At long last I have got round to starting the Thing I Need To Do.
I have started doing the Christmas painting.
This takes ages, and I know I will still have a last-minute rush in November, but I am sanguine about this, because it happens every year.
Mark is at work but he will know instantly what I have been doing, because I am covered in paint. It is all over my dress, and my hands and my glasses. I have hardly painted anything at all, indeed, there is almost as much paint on me as there is on the cardboard, but a start has been made, and I am pleased.
We had a brilliant time last night. I had just finished writing to you when Mark came home, we hurled everything into the camper van and set off.
It was the most wonderful evening. Everywhere the air is heavy with the scent of the elderflower blossom, and it wafted into the van in little gusts as we drove.
We slithered to a halt in the parking field at the edge of the woods, and rushed off up to the dam.
Actually we trudged up slowly, we are far too old and unfit to go rushing up the hill any more, and it is quite steep in a lot of places. Still it was a brilliant walk, through the green dappled shade of the trees, breathing in the still, warm evening air. We heard a deer barking somewhere in the woods, and the dogs were very excited indeed, charging about chasing the echoes of long-departed squirrels whilst we walked. We remembered lugging Roger Poopy up there when he was hardly a few weeks old, with his brothers and sisters in an inflatable dinghy, because we could hardly go swimming and leave the dogs behind.
There were a couple of people still lingering in the setting sun, although only a couple, and the water was blissfully warm and still. Water lilies were just coming into flower in the shallows, and tiny fish swarmed around our toes.
We had a peaceful, leisurely swim, and had got almost all the way across the lake when a frantically noisy splashing at the shore told us that all was not well. Roger Poopy does not like swimming, and inevitably gets chucked in, because he needs to cool off and rinse away the dust, but Rosie is much braver.
She had leaped in and tried to follow us, but something had not gone quite according to plan, and when we turned to look we saw her little nose vanishing below the surface, several times. She paddled desperately, but without much success, and in the end Mark had to swim back to rescue her.
She had just recovered as he reached her, and somehow managed to haul herself out on to the bank, where she snorted and sneezed and shivered until she could breathe again. We should not have laughed, but we did. I suppose her nose is too short for successful aquatic performance.
Eventually the sun sank behind the trees, and we clambered out. We had brought a picnic-sized bottle of white wine and some orange juice with us, and drank it sitting on tree roots watching the dragonflies skimming lazily across the surface, and a mother duck carelessly mislaying her ducklings. I do not know how ducks have not become extinct. They are hopeless parents.
It was almost dark when we chugged homewards. We had a cheerful cheese-and-crackers dinner in the van, and thought we would like to spend the rest of the summer swimming and strolling, but of course we won’t. Today is Friday and I am ready for work.
I thought I would just drop you a line on my way out.
It has been truly splendid.
