I have had another day of my own company, and very splendid it has been as well.
Regrettably it is the last such day for a little while because the demand for rural broadband is slow, and the costs of doing anything to it are high, and so Mark will not be working again until next week, unless you count the taxis, which I don’t because in January they are not so much work as an opportunity for undisturbed tea-drinking and book appreciation.
Two days in a week, we will starve to death.
Actually we won’t. One of the consequences of my endless anxious hoarding is that we could probably live very well indeed with no income at all for at least three months. We might have to become shoplifters to keep ourselves in salads, but apart from that we would probably be just fine. We do not have many vegetables, but we do have a very satisfactory vegetable patch stuffed full of Jersey Royals, and although our diet might become a bit boring after a month it would certainly not cease to exist.
Anyway it is January and we are not expecting riches. I have no wish to go anywhere or do anything and so am more than contented with uneventful tranquillity, which is a happily economical way of passing a few weeks. Better still, I have got several excellent unread books, none of which, I am sorry to say, have appeared on the reading list for my course, and I am looking forward to an opportunity to open them.
Nevertheless I telephoned the Gas Board again this afternoon. They have been promising me the two hundred quid they owe us for weeks and weeks, and the fibber on the phone last Thursday promised that it had been paid into my account and would be there as soon as the bank allowed me to have it. Today’s fibber promised that it would be in my account tomorrow. December’s fibber promised we would have it before Christmas. I have spent it several times over since then and I was not impressed.
I told them that if they were having financial difficulties I was prepared to allow them to spread the payment out over a few months, but it was an Indian call centre and the lady clearly did not have the slightest idea what I was talking about, so it was humour for my benefit alone.
I laughed anyway.
Apart from listening to the music played by the Gas Board’s queueing system I have also mended a pair of Oliver’s trousers, which I posted to him. Rosie has made several raids into my sewing box since I last told you about it, and eaten several further reels of cotton, which have given her some very regrettable poo difficulties. I thought that this served her right, but it meant that the only cotton handy that was not either in the camper van or covered with dog dribble was turquoise or pink, so I used them both.
I do not think it will show but he might have to explain to Matron that he is supporting Proud people who are of undefined sexuality, you are allowed to look weird if this is your excuse. These people dress as rainbows, for some incomprehensible reason, there was a picture of them in the august Daily Telegraph today, carrying notices saying how much they admired Nicola Sturgeon. I do not think that this is the right way to make people value you as a sensible member of society, certainly it did not work for me.
On a happier note, I decanted some more of the apple rum today. I shoved the apples in a crumble for dinner and we are going to make inroads into the rum as soon as Mark gets home. I could not help but sample it in the process, and I can tell you that it is superb. This lot was done with cinnamon sticks and chunks of nutmeg and maple syrup, and it is superlatively good.
Mark is on his way home. He says that since he is not working he will be able to fix the camper van before I got to Cambridge in a few weeks, where I am doing a Master’s’s’ degree, did I mention it? I am very pleased indeed about this, so every silver lining etc. I would have had to have stayed in college if it had not been done, and this is all very well but both costly and dull. I like the camper van much better. I am not worried about it any more, what a magnificent outcome.
Not a single one of my tutors was enable to enlighten me about the apostrophe with any degree of certainty. I am just going to have to keep my options open.
