I am on the taxi rank and feeling completely wiped out.
There is no actual reason for this, because it has been a lovely day. My parents have been at a bridge-playing weekend in Grange-over-Sands and called to see us on the way home.
We are not at all on their way home, so that was nice of them.
They took us out for lunch, which was nicer still.
The thing was that we had worked last night, and collapsed into bed long after it had become daylight. This is always a surprise when it comes around, summer really is upon us already, despite all the meteorological evidence. There will be a few weeks now when we will be doing the last dog-emptying to the enthusiastic strains of the dawn chorus. I always like this, although it is a jolly good thing that we have got blackout curtains.
We set an early alarm so that we would not simply wake up to the sound of the doorbell ringing and then be obliged to panic. We should have had lots of time to wake up and tidy up and empty the dogs, but somehow I managed to fritter it away.
On the whole we just have two sets of clothes and wear and wash them on alternate days. This is simple and efficient, and saves an awful lot of difficult decision-making. Mine are identical, except that the T-shirts are different shades of blue.
I like my life to be predictable.
The obvious problem was that having been worn incessantly for more or less the last year, our regular clothes have become distinctly less than smart. In fact they have become exceedingly scruffy.
We have got lots of other clothes, but they are not nearly as safe and familiarly comfortable, and when I got out of bed I had a small crisis about which shirt I might like to wear.
Mark is ruthless about this sort of thing. I tried one on and then explained that although it looks quite nice, I hate wearing it because it feels like static electricity, so he put it in the bin. I flapped a bit about this, but he is right, there is no point in treasuring a shirt which I will never, ever wear because it feels nasty.
I wondered about a T-shirt, because we have got some very respectable T-shirts, but then looked out of the window at the lashing rain and wondered if perhaps it might not be warm enough, even with a thermal vest.
In the end I found a shirt that met with my approval, and which could be worn with both a thermal vest and a woollen body-warmer, and sighed with relief.
Mark reached into the wardrobe and just got dressed. It is very easy to be him sometimes.
We were going to have a stroll around the Library Gardens in order to run some fidget out of the dogs, but I had wasted so much time agonising about shirts that it was too late. The dogs had been outside in the back yard, but when my parents turned up, Rosie was so excited to see them that she had an accident on the floor.
This is one of her less endearing features. We have to make sure that we say hello to her in the garden, because at the moment anything thrilling causes her to leak instantly.
They are my parents and I was also delighted to see them but I did not do that, really she needs to learn some restraint.
We went to the little bistro across the road from our house, and Mark and I had red wine for breakfast, which was an absolute delight, I wish I could do it every day. Then I had an enormous pizza covered in curried chicken and pineapple, which was wonderful, and I wished I could do that every day as well, although I suppose I would get bored with it quite soon.
It was a very happy way to spend a Sunday, although we had both completely forgotten that drinking in the middle of the day does not lend itself to productivity. After my parents had gone we took the dogs for their stroll around the park, and realised that we were so sleepy we were both stumping along in exhausted silence.
We did not do any of the things we were supposed to do. We left the washing in the machine and the taxis unexamined for their MOT tests, and went back to bed.
After that we went to work.
We will sort our lives out tomorrow.
