It is my first day of solitude again, and it has been very lovely.
It has been quite astonishingly quiet. I do not mean to suggest that Lucy and Jack are noisy, quite the reverse, they are unassuming peaceful guests. Despite that, today has had an air of the sort of quiet that one might have if the world had somehow come to an end without my noticing, a sort of silent apocalypse without the zombies.
When the children go abroad without us we always have the same agreement, that if there is a zombie apocalypse in their absence then we will all make our way to the Eiffel Tower and meet there. It is probably not the most convenient meeting place for the end of the world, but at least we should all be able to find it even if the zombies have taken the signposts down. Also I would trust the children to be able to fight off zombies until we all found one another again.
There were no zombies this morning, just a quiet so profound that I looked out of the window in some alarm, although the world seemed to be carrying on fairly normally outside. Even the dogs seemed to be tiptoeing.
It took me a little while before I realised that the end of the Very Sorry For Myself disease has filled my head with so much horrid catarrh that I have gone slightly deaf. It is not that the world has become unexpectedly silent, just that I can’t actually hear its ever-present wagging any more.
I have filled my handkerchief with Karvol in the hope of shifting it. It hasn’t worked yet, but I can at least smell it now, which is an improvement.
I quite like this. I have ambled through the day shrouded in a sort of muffled tranquillity, which has felt entirely in keeping with the season. The Autumn Equinox has just passed, the day has been grey, and still, and there can no longer be any doubt that summer has finally drifted away from us. I have still got flowers in the house, but it feels as though it is time to replace them with pumpkins and berries and autumnal wreaths of ivy. These will be the last flowers this year, I think. The house no longer feels fresh and flowery, but is beginning to retreat into its winter underground-burrow incarnation, warm and dark and ready for hibernation.
The season seems to have galloped away before I had even noticed. Booths is selling mince pies and Advent Calendars, which caused me a pang of guilt this morning, because I have not even started on my Advent productions for this year. This is a bit worrying, because the manufacture of Advent calendars takes weeks and weeks. Usually I start in August. I haven’t, and now time is running out, probably I am going to have to make do with a couple of stick-men and some scrawled hearts and smiling faces.
I will have to get on with it.
I was supposed to be getting on with things today. I got back from my walk determined to make creative inroads upon the day, and dashed around getting the fire lit and the washing done in order to leave myself as much time as I could.
Then I had my bowl of porridge, and, readers, I am ashamed to tell you this, but I didn’t do anything else at all.
I fell asleep.
I had sat down at my desk to answer some emails, and suddenly realised my eyes were closing. I blinked a few times, and made some half-hearted efforts at concentration, but to no avail. When eventually it became apparent that the outcome was inevitable, I got up and went through into the bedroom, where the next couple of hours disappeared into complete oblivion.
I was embarrassed with myself when I woke up, although considerably refreshed.
I am going to have to have another go tomorrow.
