I am all alone.
Mark has gone off to work, and is still there, even though it is now evening.
Obviously he is not driving a taxi. Even if the expected millions had turned up in the Lake District this weekend, which actually it appears they didn’t, thank goodness, there is still nowhere to take people.
He has gone to Barrow, where Number One Son-In-Law has bought a house. He has bought it very cheaply and hence there are quite a few bits missing, which is what happens with second-hand houses.
Mark is quite good at cobbling together crumbly old houses, and so he has gone off to do some helpful bashing it back into the appropriate shape.
Obviously this means that he is not bashing our house back into its appropriate shape, but I am not exactly sorry about this. It has given me a breathing space to cook things and clean sawdust off things, and restore order to my life without having Mark under my feet.
I like being married but he does take up a lot of room.
Anyway, the point of the whole exercise is that there might be some financial advantage for us in this activity at some time soon. Hence I was very keen, although accepting cash from one’s daughter is going to be almost as humiliating as accepting it from one’s parents. I can’t tell you how much I miss having a job.
I still don’t have a job, by the way, the Co-op sent me an email informing me that I had not been selected to stack shelves and check the temperature of the fridges on this occasion.
I am ashamed to tell you that the relief was massive. There are plenty of reasons why I have never been ambitious for a career in retail, and all of them have paraded themselves in front of me this week whilst I have been wondering about the outcome of the interview. I had been growling to myself with personal resentment at being obliged to desist from my perfectly acceptable job, which has kept me floating if not exactly solvent for almost twenty five years, and forced to go and wear a uniform and sell scratch cards and cigarettes behind a socially distanced perspex panel. I do not think I would ever have forgiven Boris.
Also I suspect the Co-op were perfectly capable of working out that I was entirely likely to slope off as soon as the pubs reopened and a career in public transport shone before me again. This is a small village and the Co-op manager is married to a taxi driver. Some conclusions can be reached with very little research, and I expect that was one of them.
Anyway, it was a weight from my shoulders, and I approached the rest of the day with glad cheer.
I took the dogs for a bounce around the park, them, not me, obviously, but we were so late after the unfamiliar experience of dashing about getting ready for work, that none of their friends were there. Roger Poopy was especially forlorn at this discovery, and moped about glumly, refusing even to chase his ball.
Fortunately this was remedied this evening, when I popped across the road to empty them in the Library Gardens at teatime. We had only been there for a very few minutes when there was a crashing through the bushes, and the pounding of excited paws, and it was Roger’s friend Pepper, or Pippa if you have a South African accent like her nice owner.
She had heard us going past and made a fuss at the door until she was brought out to join us.
They charged about joyfully, at absolute full pelt, around and around the grass, like very small racehorses, whilst we stood in the middle and watched them until we were dizzy. In the end they were too exhausted to carry on, and we were able to persuade them to part company with no trouble at all. Roger Poopy ate a massive dinner when we got back, and then collapsed. He has not moved from in front of the fire ever since.
I came home and made the bed up. I had washed the sheets and stuck them on the line this morning, but a tiresome bird did a poo on them, and I had to wash them again, so they took ages to be dry.
Dinner is on the stove, and there is a tin of home-made chocolate biscuits in the fridge.
I have restored some order to my life.
I haven’t taken a picture.
Have a picture of the Library Gardens.
