We have had another day off.
This day off was not quite as nice as the last one, because now it is evening, and I am at work.
Mark and Oliver are not at work, though, and they have been joined by Ritalin Boy, who is not at work either. Mark has been made responsible for putting their pizzas in the oven, after which he is going off to the farm to saw some firewood.
I am in the taxi, which is peaceful, at least.
We have occupied a very great deal of the day doing house things, though. It was the day for processing the blackcurrants into blackcurrant jelly.
We hung them up in muslin to strain yesterday, and today we boiled the liquid with enough sugar to bury a dentist. We saved some of it as blackcurrant syrup, to be added to vodka when I have earned enough money to buy some, and the rest went into jelly.
There were twelve jars when we had finished, and we have not yet started on the pulp. I have not quite decided what I want to do with that anyway. Fruit pulp is brilliantly useful in all sorts of things, from chutney to cheesecakes, and I am going to have to make up my mind.
It was all a jolly nuisance, making jelly always is, but it is so wonderfully worthwhile. There is no feeling nicer at the beginning of the winter than having a couple of dozen jars of preserved fruit, all glinting the colour of rubies in the autumn sunshine.
I am not sure that I have ever actually seen a ruby in real life, actually, probably the new Queen has got some. I do not in the least mind this, my experience of stones of any description is that no matter how pretty they are, they are jolly heavy, just think about your coat pockets after an afternoon on the beach.
I do not suppose even the twinkly ones weigh any less, and so have very little inclination to hang strings of them around my neck or fasten them to my ears. Occasionally I do, but only when I am pretending to be a trophy wife. Since it is more than obvious in every other sense of the word that I am not, it is worth putting up with the excess load just to make people a bit less certain.
Jars of jelly are the same colour and although they have no social standing whatsoever, if I am scrupulously honest with myself, will probably give me more happy moments, especially on fresh warm bread with butter, and even cream, than the most glittering of pretty stones which would only make my neck ache.
Also I do not need to worry about getting insurance for jars of blackcurrant jelly.
Apart from that I have had a university tutorial this morning. I don’t know if I have mentioned that I am doing a Master’s’s’ degree, but I am, at Cambridge University, actually, and this morning I had to talk to my tutor about my last assignment.
There wasn’t much to say really, because usually you talk about things that you could do better, and where your weaknesses are, but I did quite well with the last one, and so he just nodded vaguely and said, yes, gosh, jolly good. I was smug about this. After that I rabbited about the story I have written, and he very kindly offered to read any more letters to agents before I send them out, largely, I think, because we both know that this sort of thing is my real weakness.
Nobody has replied to them yet. My tutor pointed out that most agents have summer holidays around this time of year anyway, and probably do not take a slush pile full of aspirational garbage in their suitcase to read whilst drinking their Porn Star Martini, the non-purple variety, and lounging next to the swimming pool.
I am going to send him the stuff I am dispatching and see if he can suggest a way that I might excite people into actually reading it.
After that I am going to start writing something else.
Onwards and upwards.
