I have had such a busy day that it is a relief to sit down in front of the computer to write to you.
I almost turned to the august magnificence of the Daily Telegraph for a shirk first, but decided than on the whole I really don’t want to know what fresh horrors are being perpetrated in our Brave New World, and dutifully opened these pages instead.
I seem to have spent the entire day at a run. It is very busy to have everybody at home, and even more so because they are all engaged in productive labours, except me.
Oliver is working hard at school. When I went into his bedroom to change his sheets this morning he was in the middle of a PE lesson. This was being supervised by some ex-PT Corps enthusiast in the computer who was making them lift piles of books with their arms outstretched and whittering in the background about abs and glutes and squats, the way they did to poor old Winston Smith.
Lucy is still writing her essay about drill music and has been attending endless online lectures about the Road Traffic Act.
A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.
Mark has been installing rural broadband. He came home from rural broadband and fixed the handbrake on Lucy’s car. He is doing some welding in the shed now.
I do not envy him at all. It is dark outside, and terribly, terribly cold.
I have been doing everything else.
I started my day by feeding them all. Mark has sausage and cheese sandwiches with fried egg yolks. Oliver has sausages with fried egg whites and toast, and Lucy has toast with cheese on it. There are sandwiches and flasks of tea to be made, and they all have yoghurts and bananas and biscuits.
It feels a bit like the time, years and years ago, when I worked in an hotel for the summer. There seems to be a lot of filling trays and making coffee, until suddenly they have all gone, and the kitchen is quiet.
I like that moment, even though it usually features a huge pile of washing up.
It has not snowed yet, despite the desperate cold, but it might, and so once the laundry was done and the floor swept, the dog and I set off up to the farm to cut firewood.
Roger Poopy had buzzed off with Pepper, so it was just his father, who lay in the watery sunshine and growled at the idea of sheep.
It was so cold that I ran into a molehill instead of over it. It made such a bang that I stopped and jumped out to see what I had hit.
It was rock hard, and left a scrape on the bumper. I looked to see if there might be an actual rock, but there wasn’t, just frozen earth.
I jumped up and down on one after that, to see if it would crumble, but it did not budge. . There are lots of them at the moment. You can see them in the picture.
I managed to get the chainsaw working, but I had forgotten to sharpen it before I set off, and so it was of almost no use whatsoever, and after a couple of blunt hackings at the log stack, also in the picture, I gave up. I will have to come back to that one tomorrow.
Instead I split the bits that are already cut into stove-sized lengths. I can jolly well feel my own abs, or glutes, or whatever they are, starting to complain about it.
I am not exactly sure what abs and glutes are.
I am now. I stopped there and looked them up on the mighty Internet. I do not think my glutes are doing much, but my abs have been quite busy, and I do not know what the word is for shoulders.
Lucy was taking her car for an MOT, and when I got home she helped me unload. Then we took both cars to Kendal and whilst the garage was poking her car about, we went to Asda.
I do not like Asda. We will not talk about that.
We came home to the surprising and joyful discovery of a box of our favourite sort of chocolates on the doormat. They had been sent by Number One Daughter, who is also feeling sad about our lost friend, because she loved him as well. She wanted to do something warm and kind to cheer us up, which it did, although obviously I cried again, because of being happy and sad all at once.
I do seem to be whizzing through handkerchiefs at the moment.
I think it would be lovely if you can see your favourite people again after you die. That would be even better than Facebook. I do hope that it has been arranged.
Lucy’s car failed on a something wrong with the handbrake, which was a mere engineering trifle when Mark came home, and he has fixed it already. It must have been something loose, because we did not even need to buy any more bits for it.
She can take it back tomorrow.
I am going to go and feed them all again.
