Last minute

I am finding it difficult to get round to writing this tonight.

Every time I have tried I have been side tracked into just adding another few words to a story that I have started to write for a competition, and which is occupying enough of my attention to make me very dull company at the moment.

I have just this very minute forced myself to switch away from it, because time is getting on, and nothing is worse than reaching half past one in the morning and getting that sinking realisation that I have not even started to write to you.

However I am here now, so here goes.

Today has been a brilliant day for the Number Two  Daughters. The Gods have decided to shower them with happiness today. They jolly well deserved this after being so kind and buying my course books for me, probably it is karma.

Today they have been granted the right to reside permanently in Canada. They do not ever need to come back to the UK.

Obviously they will come back to the UK, but only for things like funerals and the sort of occasional visit where you do a lightening tour of all of your friends and relatives, and finish up exhausted, sick of driving up and down motorways, and very relieved to be going home.

They are very happy indeed.

Now that it is all official they can do properly settled down things like getting a dog and buying a house. They want to do both very much.

I think it is brilliant news.

In other news, I have finally cleaned Oliver’s shoes ready for him to go back to school.

This did not turn out to be the restful exercise for which I was hoping, but a hasty last-minute scrub next to an unlit fire, just before I dashed out to work.

I was cross with Mark about this.

He finished the camper van last night, and this morning refilled the water and gave everything a leisurely check to make sure that all of his new installations are working. I expect you will be relieved to hear that they are, as far as he can tell.

This done, he sauntered back home where I was rushing about the kitchen in a frantic panic trying to get everything finished.

By then I had taken the dogs out and been to Booths and then to Sainsbury’s. I had washed the pots and put the washing in and changed the sheets on Lucy’s bed. I had swept the conservatory and folded all of his shirts and packed the bathroom things.

He settled down comfortably in the fireside chair to tell me all about his camper-van repairing adventures, and was surprised to notice that I was not being at all warm and supportive. Indeed, I was distinctly grumpy.

I was peeling and chopping sweet potatoes to go into the diet fryer, and salting carrots and stirring the coffee-chocolate mix, whilst trying, at the same time, to concoct a ginger and honeycomb cheesecake for pudding for Oliver’s last night.

Washing up was piled high around me, and the shopping was still stacked in bags all over the floor. The laundry was wet and steaming in the basket, and there was a pile of uncleaned shoes in the hearth.

Mark thought he should perhaps do something to make me feel better, and settled on cleaning the windows.

I did not murder him, but I imagined it, quite vividly, which was nearly as good.

In the end, after some shouting, he washed the pots and cleaned some of the shoes, and we came out to work.

I have not packed even now.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.