I have ironed all of our smart clothes and replaced the clean sheets and towels in the camper van. Our Cambridge trip is finally over and preparations for our next great adventure, which will be happening in less than a week from this very evening, are just beginning.
We have got to go and get Oliver from school next week. I can hardly believe that it is half term already, and am feeling just a little shell-shocked by the speed at which it has crashed about our ears.
Before this time next week we have got to get both Oliver’s car and the camper van through their MOT examinations, which at the moment are looking every bit as challenging, and considerably more immediate, than my dissertation. I still have not finished this. I have now got ninety four thousand, five hundred and forty one words to go.
I am making progress, but it is not speedy, and this stuff about hares and tortoises is all very well but the tortoise didn’t have time left for doing any of the other million and one things that he probably would have liked to do.
Also he didn’t have a cat sitting on his keyboard.
I have now discovered that cats are not at all the solitary independent creatures of popular legend. It turns out that they are possibly the most sociable creatures in the whole house. Certainly they are more sociable than I am. I do not at all hang around waiting until somebody – anybody will do – decides to sit down with a cup of tea or a dissertation to write, and then fling myself passionately on to their knee, rubbing my face against their hands until they either stroke me under the chin or start to get grumpy. Mark thinks he would like it if I behaved like this but I can promise you that he wouldn’t, certainly not by the third time. I am in my office and once again I have got two cats on my desk and two dogs underneath it. The cats are purring and the dogs are making tiresome slurpy noises. If anybody in this house could be described as The Cat That Walked By Himself it would not be either of the cats.
On the subject of the cats I have been obliged to refill the flowerbeds in the conservatory. This is because the conservatory could now be re-titled the Cat Lavatory. Fortunately they prefer to go outside but it is October and mostly the door is shut, so unless they happen to need to relieve themselves at the moment that somebody is collecting firewood or popping out to the butcher’s, they are reduced to the house. They have got a litter tray but the flower bed is more attractive.
I do not actually mind this because it is, in fact, turning their poo into a useful fertiliser, although not an especially sweet-smelling one. Also the flower bed is so densely packed that there has not been much room for digging that is not already tightly-woven with roots, and the cat-deposits are receiving only the most minimal of covering, most of which is tea leaves. I always empty the teapot on the flower bed, at least the top inch is tea leaves now, which the plants don’t seem to mind but it is not the world’s most magnificent cat litter.
Hence today, despite the usual Lake District climate of howling winds and lashing rain, I took a bucket out to the compost pile and dug out a load of compost to shove on the top of them, the flower beds, not the cats, obviously, although that moment may yet arise.
The compost is amazing, although currently sodden. It is absolutely bursting with worms, enough to stock a fishing shop for months, I should think. I may have told you that I refilled my yucca plant shortly before we went to Cambridge. This is now thriving, and has even sprouted a dozen tomato and melon plants around its foot. I imagine there will be nasturtiums as well, because the garden is absolutely invaded with them at the moment. Fortunately they are pretty, because it doesn’t seem to matter how many times somebody stands on them or the washing line poles collapse on to them, they just seem to grow back more enormous, probably they are related to Japanese Knotweed and will mean the children can’t sell the house when we die.
I brought in half a dozen buckets and distributed it over the top of the cat fertiliser. Some of it did actually land on the cats, who were curious observers in the exact place I needed to tip the compost. It was all very muddy, but looked wonderful by the time I had finished, as if I had buried the flower beds in a thick, brown blanket.
I am going to go. I have been painting again this evening. Interestingly it seems that there is no cat bed anywhere as attractive as a newly-painted painting, preferably one that is still not dry.
Lucy is going to come home to some very brightly-coloured cats.
