I am writing this quickly before I go to work.
In fact I am not just about to go to work. I am actually hoping to go back to bed.
It is Saturday night, night of merriment and joyous hedonism in Windermere, and I am rather hoping that we are going to be busy. I am especially hoping this, because last night was a night of tranquil ambling and going to bed early, and the taxi trade was unadulterated rubbish.
The only thing is that I have got a full day of classes tomorrow and I do not want to be turning up with massive black circles around my eyes, although it is always possible I will get into a fight later, I suppose. Also for some reason when I am tired my face goes bright red and stays that way. I do not know why this is but it looks ridiculous on Zoom, and so I am hoping for a pre-emptive sleep.
Therefore you have got five minutes of my very limited time and I am going to stop.
Not that anything very thrilling has happened. We took some blokes back last night whom I had written off as being full of drugs, because they were rowdy, incoherent and alarming, but in the end they turned out just to be young and over-excited and noisy. They were doing a weekend’s climbing and were just thrilled to be together and on their holidays. I liked them, although felt mildly sympathetic towards the local bouncers, who had not, and who had searched them for drugs, albeit unsuccessfully, and then slung them out of everywhere.
Other than that it was a very quiet night, interrupted by occasionally dashing back home to sling the dogs into the yard, because Rosie has the bladder control one might expect from an excited puppy, and quite simply cannot last until the nightclub closes. Roger Poopy’s father is most affronted by being expected to rise from his slumbers on his comfortable cushion every couple of hours, and be unceremoniously dispatched into the yard, but you can’t please everybody etc.
Mark has taken all the dogs and gone off to the farm, to my massive relief, because none of them are helpful when I am doing housework. He is planting his vegetable garden ready for the coming apocalypse, because according to the august Daily Telegraph the rail unions are about to go on strike and there will be nothing in the shops again for ages. This is massively irritating, and I had no idea that so much of our stuff got shifted by trains. I thought they just did Cheap Rate Returns to London and nuclear waste.
Already it has become impossible to get sunflower oil. I have heard it said lately that it is probably good for people not to be able to get everything they want all of the time, which to be honest I think is probably one of the stupidest opinions I have ever heard. Without sunflower oil I can’t make soap or mayonnaise, no other oil has the right consistency. I could make them, but they would be rubbish, and greasy, and heavy, fit only for desperate peasants, and I can see no reason whatsoever why this might be considered good for me or for anybody else.
I like having full supermarket shelves and a wide range of choice. If we have to do without, well we have to, but I am not going to pretend that this is in some way beneficial. It is backward and rubbish, and I am cross about it.
I have still got a bottle of sunflower oil left, and I am hoarding it, in true besieged-peasant style. Probably it will have to be used for mayonnaise, because we can buy soap, but not garlic-and-tomato mayonnaise, which is good on sandwiches, especially with Wensleydale cheese.
Perhaps I had better not rant. Thinking about sandwiches has made me realise that I have not finished getting our picnics ready, which I need to do before we sleep.
I have made sesame-and-prawn toast, on thick slabs of home-made bread, ready to go in the oven, and a huge jug of peppery red chai tea.
It will be splendid even if the night turns out to be really quiet.
