Christmas is coming.
We sat in bed this morning and contemplated our preparations, which so far have been as close to ‘none at all’ as it is possible to be.
I am talking about financial matters, not making mince pies and borrowing ivy out of the Library Gardens.
So far we have not even saved up enough for a Christmas tree.
We considered this over coffee.
I went to the office and retrieved paper and a calculator, and we sat for a while, trying not to get ink on the sheets, doing tongue-sticking-out sums.
Life is like this when you do not have a salary but are responsible for creating your own money.
After a while we came to the unremarkable conclusion that we need to create some more.
We thought about this for a while.
Actually we need quite a lot more.
We wondered what we could possibly do about this, and in the end came to exactly the same unwelcome answer that we always reach, which is that we need to go to work a bit more.
It is November. There is not always very much point in going to work, a bit like being a Christmas card seller in Tenerife in June. You can hang about hopefully as much as you like but there are some times when you just will not make a fortune.
All the same we thought that we might have a go.
We decided that we would spend what was left of the day doing some domestic construction activities. Then at three Mark would go and sit on the taxi rank, and I would tidy up and get dinner ready, after which I would follow him out as soon as I could.
I know that three in the afternoon sounds like quite late to be going out to work, but you have got to remember that we are largely nocturnal in our habits, left to our own devices, and at weekends we don’t get up until twelve.
Today we were broke enough to be determined, and we actually managed to achieve this noble end.
Mark went in the garden and did things on ladders. He wants to make the conservatory watertight. It has still got some bits of the roof missing. This is mostly because he has not finished building his solar water heater, and he can’t put the roof up until that is installed. However there is also the detail that we need to purchase some more glass panels and, as explained in the first paragraphs, we don’t have any money.
He thinks that he will stick some boards up as a temporary measure. We have got several of these that until recently were serving as shelves in the boot cupboard.
This afternoon, with some banging and swearing, he put some of them on to the roof.
I painted the living room ceiling.
I did not paint all of it. By the time we had got dressed and I had done all of the usual maintenance tedium of putting clothes into the washing machine and emptying coffee pots, there was really not a lot of day left.
I painted most of it.
Even so I am going to have to paint those bits again tomorrow. It was terribly grim.
It is much better now. I mean really much better. Even with only half of it done it is as if a dark cloud has been lifted from the living room.
The day flew past, which they do when they are only a couple of hours long, and soon it was time for work.
Mark went to work and I got dinner ready.
Usually going to work on a Saturday afternoon is something that you do when you fancy a long peaceful sit on the taxi rank by the lake with a good book.
As luck would have it, today was different.
It was the official Switching On of Ambleside’s Christmas lights.
I think perhaps Ambleside Council has not realised that we are nowhere near Christmas yet. We have still got six weeks to go. I know this because of our sums this morning.
They switched the lights on all the same, and lots of people wanted taxis.
We have created some unseasonably decent amounts of money tonight.
Maybe we will have a good Christmas after all.
Have a picture of the preparations so far.
