Lucy rang last night to tell us that she had been sent home from work again.
This was not because she is naughty, the way it might be if it was school, but because of not having any voice, which, as you might recall, has disappeared into a sort of squeaky croak in the aftermath of having bat flu.
The sergeant decided that there is no point in having a policeman who cannot even shout Stop Thief, never mind say long and complicated things like, So Where Were You On The Night Of The Murder? and told her to go home until Thursday.
Lucy was both upset, because she likes work, and relieved, because she is not very well. All the same it is a good thing, because I expect that now she will get some sleep and get ready to move house. This is happening on Wednesday and we are going to go and help, hence all of the trailer preparation and fuss. We do not think we can squeeze an entire household of beds and chairs and wardrobes into the camper van, so we are going to take the trailer and hope that it does not rain.
Oliver rang again as well, as something of an afterthought. This time it was to ask for some advice about the best way to manage a problem he was having at school. I gave him the best advice I could think of, and then of course thought of loads more later, but of course it was too late by then. I don’t suppose I will ever find out what he did about it.
Mark laughed when I told him and said that trying to follow the children’s lives is like reading a book from a jumble sale which has had half of the pages torn out. You just get to an interesting bit and it all stops and you never find out what happened next.
I did not have much time to think about it in any case, because we were busy at work. It was long past midnight when we finished, and I had become so stuck in the folded-up driving position that I could hardly get out. I was halfway around the Library Gardens with the dogs before I straightened up properly.
We did not have to get up early this morning, so we didn’t, and even then we sat in bed drinking coffee for ages.
I put the fruit in the muslin to strain. You can see this in the picture. The thing about doing fruit is that you have got to be quick, before it starts to go mouldy. We are going to go away next week, and I can’t leave it, so I am going to have to hurry.
I am very tempted to squeeze it, to make it faster, but of course I won’t because this would make it go cloudy.
I made potato cakes and coconut prawns whilst Mark carried on with his trailer-fixing activities There was a lot of banging and sawing in the yard, and then he took the dogs and buzzed off to the farm, leaving the yard so full of clutter that I could hardly hang the washing out.
I did hang the washing out anyway, and then had to dash home from work in a tearing hurry when the skies darkened in a terrible thunderstormy-threatening way later on. This was rather an athletic sort of scramble because of the clutter, a bit like an assault course with rusty things included, and I am sorry to say that there was some swearing, so I hope that the neighbours were out.
In any case it turned out to be a waste of panic because it did not rain, and ten minutes later the sun beamed its gentle autumn smile again.
As I write these words it is looking threatening again.
I don’t care any more.
Have a picture of some unprocessed jelly.
