I think I have had enough of being at work.
I have been at work every day since we came back from Blackpool, which as we all know was ages and ages ago now, and I have become bored with it.
It is not that I am not making money, of course I am, because it is August, although I seem to be spending it even faster, but simply that I have become tired and am absolutely longing to sleep.
I spent much of today staggering around in a dopey sort of haze, trying to feel enthusiastic about hoovering and cooking barbecue chicken for Mark’s picnics, but without success. That is, I got the hoovering and cooking done, but I did not especially feel excited about it.
Actually I barely managed to lift my feelings above a dull grumble of indifference all day.
I went up to Booths, for some ethical vegetables, by means of breaking the monotony and in order to feel virtuous about my impeccable housewifery credentials, but even that small adventure did not cheer me up. I put it all away and rubbed my eyes and wished that the day was over.
I knew that this was because I was tired, because I could not think of a single thing that I would actually like to do. I thought I might paint, or write some of my dissertation, of which I have written about twelve lines, but when it came to it I sat at my desk and stared absently out of the window, and breathed in an unexpected smell which I eventually realised was burning chicken.
Hence I have spoken to Mark and we have decided that as soon as he has finished hauling firewood to the farm, we are both going to go home and get an early night.
He has been at work all day as well, of course. The firewood-hauling is the thing he does in his leisure time, like I do hoovering and cooking chicken.
I wish he would hurry up and haul it. It is eight o’clock already.
I have begun working during the day as well now that it is summer. I do not like working in the daytime. People have horrible sticky children, and forty suitcases each, and one chap this afternoon had two bicycles and a dog. I shoved them in anyway, and he was so pleased not to have to ride his bicycle any further that he gave me a tenner.
I do not know who the other bicycle belonged to, perhaps it was a spare.
Also there are so many cars on the roads I am surprised that more children and Japanese tourists, who do not seem to have learned the Green Cross Code, do not end up squished. I had an exciting detour this afternoon on my way to Coniston, because some tiresome herbert from the council had decided that the middle of August would be the optimum time to close the only road and dig it up.
There was another route, of course, known only to taxi drivers and other impatient locals, and then to all of the sixty million cars who followed us. The alternative route went for miles and miles along the narrowest of country lanes, some of them with grass growing in the middle, winding along the sides of steep mountain valleys, and it all went swimmingly until we found ourselves stuck behind a hay making tractor. This occupied the entire road, with barely an inch to spare between its massive wheels and the mossy walls, and so the sixty million cars coming in the other direction all had to reverse, anxiously and cautiously, all the way back to Coniston.
This occupied a great deal of my afternoon at work. Nights are much easier. People do not have any luggage and they are so drunk they do not ask thousands of stupid questions like What Time Does The Bus Go In The Morning? Obviously I do not know anything at all about the buses. I have only caught the local bus twice in my life, and it was not at all an experience I would like to repeat, there is no First Class section nor a buffet carriage, they will have to work it out for themselves.
They all ask if I live here.
I tell them all that I am here on my holidays.
Mark has called.
It is my bedtime.
