Guilt

I am feeling very guilty about my activities today.

Things all started out well enough. Once Mark had gone to work I did all the usual morning tidying up things and then Oliver and I took the dogs up the fell.

Roger Poopy likes it very much when Oliver comes with us.

This is because Oliver has been painstakingly coached in cricket for the last five years, and he can bowl Roger Poopy’s revolting ball much further than I can.

It is not easy to throw a ball very far when you are trying not to touch it any more than you absolutely must, when it is merely resting on the very ends of your fingertips because it is a disgustingly chewed object drenched in dog dribble.

All the same Roger Poopy loves it. It is his only possession, his Very Own Thing. It belongs to him and nobody else is going to take it away from him.

I do not let him have it in between walks. This is because if he is allowed to look after it himself it will be ruthlessly and adoringly gnawed until it is a thousand minuscule pieces all over the carpet. This is what has happened to similar much-loved items in the past.

When Oliver throws it for him he hurtles after it so fast that he can’t stop, and invariably skids to a messy halt several feet after it. Then he picks it up in his teeth and gallops around with his tail held high, barking through his mouthful of ball, until somebody tells him to bring it back.

He will miss Oliver when he goes back to school and there is only me and my rubbish underarm throws again.

When we came back down from the fells Oliver was persuaded to come with me to Sainsbury’s. This turned out to be a mistake, costing me two packets of Eton Mess flavoured candy kittens, some new and extravagant yoghurt and a pack of raspberries.

It was after this that the guilt set in.

I made a fresh batch of coffee chocolates and after I had washed up I was supposed to be going upstairs to clean the middle floor.

When I say that I was supposed to be doing it, I don’t mean that anybody had a gun to my head, or that Mark had left me with a set of instructions, or even that I have signed a contract.

I mean that I have become uncomfortably aware of the smeary stickiness of the bathroom, of the soft layer of fluffy dust on my dressing table, and of the dog hair on the carpets.

It needs cleaning.

I lugged the hoover up the stairs and looked around.

I suddenly realised that I did not want to do cleaning at all.

I did not want to do it really very badly.

It was as if every ounce of energy had drained out of me. I could practically see it forming a puddle around my flip flops.

Every muscle felt limply disinclined towards cleaning.

I am usually disinclined towards cleaning, but it does not normally leave me feeling as if I would like to go back to bed.

Obviously I did not go back to bed. That would have been a shocking thing to do whilst Mark was busily installing rural broadband.

Instead I thought that perhaps I might assuage my idle culpability by finding something less vigorous to do.

I felt terribly wicked about this, but it did not stop me.

I sat down at the sewing machine. I have taken one of the curtains out of the camper van. It was the last to be made, when I had run out of everything.

I did not have any of the lovely pink and grey curtain velvet left at all, and this last one was run up in a hurry out of a spare bit of red fabric, and I have loathed it ever since.

When I was buying Lucy’s curtain fabric, in a joyful moment of serendipity, I found the end of a roll of the actual curtain fabric buried at the bottom of the market stall, marked Reduced To Clear. Of course I bought it, and it has been waiting, like contentedness bottled up for the future, for the moment when I would finally Get Round To It.

Today seemed like it might be that day.

I demolished the old curtain, parsimoniously, so that I could re-use the lining and the ties and the strip of hook tape at the top.

I cut out and hemmed the new curtain, but the old lining needed washing. I washed it, but of course it would not dry quickly, so I could not finish making the new curtain today. 

I hung the lining over the stove, and then I did the most hedonistic thing.

I got my paints out.

It is not my birthday or a special holiday or anything. It is a normal working day, but I did it all the same.

There are some paintings on the landing  that I was hoping to finish before Christmas.

I sang my special painting song in my head and painted for the rest of the afternoon.

It was lovely.

The bathroom can wait until tomorrow.