I have had a very much happier day.
I would like to say that there was no paperwork in it at all, but that would not exactly be true. There were no tax forms in it, which was most certainly a huge improvement. Also I have achieved practically everything that I thought I would like to achieve, and better still, Mark got the dinner ready.
The day started with the usual rush of household things, of bringing in firewood and laundry and sweeping up. The floor had become so horribly dirt-encrusted that I mopped it, which made me feel instantly better. We emptied cat litter and mopped the conservatory and I began to feel really quite cheerful. There is nothing like having a clean house without a lingering aroma of cat poo, to lift the spirits.
After that Mark dashed off to go and collect his bench saw, which he had left at Ted’s house, and Oliver went next door to talk about A Levels with our kindly next door neighbour.
I have said before in these pages how much I like our next door neighbour. He is interesting and clever and so unruffled that he has never minded any of the terrible un-neighbourly things we have done, like occasionally flooding, or setting fire to, his house. Indeed, we still do have these accidental misfortunes from time to time. He puts bread out on his shed roof so that he can watch the birds, but regrettably we have all discovered that Lucy’s cats think this is very exciting. They lurk hopefully in the garden waiting for happy bird-family picnics that they can ambush, hiding on top of the woodshed like wicked Middle Eastern terrorists, except fortunately the birds can fly and the cats can’t.
They are also hunting down the rats in their horrid tunnels under our yard, whilst we are on that particular subject. This is making me far less grudging about their digestive by-products
Anyway, Oliver came back in great high spirits, telling me that he had been thoroughly educated and had learned lots of useful things. He had had a splendid time, so probably he will get some A Levels, which will be very useful, because at the moment he thinks he is going to follow Lucy’s career path and apply to join the police, imagine having so many coppers in the family. Number One Daughter was one in the Army for a little while, until she decided that she preferred being in charge of exercise. She has just been awarded the Army’s Fittest Woman title again, by the way. She dropped this casually into conversation last night, and said modestly that the competition had been quite hard this year, although she had won again anyway. I wondered if it was not hard to be the fittest woman in the Army all the time, but she said that it wasn’t usually, not really.
I am very impressed. I hope you are as well.
Lucy called this afternoon in a mildly downcast frame of mind, because she has heard from her conveyancer that her house purchase will probably take sixteen weeks to complete, apparently because nothing like that happens quickly now that everybody is working from home. This means that she will not have anywhere to live until February, and will have to find a house to rent in the meantime. I have suggested that she rents the one she is going to buy, which was what we did when the purchase of our house took months and months, but it is probably a bit too uninhabitable for that.
We will have to think about it.
As soon as Mark and Oliver had buzzed off out of the way I came dashing up here to the computer, and really I have mostly been here ever since. This was because the university term has thoroughly begun, and today was the day for my online university class, which was absolutely splendid.
I had forgotten how much I like listening to clever people talk about writing things, and I came away so inspired and full of arcane literary learning that I bashed out a further two thousand words of my dissertation. I have got to write a novel before next July.
So far I am on Chapter Two, but it is mounting up.
I might even go away and write a bit more.
