It is such a pleasure to discover a diary entry from my co-author, and I shirked about writing my own entry for ages whilst I read it.
It is a responsibility lifted from my shoulders. If you have not found anything to entertain you either with your cocoa or your cornflakes, depending which sort of reader you are and also whether I have got my act together before bedtime, then it is not my fault. There are now two of us to carry that particular burden.
Also it is jolly good to see what he has been upon to. I know very little more than you about his activities. I do not have a secret channel of insight into his adventures, and I found out what Basher Baiting was because Elspeth told me.
We have had a night off, because November is one of those times when driving a taxi is always a bit of a damp squib. We have reached the autumn void. This comes between the late Short Break weekends which are pictured in advertising features as being stuffed with mists-and-mellow-fruitfulness, and the Christmas parties. In any case everywhere is discouragingly cold and grim. There are neither golden and russet leaves, nor yet Christmas lights and Herald Angels singing on loop tapes .
I looked out of the window and thought how much nicer it would be to stay at home and I don’t suppose I was the only one.
It is something of a holiday for us, because Mark is not working tomorrow either, because they have installed all of their rural broadband equipment and will have to wait for some more to be delivered, so tomorrow is an unexpected holiday.
I think this is a very good thing. We are going to spend it doing some post-inferno reconstruction. Also it might be good to have some quiet time, because Mark had to go to see the nurse the other day, and we have discovered that his blood pressure is very high.
We have got our own blood pressure monitor, and the nurse told him to take his blood pressure several times a day at home, to keep a check on it. You are supposed to sit down quietly and then take the reading several times, until you come up with a reading that you like, a bit like the Liberal Democrats want us to do with the referendum about being in Europe, and write that one down.
We are trying to do this but so far we have not come up with a single reading that is anywhere at all on the spectrum of normal.
We were as alarmed about this as the Liberal Democrats and the referendum, although we have not shouted as much.
I looked it up on the mighty Internet, the blood pressure, not the referendum, and it said that if this happened your doctor might prescribe one of the following three medications. This was not much help because he is already taking all three of the following medications, and there was no mention of what you might do next.
He has got to go and see the doctor on Friday. He does not think that the problem is related to stress, because being eternally bankrupt and having just burned your house down is not at all stressful.
Obviously we did not actually burn the house down. That is an exaggeration for dramatic effect. The inferno was quite small, at least in comparison to Grenfell Tower. However it may have contributed a little to his stress levels, not least before he rang me and was still wondering what I might say about it.
I hope it is all right.
I did not take the picture today. The Number Two Daughters took the dogs out.
This was brilliant because it meant that I had a whole clear gap at the beginning of the day which is usually filled with stumping up the hillside and trying to attract the attention of the dogs. It was wonderful not only to have huge amounts of extra time, but also not to fall over a single dog whilst I was pottering about enjoying it.
It was a bit odd, though. I feel loads better for not having made any effort to be fit. Nothing hurts at all.
I feel positively rejuvenated.
