Guiltless

The countdown to Christmas is dashing along at breakneck pace.

We have not actually broken our necks, obviously, although Mark has complained about his sore knees. He is still boarding the loft, one board at a time every few days when we have saved up enough, in between sawing up firewood and clearing up clutter out of his field.

He is also engaged in putting a board over a jumble of pipe work at the bottom of the stairs. This has been a source of discussion over the last few years, some of it quite shouty, because I felt that a display of diverse plumbing and a couple of wires was not a beautiful addition to my morning journey down the stairs. Mark explained, by way of excuse, that he could not board it over until he had finished plumbing, an argument which ran out about eight months ago.

A couple of weeks ago I explained that my Christmas could not possibly be at all merry in any way if I had to come downstairs on Christmas morning and look at lots of visible plumbing before my morning glass of sherry, and so at long last a board has been cut and painted, and any day now the plumbing will be covered.

It is Mark and so it could not have been a simple task. He has cut a little door in the board which he has explained will mean that he can access the plumbing if anything goes wrong, and also so that I will have a secret hiding place for secret money supplies should I ever need one, not that it is looking likely at the moment.

The door has got bright yellow hinges on it which makes me think that we differ in our opinions of what might be secret, but nevertheless it is going to be a huge improvement on the plumbing, and it is going to have some little round knobs screwed into it as well. These are for him to hang his hats on. I could hang my hats on them as well if I was tall enough to reach, which I am not.

Lucy painted it, which was helpful, and the cats walked on it and left painty footprints all over the table, which was not. After that they retreated to our bed where they left cat hair and licked-off bits of paint behind them, so today was Clean Sheets Day. It would have been Clean Sheets Day anyway, but I was hoping they might feel guilty about it, which obviously they did not. Cats seem to have had guilt left out of their emotional repertoire, unlike dogs, which suffer terribly from it, but not enough to stop them being wicked when they think you are not looking. I once had a dog called Frottage. I always knew if he had been lying in blissful wickedness on my bed when I went out, because I would come home to find him hiding behind the rocking chair, trembling violently. This utter misery never stopped him from doing it, he must have thought the pain was worth the wonderfulness of a pocket-sprung mattress.

I once stood next to the Chairman of the Governors at some event at the children’s school, reading a board pinned with exercises in Very Best Handwriting done by the children. One of mine, I forget which, had written about My Pets, and started We have a dog called Frottage and a cat called Merkin. The Chairman of the Governors looked down at me over his glasses. I know what those names mean, you know, he said, ponderously, and stalked away, looking affronted.

I think he had been in the Navy.

I have been finishing the Advent Calendars, nearly done now, phew, and not getting round to the cleaning. I have got so many things to do this week that I do not even want to think about them, but Christmas is almost upon us and I need to get on with them.

I am on the taxi rank.

I am drinking tea and eating chocolate and doing nothing with no guilt whatsoever.

Being at work is lovely.