Population: 2

I have been so busy I would have put the bees to shame, and at the moment of writing I have not finished yet.

I have started writing these words at half past eight in the evening. Dinner, I think, will follow in about an hour when Lucy turns up.

Poor Lucy has been driving for ages and ages. She rang me to tell me that she was setting off at five in the afternoon, and she is not here yet.

It is such a terribly long way.

Obviously it is not a long way on the scale of Gordonstoun sort of long way. That is a long way multiplied by another long way, but it is long enough when you have had a busy day at work, full of shouting and arresting people.

I have been engaged in less dramatic sorts of activities. I have been cleaning up.

I have been cleaning up the debris left over from having Mark, Oliver, Lucy and Ritalin Boy in the house for the last week.

I have not included me in that list because obviously I do not leave debris. I am the soul of tidiness.

I started at the very top of the house and worked my way downwards. This was an extra level of tidying because normally I do not bother about the loft, but this time it had as many biscuit crumbs and apple-juice puddles and dog-smelling sheets as everywhere else.

I stripped sheets and bundled them up with the towels and hurled them down the stairs, where they landed on the dog, who did not seem to notice. This was Roger Poopy’s father, who had been left behind to enjoy the dog-cushion to himself whilst Roger Poopy buzzed off with Pepper to clown about in the woods.

I hoovered and washed things and cleaned all of the windows.

Halfway around Oliver’s room the hoover broke.

There was a dreadful screeching sound and a terrible smell, and it refused to go any further.

I am an Independent Woman, so I dug out a screwdriver in case it was something that might be fixed with a trip to the ironmonger’s, like the belt, but it wasn’t.

I had to go and borrow the Peppers’ hoover.

This was one of the sort that you pull along by the hose and that has a smug smirk on its red face.

It was a jolly good hoover, in that it practically sucked the carpets off the floor, but its operation required a degree of dexterity that turned out to be completely beyond me. Somehow everywhere I went pictures went crashing to the ground and bowls got knocked off tables and the tiresome thing smirked the whole time.

I was not sorry when I had worked my way down to the cellar and hoovered my way out into the conservatory.

Even then I still managed to knock a plant over.

Mark took our hoover to bits this evening whilst we were waiting for Lucy. He said that the motor has been fried. This does not surprise me. It was a very upsetting noise, rather like a shriek of misery, with which I have to say I had some sympathy, and it incorporated a cloud of dust and an unhappy sort of smell.

He has ordered another motor, which should arrive in a week or so, so I will have to try not to mind about not hoovering anything for a while.

LATER NOTE:   Lucy arrived at that moment, and we had a happy dinner in the conservatory all together, listening to stories about police misadventures and drug-related rascalliness, until somehow it was very late indeed and we are going to bed even though I have not finished writing to you.

I am going now anyway.

Have a picture of the noticeboard at the top of the children’s stairs.

The population has risen to 2 again.

I am happy about that.