We have settled into a happy rhythm of the ending summer.
The taxi rank has become a very quiet place, and the frantic rushing of the tourist season is drawing to a close. It has become so quiet that it does not need both of us. I have been leaving Mark to his own devices and going out to work by myself at the end of the afternoon, to capture any wandering souls wanting to return to their guest houses after a long day riding on the lake steamers and purchasing stuffed replicas of Peter Rabbit.
Mark has been carrying on with his yard-clearances and coming out to work later, in time for the busy part of the evening, when full-of-dinner people know that really they ought to walk the forty five yards back to their guest house, but are too idle, and decide instead to leap aboard the waiting taxi, handily situated four inches from the door of the tapas bar. We have worked together until half past ten, at which point I have buzzed off home, leaving Mark with the last handful of hardened drinkers and disgruntled hotel staff until midnight.
This has been splendid, because I have suddenly had lots of time to get tidied up and spend the last hour of the day organising my life before bed. It is always a bit tiresome when you get home in the silent hours of the night and have got to start washing pots and putting sheets on the bed and emptying dogs before you are allowed to collapse.
Apart from going to work, I have made chocolates and fudge today.
This is a happy thing to have done because I always think that our own confectionery is considerably nicer than anything you can buy in the shops, even if the shop is Hotel Chocolat, not least because I can eat as much as I like without the guilty knowledge that when I run out it will cost me £27.50 to buy some more.
I have made vanilla fudge with cream and oak-smoked salt, which is superb, and dark chocolate, also with cream and blackcurrant fondant. I defy anybody to have a better after-dinner experience.
Sometimes I eat them before dinner as well, and just occasionally, when I am in a terrific rush, I eat them instead of dinner, but that is never a good idea, and always leaves me feeling slightly uncomfortable and a little regretful.
Mark was at home again, except that he was not exactly at home, having gone next door to help our long-suffering and patient next door neighbour to mend the frame for his back door. I like our next door neighbour. We have been the most intolerable of nuisances at times, we all know that we have set fire to his house not once, but twice, flooded it, permanently borrowed his ladders, shouted at each other on the other side of thin walls in the middle of the night, and stolen his dustbin and his parking space. When we had a cat, years ago, it used to break into his house and steal his cat’s more expensive cat food. He has never once seemed to mind, and is always amicable and courteous, and if there were medals to be had for extreme forbearance, I would put his name forward at once.
Anyway, Mark went over there today, leaving me with the fudge and the conservatory-watering.
Having watered it, I thought I might refill some of the flower beds. I do not know where the soil goes in these, I do not think that plants actually eat it, the way I eat blackcurrant chocolate, but nevertheless the soil had disappeared like the biscuits in last week’s tin. One flower bed had dropped down by almost two feet.
Fortunately we have a handy supply of ready-made soil in the compost heap, and actually it was brilliant. The combination of mango peel and melon rinds and Mark weeing on it occasionally must be exactly what the worms like, because it was alive with them, as if the soil itself had begun to writhe. I could have opened a fishing supply shop.
I managed to fill one bed before I realised I was late for work, and had to spend ages scrubbing my hands clean before dashing about making salads and putting strawberries in little tubs.
I left the washing up for later on.
It can be a late-night present for myself when I come in and have lots of spare time.
