I am not really writing in this tonight, because although it is really Easter Sunday, for us it is just a second Saturday. The nightclub is open, people do not have to get up in the morning, and the Lake District is full of visitors.
I do not mind this but I do wish they would have some driving lessons before they set off to come here.
Talking of driving lessons, Oliver has got his first tomorrow. I am pleased about this for two reasons. Firstly, obviously, it will be very good to have a mobile son and thus our parental taxi-duties over and done with in perpetuity, and secondly because the driving instructor is going to collect him from our house and take him to work when they have finished, and hence we will not have to get up.
This week has been a bit wearing from this point of view. We have not been getting to bed until about half past five, but have been staggering out of bed at eleven to take Oliver to work. We have found this challenging, and this afternoon we wasted the whole useful part of the day in reluctantly, but inevitably, collapsing back into bed until it was time to go to work.
This was tiresome because we were hoping to get lots of things done this weekend, and actually have not managed a single one. We have eaten and yawned and driven taxis, and that has just about been it.
The only thing which can reasonably be described as a success is the huge capitulation of the visiting dog, which has finally condescended to accept left-over bits of toast from our hands, and has become sufficiently integrated into the domestic pack to be permitted to wander about at his own pace instead of being tugged along on a lead, paws burning on the gravel.
Obviously we don’t actually do that but it is very frustrating to have to dawdle about waiting whilst a creature which is pointlessly fastened to you on a bit of string, hangs around snuffling and licking disgusting patches of other dogs’ wee. Far better to stroll along at a gently measured pace, leaving it to catch up by itself when it has had enough.
It has realised that it wants to belong with us and so comes rushing after us eagerly. Also it has helped that it has decided it might quite like Rosie after all, much to Roger’s fury. He has taken to growling threateningly at it whenever it sits down next to her, or looks at her with the wrong kind of look in its eye. I have known quite savage fights to break out in Bowness kebab shop over very similar misbehaviour.
Rosie does not seem to have noticed. Rosie is far more interested in cheese than practically anything in the world.
I am going to go. The evening has become busy, and I have been interrupted about four times during this sentence. The last one was a very lovely chap a bit younger than me, whose wife, certainly no older than forty five, clearly had dementia. They were just going to one of the cheaper guest houses, and he was kind but weary. It was grim and moving and sad all at once.
It is not helping me write coherently gripping prose. I am going to read my book.
All of the cash machines have been emptied. By this time tomorrow I imagine that the petrol pumps will be the same.
Happy Easter.
