Well, after all of last night’s gadding and drinking I am once again sitting quietly on the taxi rank with a flask of chai and some slices of melon.
I am not surprised I have not become thin. I am far too easily distracted into splendid dinners. Last night’s was a very splendid dinner, although I did think at about three o’clock this morning that some indigestion tablets might have been a good idea.
It was all jolly good for me, though. Even Weight Watchers agree that you should eat lots of fruit, and quite apart from the banana whipped cream I had a pineapple daiquiri as well, so it was practically health food. This was one of the nicest drinks I have ever tasted, although to my regret, it only came in small helpings. I could easily have appreciated a couple of pints, but it came in a sophisticated glass with a pineapple leaf sticking out of it, which I had to be careful not to get poked in my eye. Also it was a middle-class establishment so I could not run my finger around the side of the glass and lick the froth off it, which was a pity because it was very nice, but I resisted. This sort of behaviour is almost as bad as blowing your nose on your napkin.
Mark does this sometimes if I do not supervise him closely.
I wonder if it becomes a serviette once you have blown your nose on it.
Anyway, I woke up this morning feeling very sleepily reluctant to go off marching up the fell, but of course I did because the dogs would have been very forlorn if I had tried to shirk out of it. Actually it was pretty good. The weather has cooled off now, and indeed as I write it is raining again, quite hard now, but this morning was dry, and I strode off and hardly wasted any time dawdling about chatting to people. This is always a terrible temptation in the sunshine, but today was cool and fresh, and not really dawdling weather.
I am pleased to say that my new boots have settled down so thoroughly that I did not think about them one single time for the whole way round.
I hung the washing out when I got back, but had to take it all in in rather a hurry later.
After that I dashed off up to the office where I am still faffing about with university things. I have finished my dissertation, apart from endless tweaking of grammar, but not everybody has, and my email was hot with requests for me to read things, and to tell people what I thought of their piece.
Mostly what I thought was that I hoped I liked them, because it would have been awful to say: No this is rubbish, with two days to go.
Fortunately none of them were rubbish, although I thrilled with horror to realise how still-unfinished some people’s pieces were. I would have been waking in the middle of the night in agonies of terror if mine was still being planned.
I read and commented until I was going cross-eyed, and fortunately at that point there was a knock at the back door and it was my friends of yesterday, come for a last cup of tea and chat before they headed south again.
This provided a gloriously guiltless opportunity to be idle, and so I was.
I loafed in the conservatory, listening with rapt fascination to stories of a life spent underneath a corporate umbrella, which is more or less outside my experience since my corporate life came to an abrupt end after a fortnight, when the chap in charge said I was Politically Unsound and chucked me out. Of course he was right, indeed, he was so right that I was entirely relieved, and never again imagined that I might be cut out for a career in management.
I am not cut out for any career really, except the one I have got, which suits me rather well.
I am at work now, and appreciating the late night peace and quiet.
Anyway, it was lovely to hear the stories, imagining how it would have been if I had chosen the sort of career which involved travelling to all sorts of internationally global corporate adventures and staying in hotels and making speeches and having your opinion listened to. It sounds magnificent but I am glad I didn’t. It sounds terribly worrying, and I am the sort of person who gets in a flap if I have forgotten to buy sausages.
I bought sausages today, because Oliver has come home. He has finished school for ever, and is trying not to be sunk in gloom about it.
Lucy came home tonight as well.
I am fed up of work. I am going to go home and see them.
