Mark has had a difficult day at work.
Either they are having a run of technological misfortune or the rascally Russians have hacked into their network and switched some important bits off. I do not exactly know what has gone wrong, but it all sounds fairly terrible. I think perhaps it might even have been President Putin who knocked the aerial over the other week, although we were not at war with him then, so it might have been a pre-emptive strike.
Mark has come home looking weary, and late, and says that it is all hard work. We thought that we might have an early night to get over it, because things are always a bit at sixes and sevens after the weekend, but we thought we would watch a film to help with the recovery process, and then became so engrossed that we forgot, and now it is ten o’clock and we have not even finished emptying the dogs.
Mark has buzzed off to empty the dogs whilst I write to you. I have not just been idling around in front of the computer. I have put everything in the dishwasher and tidied the kitchen as well, so do not worry about unequal divisions of labour. In any case I would happily have gone for a stroll around the Library Gardens if he had felt like writing in these pages in my stead, what a pleasing shirk that would have been.
I have had a day of post-weekend flapping about, which is mostly things like laundry and cooking. Really I should have gone to Asda and bought some shopping, but I didn’t, although I will have to go soon before prices go up any more. Very soon we are going to have to do all shopping early in the morning because by dinner time it will be too expensive.
It was an interesting film. It is on Netflix and is in several parts. We did not watch them all, although I would have liked to, maybe another night, perhaps. It has a person in it with whom I was at college, and I am sorry to say that she has aged rather better than I have, without nearly as many wrinkles, perhaps she has fewer worries. I do not look too bad when I just look in the mirror, but when I get on Zoom on the computer every little crease turns into a huge crumpled chasm, and I look about a hundred years old. I do not mind about this but very soon I am going to turn into the sort of person who everybody ignores because they don’t understand the modern world any more.
I do not understand it now, really.
I have finished writing the Adventures of Alan Dean and his Wonderful Lamp. I do not like Alan Dean, and I thought I had done a good job of hiding it, but Mark said I hadn’t. I do not think that I am allowed to show them to you on here. I think you are not supposed to show your assignment to anybody until you have handed it in. I shall check and if it is all right then I will put them here for your entertainment.
I am not entertained about it. I finished it, and then just had a quick look at Symon the Black again, to see if he might be sculpted down, but he certainly couldn’t, any more than he could yesterday or the day before.
I do not know what I am going to do with him. Leave him in the dark secret recesses of my computer, probably, for the children to delete after I am dead, like a sort of cyber Age Concern. I could finish writing him and then put him on here, perhaps, probably in half a dozen thrilling instalments, like a sort of literary Netflix.
I can hear Mark returning with the dogs.
I am going to go and start getting ready for bed.
