This is going to turn into an abbreviated diary entry because I have inadvertently run out of day.
Also inadvertently, I have become intoxicated.
This last was due to the arrival of Number One Son-In-Law, who is staying with us for a few days. When I say that it is due to him, I do not mean that it was his fault. He did not enforce compulsory wine drinking with a villainous ‘ha ha ha’.
The thing was that he turned up, and I was so pleased to see him and to listen to his stories that I accidentally drank three glasses of wine, and now I am feeling mildly fuzzy around the edges. Certainly I am not in the incisive and probing state of mind necessary for composing thoughtful and provocative prose.
I am not sure that I am ever in that state of mind, actually.
Number One Son-In-Law has come to visit whilst working on his house in Barrow. He is staying with us, at least in the sense of camping in his van in the street outside and then buzzing off to work first thing in the morning.
I feel ridiculously concerned about his camping outside in the street. I do not know why this is, because it is exactly what we do whenever we visit any of our relatives, but all the same I am mildly anxious about it, it would be awful if he was cold or needed to visit the bathroom.
Not to worry. Onwards and upwards.
The chief incident of not today has been that Roger Poopy disgraced himself on our walk this morning. He rushed over to another dog and flung himself on it savagely, like a policeman catching a villain in a made-on-a-budget television drama.
The other dog’s owner was not pleased, although the dog was unhurt. She was not pleased, but I can tell you that her crossness was nothing to mine.
Roger Poopy was quaking in repentant terror by the time I had finished bellowing at him.
I grabbed his collar and shook him. Then I rolled him on his back and bawled my fury into his face.
This was not very dignified. I have never seen the Queen doing it to a naughty corgi.
I think that everybody in the entire park must have heard me, because nobody came anywhere near us for all of the rest of our walk.
Roger Poopy was made to slink along at my heels with his tail between his legs.
Pepper, who had been a good dog, and who had not viciously attacked anybody else’s fluffy cute Pomeranian lap dog, was also sufficiently intimidated to behave impeccably, and the rest of the walk was rather uncomfortably subdued.
When we got home Roger Poopy hid under the table in the conservatory until I had calmed down, which took some time.
In the end I relented, and he was allowed to go and spend the rest of the day with Pepper, which suited me, because it was a happy excuse for a cup of tea chez Pepper, and a contented shirk for half an hour.
The picture is Oliver at school. At least, I think it is Oliver. It is hard to tell at this distance and it is ages since I have seen him. They have had a leave out weekend, which would normally be a holiday if only it were not for bat flu.
School had to think of something to do with hundreds of bored teenagers for a compulsory stay-at-home weekend, and came up with Nerf gun wars all over the grounds.
I thought that this was ingenious, and much better than smoking drugs on a bench in the Library Gardens, which is what Windermere’s bored teenagers seem to do.
Thank goodness for school.
