Once again, things are tootling along at a rattling good pace.
We have got the Christmas tree up.
That is to say, it is up in the sense that it has been stuck in a bucket of water and anchored to the ceiling. We have not yet finished decorating it.
Actually we haven’t really started decorating it. We made the colossal mistake of having scrambled eggs for breakfast, because the weather was so vile, and washed it down with cup of chai tea and a glass of Highland Park single malt. This did not exactly create the mood for busily productive activity afterwards, although it was absolutely splendid. We had a mince pie as well, and thought that life had no more happiness to offer.
We had been for a stroll around the park with the dogs, and the weather had been completely ghastly, the sort of stinging rain that isn’t quite snow, and an icily brisk breeze. We were cocooned in jerseys and coats, and felt like Scott of the Antarctic, bravely striding into the wind, but the dogs do not do positive visualisations, and were glad to dash back inside, to their dish of walnuts.
Roger Poopy tried to bring one into our bed this morning. The dogs are allowed on the bed, on an old towel, whilst we have coffee, and it is their favourite part of the day. This morning Roger Poopy thought that he might improve on perfection by bringing a walnut with him to crunch up, and was disappointed to learn that we disagreed. Mark extracted it from his firmly clamped jaws and put it on the table, and he spent the rest of coffee time staring longingly at it and making sad little noises.
We were implacable. I do not think that restful sleep would be facilitated by the presence of shards of walnut shell and dog dribble.
We sat in front of the stove for a little while, with our feet comfortably stretched out on the hearth, contemplating the forthcoming adventures of the next few weeks, and appreciating the mild post-whisky numb sensation, before deciding that really we ought to be doing better than this, and I went upstairs to start piecing together our Christmas card.
I do not know what Mark was doing. He will have been occupied, because he always is, he is rubbish at being bored, although maybe he had a little snooze.
Anyway, I collapsed into my office to start squinting at the screen and searching for appropriately festive images which might be transformed into a Christmas card.
This took ages, and filled my computer memory up so much that after a while it accidentally deleted the lot, and left me swearing impotently at the uselessness of technology. I am going to have to start again tomorrow.
Please remember this if you get a Christmas card from us. It has been the product of much tongue-sticking-out and a Worried Mind.
In the end I thought I might be better to give up until I was in a better frame of mind, and turned my attention to some classwork for my university course. We have got a full day school tomorrow. I am looking forward to this very much, although of course the nightclub will be open tonight and we will not be in bed until some time after tomorrow has started, so it will very probably be another day of coffee and yawning.
I couldn’t concentrate on that either, probably because of the Highland Park, so I went downstairs and gave Mark a haircut.
This is always a good thing to do if you are too drunk to be successful at anything else.
In fact it was probably my most successful project of the day, which is just as well because we have got some smart Going Out to do over the next few weeks. We have got the carol service at Oliver’s school, and several trips to hotels and theatres, and it would not do to look as if I was married to a member of the National Front.
We strung the lights around the Christmas tree and put some taxi picnic into boxes and came out to work.
We are doing jolly well at the moment. Every day we are getting a little closer.
We might be organised in time after all.
