I am writing this a bit early whilst I am waiting for Mark to come home.
We are going to have an early night.
I am looking forward to this so much that I can hardly tell you.
We have got lots of Turkish dinner left over from last night, so I do not even need to cook. We have got apple pie, and I have bought some more wine. It is going to be perfect.
We are going to eat, and maybe watch a film, and then we are going to go to bed. It feels like a holiday.
It is a bit of a holiday. I have spent today making biscuits and candles and mayonnaise and other useful household items, and will be very glad to have an evening of complete hedonistic idleness.
We went out for our usual trudge up the fell this morning. Roger Poopy was not his usual enthusiastic self at all. This was because our visitors last night brought with them a large and friendly gleaming black Labrador, and Roger liked her very much.
He liked her very much indeed.
They charged about joyfully together for ages, bashing into all the furniture and wagging their tails so hard that they must have been covered in bruises this morning.
In the end they wore themselves out. They found a space behind the table to lie in, and Roger Poopy licked her tummy until eventually they curled up together to sleep. We were not sorry about this. Our house is not big enough for outbursts of canine exuberance, and the first hour had to be interrupted every few minutes by bellowing at the dogs to shut up and settle down.
Roger Poopy was very downcast when he discovered that she had not moved in to our house for ever, but went home at the end of the evening.
He was still forlorn this morning. His ears drooped and he kept sighing heavily whilst we had coffee . When we went on our walk and I threw the remains of his ball for him he brought it back to me a couple of times and then decided that he would just keep it. He threw it down on to the ground and then collapsed heavily on top of it.
In the end he resigned himself to his continued bachelorhood. I retrieved the ball and put it in my pocket for tomorrow. This was not nice. It is soaked with dog dribble, and is beginning to smell.
We walked on up the fell and lost his father again. He had wandered off up the wrong path, and although I could see him, he is too short sighted now to be able to see me, so I yelled my head off and jumped up and down until I finally attracted his attention. Even then he could not reach us all in one go, and had to stop and have a little rest halfway up the slope.
When he set off again he slipped and fell over. He landed in the mud with a horrible squelch and all four paws waving helplessly in the air. I thought that he was having a heart attack, and came belting back down the fell to rescue him, but fortunately he wasn’t. I was relieved about this because I did not much like the idea of having to carry forty pounds of expiring muddy dog all the way back home, even though it was mostly downhill.
We were not sorry to get back home, and I peeled my soaked coat and boots off with some relief. It has been nice to spend a quiet sort of day making homely-smelling things in the kitchen.
Nicer still to have a quiet sort of night to come.
We will have a whole clear evening with nothing to do.
I think we will watch A Game Of Thrones.
