Things are recovering.
Our guests have gone.
They were perfectly nice young people, really, although I didn’t see much of them this morning, because I took Oliver to work whilst they were having breakfast. Then they went off on a dog-emptying expedition with Mark whilst I stripped their room ready for Lucy coming back in a couple of days. I explained to them before we went to bed that we weren’t early risers, and they said cheerfully that whilst they liked to get up at seven, they wouldn’t mind reading in bed until half past eight. Obviously this brought an ironic smile to my lips, because clearly they lack a taxi driver’s perception of early rising.
In any case, in the end the night air must have been truly soporific, because to their surprised discomfort they didn’t emerge until ten, so I forgave them. Perhaps it is something in the house atmosphere, a sort of inverse poltergeist that makes everything dreamy and peaceable and unmoving in the mornings, especially me.
Oliver had been out doing Young Person things until one in the morning, and he was not terribly inclined to get up early either, but he had to go to work, so it could not be avoided. There was some groaning and yawning, and he looked at his breakfast with distaste.
Once they had all cleared off I finished the tidying up and belted off upstairs finally to address my much-neglected assignment.
It was a huge happiness, I can tell you. It was like sinking into a much longed-for sleep, dreamlike and contented. I had got the body of it written during frantic moments on the taxi rank, and so much of it was polishing and rearranging, contemplating and investigating. The creative part of the assignment is a shocking story but I have liked writing it very much. The critical analysis is basically a long-winded explanation of what I have done and how and why I have done it. It is heavily based on other people’s research papers, all of which had been carefully chosen by me to reflect my preconceived ideas, there is no happiness like reading opinions with which you wholeheartedly agree, which is, on the whole, why I find The Guardian so very irritating.
Anyway, it has made me very happy. I have still got a lot to do, but I spent the whole afternoon deeply immersed in it, and emerged feeling mildly confused and a little disorientated with the world.
I have also had a reconciliation with Mark. I have explained to him that I do not wish to socialise with anybody’s friends and relatives, not even my own, in the last days before an assignment is due to be handed in, not unless I am saying smugly how very easy it was and how it was completed ages ago. He has agreed that perhaps it was not the wisest idea he has ever had, with which I agreed, it was worse than the time he left the divorce solar panel lying about on the garden path and I fell over it in the dark and ruined my favourite boots.
He was very penitent and even hung some of the washing up and made the sandwiches for this evening’s picnic, and so I have mostly forgiven him, although it is conditional upon my actually completing the assignment in the rest of the time I have left, and then getting a decent grade. If I do not then at least I can conveniently blame him and absolve myself for the responsibility of having written rubbish.
Also, tonight at work a customer very kindly handed me a bottle of Southern Comfort, as a present for Good and Faithful service. I am sorry to say that I did not merit this in the least, being faithless, indifferent, and only in pursuit of the cash.
Worse, I explained that I had recently chucked his mate out and told him never to darken my taxi again as a penalty for being an irritating idiot. To my surprise he agreed wholeheartedly that his mate was an irritating idiot, and that it was about time somebody mentioned it, and that I had therefore doubly merited the Southern Comfort.
It is not Sancerre, but I shall enjoy drinking it anyway, and I have had my faith in human nature restored.
I think this is a jolly good way to end the old year.
