I have been getting Mark’s things ready for him to go offshore next week.
Number One Son-In-Law, who is currently on the oil rig which Mark will be going to next week – he gets on the helicopter as Mark gets off it – has been acting in an advisory capacity, giving me lists of everything he is likely to need. He helpfully explained that I needed to sew little tags in everything that say IBBETSON, just as if he were at boarding school.
I could practically hear him laughing from here.
Still it has been a lot of faffing about, what with nailbrushes and scarves and the right sort of trousers. I have been in a complete tizz about the whole thing all afternoon. I was supposed to be writing my dissertation, but I wrote about six lines, after which point I remembered toothpicks and teabags, and jumped up again.
It seems to have occupied most of the day.
In between I have been in discussions with the web hosting provider about the cost of these pages, which eventually they wrung out of me even through my clenched teeth, after which I had to book an overnight stay in Bath for Oliver’s trip to Norland. The whole day has rinsed about five hundred quid out of the poor exhausted credit card and I have hardly moved from my desk.
Fortunately I had plenty of low-budget exercise this morning, when I took the dogs up over the sodden fells.
Spring is definitely coming, there is no doubt about that. All of the hopeful signs are there now. We have crocuses and snowdrops in the front garden, daffodils in the Co-op, and a young blackbird has taken up residence in the back yard.
He has been very welcome indeed, it is a good job the cats have gone. He has got the most melodious song I think I have heard from a blackbird, they are always lovely but this one is ace, he should find a girlfriend in no time. At the moment it is very quiet, almost a whisper. It will be glorious when he gets going. I keep pulling back the carpet on the top of the compost heap for him, and exposing the poor worms. This seems brutal and unkind, because the worms are doing so well in there, and have built themselves little pink nests where dozens of them are all twined together in great wriggling masses. It seems so unspeakably dreadful that one minute they are warm and safe in their dark fruity nest, and the next minute they are clamped in a cruel sharp beak, ready to be torn to pieces.
It is a harsh world.
There is frog-spawn in the little pond on the fell. There was hardly any last week, but this week there is loads, great frothing clumps of it occupying half of the pond. At least I think it is frog-spawn. It might be newts, they live in that pond, and so do toads. I know it isn’t toad-spawn, that is in strings. Whatever it is, it is early, and I hope we don’t have any hard frosts.
The sun was shining, but it was dreadfully wet. I came in from work last night and took the dogs out under beautiful starry-clear skies, but had hardly been in bed for ten minutes before I was disturbed by a heavy drumming sound. I couldn’t work out what it was, and was astonished to discover, on peering cautiously out of the window, because you have to be careful to hide behind the curtain when you don’t wear pyjamas, that the heavens had positively opened, and rain was hurling down like a taxi driver trying to hose bird poo off the driver’s door.
Hence today everywhere was drenched, and I had to pick my way carefully from one clump of wetly-waving grass to the next. There were streams where usually there are only damp patches, and everything smelt rinsed-clean and fresh. I was not looking forward to walking, because of being old and idle, but of course once I actually got outside it was lovely. I had taken us to the other side of the park in the taxi because I really didn’t feel like having to beat every enthusiastic gentleman-dog away from Rosie, who is still in her adorable state of dog-attractiveness, and I hardly minded at all that I had to clean it out afterwards.
Hence my taxi is rinsed-clean and fresh as well.
I am off to work in it right now.
