I am feeling a bit wearily disheartened.
To be quite honest, I have had enough of the bank holiday by now. I have reached the end of my tolerance for chatty pink people who have got a bad leg and therefore can’t possibly walk around the corner to their hotel.
I do not wish to discuss the book that I am reading with anybody else who read a book once and wishes to know what mine might be about. I think it is more than obvious that I live here, and am not even going to dignify that particular stupid question with an answer again. Yes, the weather has been nice. That is how you have become that ridiculous colour. And, yes, I know that bank holiday double time rates are expensive. If they were not, I can absolutely assure you that I would not be here listening to you. Under the circumstances I think that I have earned it.
Apart from the customers I am having a pleasant enough evening, although it has been busy. Despite double time rates I have not spent very long sitting on the taxi rank. This is a good thing, and tomorrow we will be blowing stacks and stacks of cash on all sorts of reckless things, mostly paying off the credit card I expect.
We have got both children home. Lucy turned up in the middle of the night last night, arriving just as we were getting back from work. We had a brief but happy family encounter around the table whilst Lucy told us all about her new house. This lasted until around five in the morning, at which time Oliver thought he might like to go to bed.
We did not rise early this morning.
Mark and I made it out of bed for lunchtime, but the children did not and had to be summoned before the afternoon turned into evening.
As it turned out we were requesting their assistance. The house has become trashed, in a horrible, black-mould-and-grime sort of way, and some cleaning support was required.
I will say this for Lucy and Oliver, they do not complain when they are asked to help.
They cleaned their bedrooms and bathrooms, and Oliver helped polish the living room whilst Lucy started on the drawer-reorganisation that is the beginning of the scary process of moving out.
I cleaned the middle floor, which is always the nastiest, because of the bathroom. Mark went outside into the yard and mixed cement to build the new flower beds in the conservatory. You can see this in the picture.
Oliver is a bit anxious about going outside at the moment, because there is a pretty girl in the alley who keeps smiling at him. He likes being smiled at but is not quite sure what is the best thing to do next. He has not encountered many girls before.
Mark is not much help. He has explained to him that the most important thing about girls is that you have got to listen to them really carefully, because even though you think that you know what they are talking about, you probably don’t, and you will have got it wrong. Also they get shouty at all sorts of surprising moments, and you have not got to take it personally, because it is just one of those things that women do, and probably nobody knows why. He suggested that Oliver bought her an ice cream and took her for a walk in the park.
Oliver thinks he might do this the next time that she smiles at him. After Mark’s words of wisdom I think this is very brave.
We are working late tonight, and so tomorrow will be very short, because obviously it will not start until lunchtime again. All the same we think that we are going to take a day off from everything, and have a little bit of time together.
We have not got very much longer.
In one more week Oliver will be gone, and then after that Lucy.
It is nearly over.
