Sighing

Mark called this afternoon to tell me, regretfully, that we were not going to go away in the camper van after all.

Ted was having a crisis of broadband, and Mark had offered to work for the rest of the week to help sort it out.

Obviously this was the right thing to do, how awful for all those poor people not able to watch films or buy things on eBay or send emails to their children. Still, I had to try very hard not to feel sad about it, and hoped that Ted jolly well appreciated such a colossal sacrifice being made on his behalf.

I agreed with Mark that it was the Right Thing To Do, but I felt sadly wistful.

It was the middle of the day when I found this out. I had almost finished the dusting and hoovering, the conservatory was watered and the clean sheets blowing nicely in the yard, so I sighed deeply, and instead of packing all of our favourite holiday clothes, I started to think about making going-to-work dinners for the rest of the week instead. This was tiresomely gloomy, because I had expected to be going away, and so had emptied the fridge of the useful necessities for a working week, like pies and sausages and salads. I had quite decided that I would occupy the end of the afternoon in a thrilling shopping trip gathering together all of the splendid holiday extravagances like bacon and chocolate buttons and brie.

I had a quick inventory, sighed deeply, and went to Booths, where I spent all of our money on sausages, lettuce and tomatoes for health-giving taxi picnics before heading home to spend a quiet half an hour painting before work.

I have got a tiresomely aching shoulder at the moment, which feels uncomfortably like a trapped nerve. It has refused to be battered back to tranquillity by Mark’s soothing massages, and so I have resorted to private painkiller-picnics to smooth my daily path. Fortunately I have recently been given some splendidly efficient drugs, and have been medicating myself back to health without needing to go and extend the already endless NHS waiting list, however, it does mean that my daily activities are being interrupted by the occasional quiet sit down, sometimes with painting.

Dear Drug Donor. You have no idea how gratefully you have been remembered this week. My appreciation knows no bounds. Let me assure everybody that there is absolutely no happiness like not being in pain. Once you have got that, nothing else matters.

I am working this evening, although Mark is not, and am writing these very words from the taxi rank. Mark has gone off to faff around with the dogs in his field, having first stopped by the taxi rank to share the happy news that we will be able to go away on holiday after all, because Ted will not now need him until Thursday.

The poor people can speak to their children, and we are going to go on holiday after all.

I considered the fridge, now filled with all of the wrong things, and sighed deeply yet again.

Mark was entirely sanguine about this and said that he would happily eat sausages and lettuce even on holiday, and that it would be fine, so probably it will.

Despite the wrong things filling the fridge, I am suddenly feeling quite remarkably cheerful. We are going to spend two whole days not at work in any way whatsoever. We can drink cups of tea and amble around and do whatever we like, although I am not yet entirely sure what that might be.

It does not matter. It will involve neither driving taxis nor dusting, and that sounds pretty good to me

We are going to go when I have finished working. Mark has put our bicycles on the back of the van in case we go anywhere flat. I do not do cycling on hills. It looks as if it will rain, but this will not matter.

We can go and paddle.