Goodness, this is an exciting time to be English.
It would appear that we have a new Eurovision Song Contest style of Government, in which one candidate after another gets up and has a go, only to be awarded minimal points and chucked out into oblivion, never to return.
Boris appears to have buzzed off on a Caribbean cruise, with occasional interruptions of after dinner speaking engagements, the fee for a single one of which would have covered my mortgage twice and still left me with change.
I do not know why Liz Truss is wanting to be Prime Minister if these are the pension arrangements. If I were her I would have got my Caribbean tickets booked already and Jeremy Hunt could have it all to himself.
I would like to be in the Caribbean. I am even having occasional pangs of envy in respect of the children, who are currently in Rome, having a lovely time. They sent me a message telling me that they are sunburned.
I wish I was sunburned.
On the positive side, it has been so colossally windy today that I got two loads of washing dry in the back yard even though it was raining.
I thought that was an achievement.
Once we had pegged it out we went dashing off on a food-purchase adventure.
It was an adventure because I do not want to be shopping at Asda at the moment, which refused to sell me four cartons of orange juice because they are doing rationing. This is absolutely true, although I am not sure why, maybe we are practising for nuclear war, or perhaps Jeremy Hunt will explain later.
Hence we defaulted from my usual well-trodden paths and tried Aldi.
I have been in there before but never tried to do any actual shopping, and it was all just a bit troubling.
It is indeed cheap, but it is a bit like being in Russia in the days when everybody wore a headscarf and ate next door’s cat in an emergency. It felt gritty and dim and was packed with the sort of people that make me sigh in a tolerant middle-class sort of way when I encounter them in the taxi.
It was all very troubling and I spent too much on alcohol.
By the time we emerged, blinking into the sunshine, I was so utterly shell-shocked that I had to sit quietly in the car for a couple of minutes before I had sufficiently recovered to set off for home.
Mark thought it was all right, and when we came home he cooked the sausages, which he said were very nice.
We rushed round then, putting the shopping away and getting ourselves ready for the day’s major event, which was the arrival of Number Two Daughter.
We have not seen her for years and years.
It is so long ago that we did not even have a conservatory.
It was late in the afternoon when she arrived, having appropriated Lucy’s car from where it has been dumped at Grandma and Grandad’s.
It is truly lovely to see her.
She is looking well and fit and healthy and happy.
Roger Poopy did not recognise her for the first few minutes. Then something in his admittedly not exactly super-powered canine cognitive function clicked over into its place, and he realised who she was. Then he hurled himself on her with an abandon of joy, licking her face and making adoring little whimpering noises.
He was very pleased indeed.
His father does not do joyful abandon, but wagged his tail politely and then returned to his cushion in front of the fire.
We listened to stories about living on another continent with great satisfaction, how splendid to have such adventurous children.
She has been staying with Number One Daughter so she only stayed for an hour or two and popped out to go to the gym, but she will be back soon and we are going to have dinner together, with red wine and happy thoughts.
It is very lovely indeed to have her back home.
