I am in an advanced state of melted.
This is not because of the improvement in the weather and the sudden efficiency of the heating system. It is because I have already had the melting down bit, and now I am post melting down, which logically, is melted.
I am melted.
The day seems to have been a cacophony of things not going the way that they were supposed to go.
This is not true really, because I had a perfectly acceptable start to the day in which I prepared everybody’s breakfast with such trouble-free effectiveness that I felt myself to be an entirely capable and multi-functional individual.
How smug I was.
I emptied the dogs with almost no difficulty at all, although Roger Poopy got into a fight with a terrier, and had to be hauled off and bellowed into cringing submission. I do not know what the terrier said to him. He looked to me as though he was just walking past inoffensively.
It started to go wrong when I came home.
My carefully-considered plan for the day was to get our lives perfectly organised so that we could go and appear in court in Carlisle tomorrow without the smallest possible worry about what might be happening whilst we were absent.
Dinner had to be prepared and stashed in the fridge, firewood had to be left to fulfil all of the children’s heating requirements, and some contingency plan had to be made for the dogs.
This last is going to be dumped on the Peppers. I did not have the smallest intention of taking them with us. I do not know how the Queen has managed all of these years of public appearance without ever having a last-minute corgi-supplied ladder in her tights, because it happens to me every time. I only need to think about Roger Poopy and I get a paw print on my trousers.
This is almost true, actually. He has got a very splendid command of English, so we have to try and disguise our intentions in other language. This morning I said to Lucy that I was going to take the You-Know-Whats for a You-Know-What, and Roger Poopy leaped to his feet and rushed to the door in excitement.
Once all of that was dealt with, our carefully prepared Trustworthy Outfits had to be brushed down and made ready, and all scents of the black mould from the loft had to be completely eliminated. How terrible to turn up in court with a perfectly coiffured appearance but for everything to smell as though it was three years since the last time you needed to be smart for anything.
Also I had got to find some shoes.
I washed my car first.
This was because it had got completely sprayed in mud when I fought my way up the field to the farm the other day. The previous sentence does not give you a muddy enough picture. It looked like a Dalmatian.
It was so muddy that several people stopped me in the back alley and asked what on earth had happened to it.
I washed the mud off and went to Booths for some interesting cheese.
This was so that we could have a day in court with mid-day refreshment if we wanted it. I always want it. I have not become this portly without being enthusiastic about mid day refreshment.
Interesting cheese and crackers, that was the thing, so I went to Booths.
Once there I remembered other necessary but costly accessories for a journey, like grapes and jelly babies, and things that we had run out of, like eggs and carrots, and by the time I came home I had spent twenty quid.
I know that should read: things out of which I have run, but it makes me sound as if I am a BBC newsreader from the nineteen forties. The point is that it is my diary and I can say what I like.
I had just started making the Two Day Pudding when the phone rang, and it was the lady from the court telling me that they were running behind schedule and our appearance had been postponed until the day after.
We have got to be there first thing on Thursday morning.
This threw all of my carefully prepared plans into complete disarray. We will have burned the firewood and eaten the pudding by then.
We can’t possibly get to Carlisle for ten o’clock in the morning without getting up in the middle of the night.
We have got children to get ready for school.
We will have worn the set-aside underwear.
Everything will have to be done differently. We will have to bring in firewood for the children either in the middle of the night in the dark, or first thing in the morning which will cover our smart clothes in sawdust.
I flapped around being at a loss, and a little while later Mark rang to say he was coming home early.
Dinner was not ready.
Pudding was not ready.
I had not hoovered the bedroom.
I flapped about some more.
In the end Mark came home and said that we would have to travel to Carlisle in the camper van tomorrow night, so that we will be there and ready for an early start on Thursday. He will go to work tomorrow and I can get our clothes ready. We will shower before we go, and travel in some scruffy clothes, and put our smart ones on in the morning. Above all, I was to stop flapping around because it would be fine.
We spoke to the children.
We will have to leave them all alone in the house for the whole night, on their little own. Obviously I was worried that things might go wrong. How dreadful it would be if they were hungry, or lonely, or scared, or cold.
Lucy said that she is twenty years old and a police officer.
Oliver said that he is fifteen years old, and spends most of his life at boarding school.
Mark said that it would be a week or so before the tuck drawer runs out, and they will be quite all right.
I am going to try not to worry.
It will all be fine.
Have a picture of Roger Poopy, taken by the Peppers.
He is smiling.
