Mark has had a day off.
We were supposed to be working, but somehow at bedtime last night we knew that it just wasn’t going to happen.
I don’t think it is right to say that we were tired, just monumentally and eternally fed up of the whole thing. It is very tiresome indeed to be getting up in the morning and going out to work, every single day, and still having less than half of your usual income.
We decided, before we went to bed, that we had had enough.
It was an unspeakable joy to wake up without the alarm.
As it happened we were woken up by the Co-op wagon unloading what sounded like several tons of scaffolding being dropped from a huge height into the street outside. This did not matter, because it was nearly eight o’clock, and we knew that there was nothing whatsoever to hurry up for. We rolled over and dozed, and it was an utter happiness.
We ambled around the Library Gardens with the dogs. They did not even need a long and energetic walk, because Roger Poopy and Pepper were due to go out on a long charge up the fell side, and Roger Poopy’s father does not like exercise. He has got to the arthritic bad-tempered stage of liking best to be on the cushion in front of the fire, preferably by himself. He does not even move when I have to pull the cushion out of the way to sweep, merely lies and allows himself to be tugged along, like a novice ice-skater partnered with a show-off.
Mark had got a massive long list of jobs that needed doing, because there was firewood to be cut and a picture to be hung and a bit of the conservatory roof to be sealed, but he was so tired that he did not do any of them. Instead we sat companionably by the fireside and cleaned all of the shoes and boots.
This has needed to be done for a while, but is one of the jobs that I have been putting off, because it feels like such a colossal shirk.
Outside the icy rain swept across the yard in little gusts whilst we sat peaceably beside the hearth. We polished and rubbed dubbin into our shoes, and Lucy’s police boots and Mark’s heavy steel toe-caps and my ex-Army boots that I inherited from Number One Daughter, until they all gleamed.
Lucy emerged just as we were finishing, still yawning and rubbing her eyes. She will be going back in a few days and is catching up on sleep before she has got to start keeping the people of Northamptonshire safe from rascals.
After that Mark went outside to faff about in his shed and I went upstairs to get on with some of my ready-for Christmas projects with Lucy, who is busily designing our Christmas card. She has lost her patience with trying to draw hands, and so everybody on the card will have their hands behind their backs, like the Royal Family on walkabout in Australia.
After a while we stopped being creative because of stiff shoulders and Lucy being sick of nineteen seventies pop music being played on the little speaker, so we went downstairs and made a cup of tea instead.
When Mark came in he had sawn up some firewood and repaired my dishing-out spoon. The original handle had come off ages ago, and it has been a dwarf spoon for ages.
He had made a splendid new handle for it, very long in case we invite the Devil for dinner when we are allowed to have visitors again.
As it happens we had a visitor at the time, who was very interested in the spoon.
It was Pepper, who had come to visit Roger Poopy after their long walk, and she likes sticks.
We had to guard the spoon carefully, because she thought that it might be a nice shape just to take into a corner and chew into little pieces. We told her no very firmly, and in the end she had to settle for pinching the sandpaper and sloping off with that. She ate it all so she might have some uncomfortable poo moments in the morning.
The picture is my lovely new repaired spoon. It is the beautiful tall one.
I do not want to go back to work tomorrow. It has been so lovely to all have a day off.
