I have had a splendid day.
I am feeling very contented with my world.
Mark came home late last night, and so I stopped working early and we had a reunion. It was not exactly a passionate reunion because it is always difficult to feel thrilled when somebody comes into your space with a sack of laundry and some smelly sandwich boxes left over from their journey north about three weeks ago. Those things do not inspire me to raptures of joy.
Apart from that it was, of course, very nice to see him. and he has mostly been out from under my feet all day because he has been fixing his car.
He hit a deer some time before he left and smashed the headlight. This cost us a hundred and seventy eight quid for a new one, and I had to console myself with the thought that it had been very much worse for the deer.
It cracked the bumper as well, and he has occupied himself today in welding the bumper up and replacing the headlight.
He also covered himself in glory, as far as I am concerned, by telling the tiresome bloke who keeps parking in my parking space, to sling his hook. He is a very tiresome bloke, the handyman from one of the hotels, and he comes to repair the staff house where the hotel kitchen porters keep trashing it before they disappear off into the sunset, kicking the dust from their Adidas trainers and making rude gestures in their wake. Kitchen porters do this. This is because it is a truly horrible job.
Anyway, when the bloke comes he just dumps his car in my parking space, sometimes across the middle of both parking spaces, and today Mark told him that if he didn’t move before I came home he would get very cross and tow it away. The bloke glowered a bit but when Mark did start to get cross, he gave in and moved. Oil rigs must boost a chap’s territorial instincts, something must have activated his Inner Chimpanzee. I was very pleased about this. I also have an Inner Chimpanzee, but unfortunately it is not six feet tall and oil-rig muscular.
Of course Mark being occupied outside has meant that I have had the house to myself, and I have been able to get on with the last remaining clearing-up jobs.
I cleared up the attic. This was remarkably satisfying. Of course before Oliver left we occupied much of the last couple of weeks sorting out his new uniform in there. We ironed things and hemmed trousers and sewed name labels into things and unpacked new things and stuffed them into cases, until in the end what was left looked like the aftermath of a Women’s Institute jumble sale, the sort where things got a bit nasty over the bric-a-brac.
Matters had not been helped by having had Lucy’s cats as guests for a couple of weeks. They prefer to occupy the attic as their private bedroom, and they had left practically their own weight in cat fur behind them.
Today I cleared it up. All of it. I made it all look beautiful and lovely. I even finished the job beautifully by glueing some upholstery fabric over a shoe box to store scarves. These had been in a bag that Oliver had decided he might need in Bath, and I did not want them to become cat blankets the next time the cats turn up, so I made a box that would not look out of place beside my lovely hat box collection, and felt creative and smug. Actually I made a bit of an uneven pig’s ear of it because I wasn’t really concentrating and was gassing on the phone whilst I did it, but it is an old shoe box full of old scarves, so nobody cares, and I tied a ribbon round it so even I probably won’t notice next time, unless it hadn’t dried properly before I got bored, and is accidentally glued shut, which is always possible.
I stopped there because Mark had the reckless plan of going out to the Indian for a celebratory welcome-home dinner, so we did. I have eaten so much now that I am thoroughly uncomfortable, not to mention intoxicated, and added to which we have spent all of our money, but I really don’t care.
I am stuffed and drunk, and it is wonderful.
PS. Please appreciate the double meaning in the title. It implies not only that we have been eating hedonistic dinners in restaurants, but also that I have been at the top of four flights of stairs cleaning the attic. It took me a while to think of it, but then I thought I ought to explain it in case it turned out to be too subtle for somebody who is still eating their cornflakes.
