Well, life is starting to fall back into its well-worn grooves again. It is slow. I have been overtaken by a wash of dopeyness.
It seems to have been very busy. Lucy and Oliver have both been at home, and Lucy has been accompanied by her new boyfriend. He is called Jack The Postman, and he is rather a nice chap. Mark likes him very much because he talks a lot about things like turbos and cam chains and wheel bearings.
I do not think that this is the bit Lucy likes best about him.
They have been tootling off together exploring the Lake District. Oliver has not been going with them. Oliver has been working, mostly. He is not just being a security guard, he has also got another job cleaning things. I had no idea he could do this but apparently he can.
The dogs have not been allowed to go with them either. This has upset Roger Poopy very much. Not only is he having to share his beloved Lucy with some rascally interloper, but he is obliged to sleep on the floor instead of in Lucy’s bed, curled up lovingly at a handy angle for being able to lick her ear at affectionate moments, and this morning when they went out, off for a morning of Tree Top Trekking, they left him behind.
I was woken up by his piteous cries. I staggered sleepily downstairs to find him sobbing at the back door. I had no idea why, so I imagined he might have some urgent physical need, somebody had been sick on the conservatory floor the previous evening, and booted him out into the back yard.
He was even more noisily forlorn after that. I am very glad I don’t live next door to us.
I am still not quite settled back into my own life yet. I have been very sleepy. I think perhaps I have not slept very much over the last few weeks, and now my brain cells and synapses are demanding repayment. I am having to scowl very hard in order to achieve anything sensible, which is a nuisance because there are lots of things I would like to be doing but whenever I start they get too difficult very quickly.
Hence I am avoiding anything which might turn out to be complicated and am just doing things which can be accomplished without any difficult thinking.
Yesterday I cleaned the big dresser.
This is always a very long job, because it is very full of all my favourite beautiful china, and yesterday it was especially long because I had not done it for ages and ages. I can’t remember when I cleaned it last but it was probably some time when I was a lot younger.
Everything was horribly sticky and covered in dust, but it was a perfect job because of being tidily methodical without requiring any actual mental acuity. I ambled around the kitchen, boiling the kettle for really hot water, wiping the surfaces and washing the china, all the while listening to some Mrs. Gaskell yarn on an Audible story.
Things have changed very much since we were Victorians. There are a lot of bits in her stories where I know that we are supposed to admire the heroine but actually I was just horrified at what a complete tiresome sap she was. We had to read Mrs. Gaskell for some exam in my youth once, I forget which, but really I do not think her books are at all suitable for children, she has some awful ideas. The most racist right-wing rioter could not be more prejudiced about immigrants than Mrs. Gaskell’s heroine is prejudiced about servants and tradespeople, and every now and then she puts them thoroughly in their place so that the reader can applaud her.
I am going to go to the library and get some easy reading, I think. Stephen King or something.
I am not even sure I can manage Stephen King at the moment.
Perhaps I had better look in the children’s section.
