Tonight’s post is both seriously abbreviated and also coming to you from the roadside in Lancaster.
We have been to dinner with our friends Kevin and Kate and have both eaten and drunk a very great deal of splendid fare. Kate cooked a magnificent dinner, so splendid that I was quite sorry when I became full because it was so nice that I could easily have gone on eating for an hour or two, except I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable around the waistline. I do not know what the chocolate pudding exactly was except that it was divine, and I would have been very pleased to find a bowlful in my Christmas stocking, apart from for the obvious squishy reasons. Anyway, it was magnificent.
The wine was so middle class that Kevin had to open it a couple of hours before we actually drank it, you don’t get much more upmarket than that I can tell you.
We have had the finest evening. Kevin and Kate have been to India and we listened with absolutely rapt fascination to their stories. We have also visited India, except it was a long time ago, which helped us interrupt in the irritating way people do when they want to tell their own stories instead of listening to yours. We did that and they were polite about it, which was courteous of them.
They have also dug a fishpond in their back garden. We went to look at it and although it might not be the most intellectually stimulating place to be a fish, it looked so impressive that probably if they were to sell their house it would have become more expensive as a result. I do not know if any of our house modifications have had this effect. Number One Daughter says that she is not looking forward to our demise for the very reason of having to turn our house back into something that other people might want to live in.
I am in bed and Mark is asleep next to me. This is because he has had a busy day at the farm and I have only been changing sheets and cleaning the camper van. We are in the camper van now, it is very weird to have no children, nor dogs, nor cats. Lucy is looking after all of those and we are alone. It is peaceful in the sort of oddly disconcerting way that your house becomes peaceful when the electricity suddenly goes off and you realise that you can no longer hear the irritating hum of the fridge and the water pump and all of the other breathtakingly useful things you do not usually think about.
I do not mean that the dogs are breathtakingly useful, quite the reverse, actually: but it is very peculiar that they are not here.
I am going to sleep. I am sorry that this is so short.
It is a misfortunate side effect of middle class alcohol.
