We are on the taxi rank, and it is very quiet.
This is tiresome because we are trying to make some money. Tomorrow we are quite resolved to purchase another board for the furtherance of our ongoing project in the loft. We have been up there for much of today, although I confess we have been achieving very little. It has been the sort of day where you do something for five minutes, like perhaps taking chairs downstairs to dump them in Oliver’s room, and then you are suddenly struck by another loft-redesign inspiration. Obviously then you have to stop for another five minutes just to talk about it, sometimes with a tape measure.
This has meant slow progress, because we have had loads of inspired ideas, although the problem with inspired ideas is that generally they are more expensive than we can afford, which is dispiriting. In the end we decided that probably we would be able to run to another sheet of plasterboard, maybe, in the event of a taxi-bonanza, even two, but that anything else, including all of our plans for extravagant lighting, extra windows and more plug sockets, would be reckless folly. That is all right. If we carry on at today’s speed it will take a fortnight to get tomorrow’s board on the roof anyway.
Still it is coming along, despite our contemplative snails’ pace. It is going to be an all-purpose design studio, wardrobe storage, spare bedroom and music room. Given that the useful part of it is about three metres square, you will understand the necessity for some detailed design contemplation. Also I do not want it to be cluttered, so we are having to think very carefully.
Mark has been bashing the insulation boards up on to the roof and I have been clearing stuff out of his way. There is a lot of stuff. He is going to turn all of the side wall into bookshelves. This will instantly clear about a square metre of floor.
In the meantime I have dumped everything in Oliver’s bedroom, which is going to need some modification before Christmas because his girlfriend will be joining us. I do not think that she will wish to share Oliver’s single bed with Oliver and Spider Man and an unspecified number of cats and dogs, although mostly the latter seem to prefer Lucy’s bed.
None of them are stupid enough to believe they would be welcome in our bed.
Talking of Lucy there is still no update on her house-purchasing activity, although she has sent me a picture of a spectacularly enormous bruise that she has sustained at work. It appears that her occupation has become not so much a Thin Blue Line as much as Fat Purple Splodge. She has gained it fighting with a drunk person, it must have been an exciting fight because she can’t actually remember how the bruise happened. The drunk person had to be restrained by five police officers and given some tranquillisers before they would desist, and I imagine they had a truly terrible headache on the following morning.
It is to be hoped that there is some movement on the house-purchase in the near future, because she will be leaving Kettering in two or three weeks, not that I suppose there is any urgent rush, she can always get a tent in an emergency.
Finally, I don’t know if I told you that as requested I dispatched my article to Cambridge to their news magazine. You might recall that they asked me to write an article, explaining that they thought this would be marvellous because my speech at the ceremony was so entertaining and funny.
Today they sent it back for my final approval but have edited out absolutely all of the amusing bits. Not a single light-hearted quip remains, to the point where it is now so boring it is truly not worth reading. In fact, it is now entirely indistinguishable from every other article in the magazine, which I never bother reading because it is so insomnia-dispatchingly dull. This has amused me. I had always thought that somehow Cambridge managed to produce dozens of identically tedious article-writers in their magazine every month, but it would seem that this is not the case. Instead, it is now clear that the Department in charge wishes to make sure that absolutely nobody is entertained by their perusal of it.
I have even been considering putting in a request that they take my name off it. I really don’t wish posterity to remember me as the dullest of dull writers, which this article certainly makes me seem as though I am.
Actually, I don’t suppose it will matter. It is so boring that I am quite sure that nobody will read it.
Certainly I wouldn’t.
