Diminishing return

Well, I have returned again, although I am aware with somewhat less fanfare since I actually returned this morning and this evening’s entry is in fact Return The Sequel.

I am very glad to have my diary back again, although I must admit that it was a pleasure to loaf about in total idleness on the taxi rank last night, with nothing to do but gaze out of the window, watch a film on Netflix, or read my book.

I do not always like reading a book on the taxi rank, because customers get in and say Wot You Reading, and I have got to try and find some excuse not to tell them. Instead I say I Need To Tell You That I Don’t Have A Card Machine Have You Got Cash, which usually distracts their attention so they forget, people tend not to be very focussed after fourteen pints and a kebab. In any case, it always seems to be the most hideously intrusive personal question, especially since the response is almost never going to mean anything to them, and in the unlikely instance that I do tell them, the usual proud reply is I Read A Book Once.

Especially I am not fond of telling people if the answer is something undignified, such as Piers Morgan’s diaries, or the latest Jilly Cooper, although my own story-writing adventures have led me to the conclusion that even the most wrong-headedly rubbish of books has still been a massive exercise in tongue-sticking-out and scowling for somebody, and hence I am inclined to admiration. Still there is a hierarchy of literature, and I have an embarrassing fondness for the stuff at the bottom. Indeed, during one of our last Cambridge lectures, it turned out that I was the only person who had actually read the Thursday Murder Club books, everybody else considered them to be peasant fodder, like oats and kale and pottage in the Middle Ages.

They are jolly good peasant fodder, so worth a read if you are also a literary peasant.

My current read, the Viking Edda poetry, is not nearly sufficiently low-brow to be entertaining, and is in fact an endlessly tedious recitation of Odin’s bad behaviour, shield-bashing and swearing of improbably unpleasant oaths. I am trying just to skip to the bits I need to know for my dissertation, but it is still making me not look forward to quiet taxi moments any more. I will be glad when I have either finished it, or have become sufficiently well-informed just to invent the bits I got bored with. This will be enough for me to add it as a credit on the reading list, and it is perfectly possible that the examiner won’t have read any more than I have anyway.

Anyway, in other news, you will be pleased to hear that I am still getting along nicely with my life, and am pleased to announce that Oliver has got through all of the initial form-fillings of applying to the police to have been offered an interview. This, we have been importantly assured, is the Final Stage, and he will be notified of a date in due course, as if he were awaiting a court date for a prosecution for criminal damage. I am very pleased, if he passes both this interview and the one at Norland then he has got some splendid choices in front of him, and we haven’t heard back from Sandhurst yet.

Mark is still plating away on his oil rig, and I have been bravely keeping up my solitary end. I took the dogs up the fell in the splendid sunshine this morning, and we splashed about getting muddy, especially the dogs. I made the mistake of telling Rosie that she was a Good Dog when we were halfway round, and she was so proud of herself that she jumped all over the place and got paw prints and mud smears all over my trousers, after which she was disappointed to find that I no longer thought she was a Good Dog, and instead said For Goodness’ Sake You Idiot. The paw prints are still there now, despite repeated attempts at brushing, so it is a good job I work in the dark.

Also I am covered in sawdust again. This seems to cling no matter how much I apply the dustpan and brush to my person. I can also tell you that during my firewood-sawing activities this morning I tried out the new Lumberjack Barbie chainsaw, and I think I can say it is probably the most lethally dangerous tool I have ever used.

This is not because of its superior slicing power, although for so small an implement it does a jolly good job, but because it is so lightweight and frothy that it is almost impossible to treat it with any more gravitas than if it were a hairdryer, or a fruit juicing machine. All of our other tools are solid, and forbidding, and make no bones about presenting a serious peril, like Odin faced with Greybeard the ferryman*. The new chainsaw has gone to such trouble to appear girlie-friendly that it is very difficult to remember that it is still a savage killing machine, and I am going to have to take serious care of my fingers. It is even called Golddigger, or some other feminine sort of title.

Still, it is very useful for awkwardly shaped bits of wood, and I am pleased to have it, it has saved me a very great deal of messing about today.

It is almost my bedtime, and I am going to bid you a farewell. It is very nice to be back.

See you tomorrow.

* spot the literary allusion there, did I mention that I am doing a Master’s’s’ degree at Cambridge, well I am.