Almost completely paintless

The picture is my reassurance that I will be All Right In My Old Age.

It is a picture of some pastries made by the Mrs. Number Two Daughters, who have been on their cookery course after all.

Number Two Daughter did not do any off the pastry rolling, obviously, because of her dog-inflicted wounds, although I am pleased to say that she managed the swimming pool in the hotel by putting a rubber glove on and sticking it to her arm with gaffer tape.

Swimming and dinner in an hotel. I feel like a Greek peasant watching a film about James Bond, what a magnificently hedonistic life.

There are lots of similar pictures. Some of them are of Danish pastries. The Mrs. Number Two Daughters have learned to do all of these things, and so when I get too decrepit to cook my own breakfast I am going to go to Canada and live with them.

It is a cheering thought.

As you know, the plan for the day was that I would paint Oliver’s bedroom, and indeed I have, a little bit, except it is only a little bit, just the corner of the ceiling really. It is nowhere near finished and ready for Thursday, when he will be evicted from the room next door.

It is not finished because I was horribly distracted.

When I was bringing in the firewood this morning, I realised that the remaining stack in the yard had dwindled to almost none.

This could be a terrible calamity, because of course without the fire we have got no heating at all.

Of course I could have dealt with it just by pointing it out to Mark, who would have hastily sawn up some of Number One Son-In-Law’s skirting boards in the house that they are building, or something.

Mark has gone to build the house again today. He was supposed to be installing rural broadband, but everything that needs to be installed is stuck in terrible queues at Calais whilst the French decide what colour ink they would like the lorry drivers to use on the form, and whether or not they are allowed to take their sandwiches with them. Hence no deliveries have arrived and they do not have anything that they can put in anywhere, a bit like the French and their vaccine programme.

Fortunately, fortunately, thank goodness, he can still work for Number One Son-In-Law, and so we will not have to tighten our belts and become lean for a little while longer just yet.

It would be ages before I became lean anyway.

I did not wait for Mark to bring the firewood. I am an Independent Woman, and can collect my own firewood. In any case, I reminded myself virtuously, it is most unfair to expect Mark to saw up firewood as well as going to work and making the coffee in the mornings and rebuilding chests of drawers.

Also the sun was shining and the birds were singing. It was a truly wonderful almost-spring day, and I absolutely did not want to waste it painting Oliver’s boring bedroom ceiling.

I do not do independence in the rain. That is why I got married.

Oliver was having his Fit And Healthy break from school, and agreed, with some reluctance, to come with me, because his computer game was not working properly.

We spent a happy couple of hours at the farm, breathing in the smells of soil and hay, mingled with the glorious scent of split pine. I split the logs up and Oliver stacked them in the back of the taxi. When we had finished he asked if he could drive the taxi back as far as the gate. This was an alarming development, it is quite astonishing how many hazards you suddenly spot in an empty field when you are suddenly being piloted by an enthusiastic novice.

In the event we missed the stack of logs and the bench and all of the sheep, and landed on the road feeling pleased with ourselves. I told him he could drive whenever he comes and helps me with the logs, and felt like an expert negotiator.

In any case it might prove to be an economical measure. Lucy’s driving lessons cost us an absolute fortune.

He sloped off after that, making afternoon-school noises, but it was really because he wanted to make the most of the last five minutes of freedom playing on his computer before the alarm went for the physics lesson. He is playing a game called Corn, or Garn, or Gorm. I can never quite remember which is is, and hence can only ask generic questions about it in order not to give away my ignorance of the things that matter to young people.

I unloaded all of the logs and stacked them up, and then went off to stand in the irritating queue outside the post office, which always makes me feel as though I should be wearing a headscarf and carrying a shopping basket filled with black bread.

After that I took a parcel to the garage, because of free enterprise and the post office not having a monopoly any more, and the man in the garage told me that he has not earned any money at all since September. I do not much like the man in the garage, because he shouts at taxi drivers who hang about on the forecourt waiting for people to come out of the shop next door, but today I felt terribly sorry for him. He looked weary and grey and cold, and I thought that perhaps I might go there to buy milk from now on, every little helps.

In the end I had to go back indoors, and dragged my reluctant feet up to Oliver’s room to start on the painting.

He looked at me in some surprise.

You can’t paint in here now, he said. I’m having a dance lesson.

So I didn’t.