It has been a day of excitement, probably not helped along by a somewhat fragile sensation around the temples.
Of course we woke up still in Lancaster, actually to Roger Poopy squeaking frantically to be allowed to leave the camper van. Mark went with him, somewhat reluctantly, but it turned out that his reasoning was not related to a passing and nicely-scented lady dog, but to a digestive emergency, so we were glad that we had not merely ignored him.
I think the digestive emergency was caused in any case by my having given him some gone-off prawns the night before. I found these in the back of the fridge and chucked them in his bowl before we left, and so he can hardly be blamed.
We had a slow and restorative coffee, accompanied by some quiet recovery, and eventually chugged off to Crooklands, where we parked at the roadside and took the dogs for a recuperative stroll along the canal.
By the time we got back, Roger Poopy was thoroughly emptied, and we had lost his father and had to go back to look for him. It turned out that he had not fallen in the canal, merely neglected to notice that we had not continued for a further half a mile along the towpath, and was quite surprised to see us approaching from behind him.
We stopped at Asda, which took ages because of encountering another taxi driver in the car park, and having to discuss the wickedness of the local council at some length, and then I got home to discover a financial misfortune.
It was not even the first one of the day, although the first had been quickly sorted out. The second involved prolonged discussion with the Inland Revenue. That is to say, I waited in their telephone-queueing system for an hour, and then it took me a further hour of panicked explanation after that.
They had suddenly decided that I owed them a fortune, which I had a week to pay or Face The Consequences.
I had been entirely convinced that we were completely paid up, and was very upset.
Eventually I discovered that in fact they had been crediting massive lumps of the cash which I had paid to them into Mark’s account, with the result that Mark was creditably and virtuously in credit by a small fortune, and I was about to be sent to prison.
I was not able to tell if this was my fault or theirs, but it was an anxious sort of homecoming.
Of course in the end the very patient chap worked it all out, and promised that they would not send the bailiffs round but would return Mark’s overpayment so that we could have another go at paying it into my account.
I offered to pay it there and then with Mark’s credit card, but he said that this was not the way that Her Majesty’s Government works, and declined.
We were so relieved that we collapsed in front of the fire with a cup of tea and lit a candle to the Money Gods, whom we felt that we might have displeased in some way. Then Mark went outside to continue welding things to his log splitter, and I made sushi.
I do not know what he is going to do with his log splitter, by the way. It is so huge and heavy that it is almost completely immovable. I do not know how he is going to get it out of the garden and into the car in order to transport it to the farm. I will keep you posted.
I have never made sushi before, but was completely inspired by my friend Kate and her forays into Korean cooking, and also it is £3.75 in Sainsbury’s for a tiny handful of titchy little bits, so I thought I would have a go. Actually it is not as difficult as it looks, except that I did not quite judge the quantities right and now we have got sushi which could only be described as bite-sized if you happened to be a timber wolf.
I expect that it will taste perfectly all right anyway, and Mark laughed a great deal but agreed that it was entirely edible, and for £3.75 there is absolutely lots and lots of it, so that is another victory for Good Living On A Budget.
Incidentally I have heard back from Cambridge about the Masters’s’ qualification thingy, and they have just said that there are half a million applications. They will be interviewing a very tiny number, and offering places to an even tinier number, and they would let me know at the end of February if I am suitable for an interview, but not to hold my breath.
I was downcast, but Mark said that it is the standard letter that they probably send out every year, and it means nothing.
I don’t suppose it does mean anything, but equally I suppose I had better not hold my breath.
It seems to be a very long time until the end of February.
