My current bedtime reading is a rather gentle book written by a lady who dresses, and designs clothes for, the Queen.
I have started reading it in the hope that I will feel inspired to create an outfit that exudes honesty and integrity, for the benefit of the court appearance in a week or so.
For the benefit of any new readers, I am not on trial, although I am prepared to concede that these pages would make far more interesting reading if I was. I am going to be a witness, and I will need to do something to counteract the inevitable dodgy impression that will be created by turning up in the camper van.
If you are a new reader there is a picture at the bottom of this page.
It does not look as though the Queen ever needs to pick her clothes especially to look as though she is a pillar of respectability. She can turn up in wellies if she likes and it will not make any difference.
I think I had better not do this in court.
There was no inspiration to be had. The closest was an account of a visit to the Pope, who is not going to be in Carlisle Crown Court, so I will have to carry on with Plan A, which is to hunt frantically through my wardrobe the day before and hope that I can find something with an elastic waistband.
I was pleased by the passing reflection that the Queen reads the Daily Telegraph, and so, in an unexpected reversal of roles, she might read about my daily activities.
I will have to ask if they can include my diary bits on the racing pages just to make sure.
Mark did not go to work this morning.
It is his second day off this week. He is going to work on Saturday and Sunday to make up for lost time. Obviously he can’t because that will still only be five days, but we have got some money now, because of my parents, and so it does not matter.
He stayed at home because Oliver’s bedroom had not been painted and Lucy was coming home today.
Her bedroom was bursting at the seams with all of Oliver’s clutter. You could neither open the door to her bathroom nor get into her bed.
We started painting the bedroom earlier on in the week but I had lost interest when I realised that we did not have enough paint to finish it, and that Oliver did not like the colours we had got anyway. These were pink and green, and had been left over from our circus tent decorating project in the summer.
Oliver said that he did not want a pink and green circus tent bedroom, because he is a teenage boy.
I could not think of a reasonable argument with which to contradict this.
I had been disheartened then, because we had got to paint the bedroom with something. The walls were covered with stained yellow patches where the black mould had lived, and big patches of paint had bubbled off completely, and crumbled to dust, leaving patches of bare plaster like in ancient television programmes about black and white tower blocks in Birmingham in the nineteen sixties.
The thing is that he has got to do all of his lessons in there now that Lucy is home, and all the teachers can see right through the computer and into his bedroom.
It would have been almost as embarrassing as having something rude on your bookcase whilst you were reading the news.
When my parents gave us the cash I rang Mark straight away, and he popped round to B & Q for a tin of the turquoise blue that Oliver had liked.
We were just painting the last bits when Lucy came home, which fortuitously was just as Oliver was finishing school. Everything stopped then anyway, and we rushed downstairs to drink tea and listen to stories about being a policeman. These are not nearly as exciting as crime dramas would have you believe, and seem to involve quite a lot of saying: just go home and stop being a nuisance.
It is an absolute happiness to have her back.
The children moved everything back into Oliver’s room, and then sloped off to play games on the computer whilst we tidied up and made dinner.
She has got to spend the next weeks doing university on the computer, just like Oliver is doing school. We have got a sign on their landing which says that it is Oak Street Boarding School, and Lucy has crossed out where Oliver wrote: Population: 1, and written: 2 next to it.
We have a painted bedroom and money in the bank and children upstairs. The hyacinths are opening and smelling wonderful, and the world is a happy place tonight.
Have a picture of the snow, although it has gone now.
