It is going to be an absolutely brilliant year for blackberries.
I had so many for breakfast on my walk this morning that this evening Mark came with me and we went off to pick them as the sun was setting.
We brought loads and loads home, and there are loads and loads more.
Of course it has been a good year for them, lots of rain, but weeks here and there of absolutely brilliant sunshine. They are fat and sweet, and fruiting in their thousands. We can have jam and mousse and blackberry gin and there will be some to put in the mince pie mix, although that might have to wait until next year, after they have had a really thorough soak in the gin.
You will have guessed that we are home. I have discovered that I am utterly exhausted. We slept for almost ten hours last night. It is only half past eight but already I am longing for my bed again. I do not know how we have managed to wear ourselves out so thoroughly, it is one of the few really tiresome bits of getting old. Once upon a time I could dash about all day, drink and behave badly all night, and wonder at six in the morning if there was any point in bothering about going to bed. These days the worst-behaved I ever get is to watch the whole of a film on Netflix all at once, instead of spreading it out sensibly over two nights.
Mark has not been at work today. He stayed at home and finished off putting the grout into the conservatory floor, and then got out his plumbing invention, which he spread all over the conservatory table. It is a huge and intricate interweaving of copper tubes, designed to heat the water without having to use electricity, which has become expensive. We do not use electricity in the winter when the boiler is lit, and it would be nice not to use it in the summer either, which is where the divorce solar panel comes in.
I am not entirely convinced that it is going to work but it does not matter, if it doesn’t he can send it to the Tate Gallery and call it something like Domestic Bill Avoidance. Really it is quite an astounding creation. He has not yet fastened it to the tank, which is also sitting in the conservatory. I do not think he would be able to get it up the stairs if he had.
I do not exactly know where he is planning to put it, it will need a really big cupboard or possibly a pedestal and a descriptive label. If it needs dusting I am going to hang a blanket over it.
It is now much later and we are going to bed. We were too tired even to go to work, so we ate a massive plate of pasta and watched a film, all of it at once, how rascally. The result of this is that it is now very late and I am going to be sorry in the morning. This is regrettable, because it was a truly rubbish film.
It was about the poet Siegfried Sassoon, because of getting into the swing of things for my course in a few weeks. I am sorry to say that it did nothing whatsoever to inspire me poetically. Worse, Sassoon was shown as a young gay chap, having wartime traumas and reckless affairs, and then as an old chap, reminiscing about being young and gay and traumatised and reckless. He did not think at all about the fifty or so years that passed in between the two, which appeared to have left no mark on him whatsoever. I had imagined Sassoon would have been more interesting and personable than that, but in the film he wasn’t.
All in all it was a very dull film. I liked the scenery, there were some very nice lampshades and a couple of decent cushion covers, but really that was where the excitement ended. Here is my cinema review: don’t bother. It is boring.
I am going to bed.
Weekend tomorrow. There might not be much diary for a few days.
