the new gate. A picture is attached.

I have enjoyed myself very much.

I am painting a window in the top of the gate, with a dragon’s eye looking out. I did not take a picture of that because I have only blocked out the basic colours, and it looks completely rubbish, as if it has been done by a six year old. The early stages of painting a picture are always like this. It is nice to add shade and detail afterwards and make things look more realistic, if ever a dragon’s eye can ever be made to look realistic.

We did not start the day early because I spent yesterday night visiting with my friend Elspeth, whose family have all gone away for the week. When we were young we used to do this all the time, when we were not in each other’s houses drinking gin together we were on the telephone to one another. Telephones were expensive then. This cost a lot.

Since we have become elderly matrons we do not have quite the same need to talk obsessively about our lives all of the time. I can’t remember now what we talked about, back in our distant youth, but it must have been interesting at the time, because it occupied several hours every night. 

We managed to occupy several hours very satisfactorily last night. Elspeth does outdoor education, and is on all sorts of important committees. I am always very impressed with this. Nobody ever asks me to be on committees, mostly because of the attitude problem, but partly because I don’t really know very much about anything, although this never stops me having plenty of opinions. 

Elspeth had been to a meeting of the Birmingham chapter of Druids, which made me laugh. Somehow I would not have expected to find druids in Birmingham, which proves my previous point about not knowing very much about anything. Anyway, this had given her lots of material for contemplation, and we pondered for a while about whether the sort of soil and rock that you live on might have an impact on your mood, and whether it is important to be able to identify a tree even when all of the leaves have fallen off in winter.

If this was the sort of thing we talked about when we rang one another up every night I am surprised that anybody ever married either of us. 

I was reluctant to go home, because it was so nice to talk, but of course in the end it was almost midnight, and Elspeth had to empty her dog and put her chickens to bed. 

I was unexpectedly cheered by the evening, which brought back recollections of being young and hopeful about the world, because obviously those were the days before David Attenborough.

The sun shone again today, and I spent it painting, as you know, underneath the lines of beautifully drying washing in the globally-warmed back yard. There was a dreadful, dreadful moment when a poor unsuspecting bee flew right into the blob of white paint on my palette, and became mired in deathly sticky. I killed it straight away, because it was finished then, and felt desperately sad. It had come from the hyacinths. What an awful end.

Shortly after the bee we had to stop anyway, because a policeman arrived to take down the details of Mark’s taxi misadventure on Friday night.

Policemen are very young these days. This one had a fluffy beard and string beaded bracelets around his wrists. He turned out to have been the one who had actually turned up during the event, and was a bit subdued.

I was not entirely surprised about this, because I have complained my head off about the whole thing to everybody official who might listen, and it is always horrible when people complain about you. Also it is not very fair, when you are only fourteen, to be expected to make important judgements about who is a rascal and who is not. He was barely above the age when he himself might have been made to sit on the naughty step for fighting in the sand pit, and indeed, I would already have been driving taxis when he was.

In the event I liked him. He was earnest and listened carefully. Mark explained what had happened, which made me cross all over again, and I had to try very hard not to be cross with the poor police boy, who did not know any better.

He  said that the other chap was coming in to the police station for an interview, and promised that he would let us know what was going to happen.

Mark seemed cheerful afterwards. He smiled more than he has done for days, and eventually explained that it had made him feel better just to have talked about it, and for somebody to have listened. He thought a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

It has been good to talk.