The sun shone today, to my profound relief, because it was Clean Sheets Day.
I expect you read these pages because of the nail-biting suspense and cliff-hanging adventures.
Well, I shall put you out of your misery now. It did not rain until I was just hauling the very last pillowcase off the line, and then a few light spots sprinkled down, not even enough to spoil a newspaper.
It was such gentle, unassuming rain that if my washing had not already been dry, I might have considered hanging it out in it anyway, in the hope that it would still get a bit drier.
Every drop of water that does not finish up in the house is a bonus.
Anyway, almost all the drops of water finished up back in the atmosphere today, instead of becoming fodder for black mould on the bedroom windowsill. I was very pleased, I can tell you. I have become fed up of the hems of my trouser legs being soggy and cold whenever they touch my ankles.
I have celebrated by buying a new coat on eBay. New to me, that is. I have not got an outdoor coat at the moment, at least, not one that I would like to wear when accompanied by the dogs. Obviously I have got some beautiful smart ones, to be worn to school and to the theatre and on any other occasion when I might wish to disguise myself as a middle class person.
I have had a dog-walking coat, but it has become so scruffy that Mark has now inherited it to wear whilst mending the taxis. I bought another one some time ago, but it disappeared when Lucy went back to Northampton.
Hence I have been getting wet for the last week or two, because obviously it is not an omission that one notices very much between May and August, but one that is quite significant once the autumn winds start puffing down the alley.
Obviously I did not want to get my beautiful dry-clean-only coats covered in dog paw prints and mud. Neither did I want to wear the one that is now so scruffy that if I were to sit on the bench with the dogs on a string, instead of letting them mill about just as they like, people would kindly put fifty pence pieces into my coffee cup.
Today I bought a splendid compromise coat. It is a beautiful bright blue, with a corduroy collar, and so is middle class enough to be worn when we spend a few days in the camper van. Despite this it is still second hand, and so I will not mind in the least when Roger Poopy leaps up and spits his dribble-laden ball into my lap.
Probably it will wipe clean anyway.
I did not go for a long walk today, despite the sunshine, because I had so many things that I needed to do.
I rushed around and made biscuits and fudge and a honey cheesecake. Then I hoovered the middle floor, which has needed doing for ages, thank goodness the top two floors are empty so I don’t need to bother. I was just starting to tug the sheets off the washing line when there was a tap at the garden gate and an old friend poked his head around it.
We have not seen him for years, not for ages and ages. Many years ago, when we lived in Coniston, he used to have a little business, coming around all of the villages and renting first videos, and a few years later, DVDs, out of the back of a van.
How funny that seems now, in our magical age of Netflix.
Of course we used to rent films from him every week. Indeed, it was an exciting and important part of our week. When a new film came out we would all hope that we might be early enough in his round for him still to have a copy left.
Quite often he didn’t, though, because we were at the end of his round and he used to come and have dinner with us when he had finished.
Numbers One And Two Daughters were teenagers, and Lucy was but a little squirt, and my weekly DVD bill cost me considerably more than my entire film watching budget for a month now. We hired everything ever made by Disney, and Lucy watched it and watched it. One film was called Shrek, which she enjoyed so much that eventually we bought our own copy, which she watched until everybody in the household could recite it, and her teenage sisters hated it with a violent passion.
The weekly videos and dinner were a happy part of life, and we stayed friends long after the mighty Internet had seeped into that corner of our lives, washing videos and DVDs away. He took the van to France then, and he and Mark filled it with the last things out of our French house, and lots of red wine and cheese.
In the end we lost touch, until today.
I was very pleased to see him, and to hear that he is well, and happy. There is no better visitor than one who knows your children, and is not just polite, but is actually interested in what they have done with their lives, and I am pleased to say that I made the very most of the opportunity, until he wasn’t interested any more.
I was late for work afterwards, but it didn’t matter.
It was a very nice moment in my afternoon.
