I still have not finished my story.
I have written another couple of thousand words, pounding back up the stairs to write a bit more every time I have finished some fresh bit of domestic tedium, like sweeping or dusting or making mayonnaise. In between writing I am looking at the course reading list and groaning, although not, I confess, actually reading any of it.
The reading list is on my computer so I can’t even give it a rub over with bacon and leave it in the dogs’ basket.
I have given up with all of it and am now on the taxi rank, where Mark paused briefly to say hello on his way home. He has finished work for the day and was on his way to take some firewood to be stored at the farm. I was pleased about this because it gave me an excuse not to bother about the dogs. His field lies at the end of a very narrow, deserted country road, and so he chucks them out of the car for the last mile of journey before he gets there, and they belt after the car at high speed. He does the same on the way back. I do not know if they like this, but I do know that they are exceedingly fit, maybe I ought to join them.
The dogs spend the entire rest of their lives asleep on the sofa in the sunshine. I will join them the day they offer to help with the dusting.
I have absolutely nothing of interest to report. This is the problem when your most exciting occupation of the day has been writing a story. Lots of thrilling things have happened, but they have all been inside my head. This is just as well, because one of the most important events today was a conversation with a dragon, describing a mass incineration for which it had recently been responsible. Such events are better kept on the inside.
The taxi rank is quite astonishingly deserted. This is not exactly surprising, since presumably the entire population of the UK is staying indoors to get on with manufacturing quiches and stringing bunting around the front door. The only people I can see at the moment are three Japanese tourists with cameras, a bored looking doorman who appears to have an uncomfortable itch, and me.
I am drinking tea and eating chocolate buttons, since I have abandoned my attempts to become less rotund. This was because despite not eating a single chocolate button for nearly a week, I could not see any difference in my waistline whatsoever. I still achieve a distressingly good impression of a blancmange in an earthquake if I jump up and down without my clothes on, which on the whole I don’t.
Maybe I should have given up fudge as well, but some things are simply a step too far and I have concluded that the sacrifice is simply not worth it.
This lack of dietary impact has led me to conclude that the most likely cause is a hormonal problem, and that probably the answer will be to go and get some of the drugs that Jeremy Clarkson took to make him go off food. I do not know if they work on chocolate buttons. I can’t imagine anything making me go off them.
I had actually hoped that my bitten lip, sustained during my Bank Holiday misadventure, and which briefly swelled in size to resemble a Cumberland sausage, might last a day or two and render eating problematic, but no such luck. My face has now more or less returned to its usual proportions, and all disfigurement has disappeared, apart from some irresistible scabs and a peculiarly disconcerting numb patch in the middle of my bottom lip. This has left me with a permanent sensation of having recently vacated the dentist’s chair, and it is very weird indeed, I can tell you. I hope it wears off soon.
I might not be looking my peak of sophisticated loveliness at the moment. Worse, my hair has become so long I can practically sit on it, and even if I had made sufficient cash for a haircut, which at the time of writing I haven’t yet, I would have to choose between that and finishing my story.
Sometimes life is just impossibly difficult.
