I am on the taxi rank eating wild smoked salmon with cream cheese.
It is a very nice moment.
We have just discovered that Mark has got to go away again on Sunday, and so our time has been somewhat limited today. He is rushing around doing all of the things that need doing before he has got to dash off again.
Mostly today he has been hauling firewood. He came with me on my walk this morning, and then he and the dogs, who never mind having another outing, dived off to the farm to fill his trailer with logs.
He only takes the dogs as far as the bit where the main road stops. After that he hoofs them out of the car and they run the last mile. I would think this was hideously cruel if he did it to me, but the dogs seem to like it, and get very excited when they know it is going to happen, milling about like racehorses in the paddock whilst their owners are on the telephone to Ladbrokes and Bet Fred before the race.
They are squeakier than racehorses, but apart from that it is a good comparison.
I did not go to saw up logs. I spent ages cutting up fruit and salad for virtuous Not Being Fat taxi picnics, and then I went into the attic and got on with making Lucy’s curtains.
I am supposed to have been doing this for ages but have been idly putting it off. This is because it is such a colossally heavy job. Her windows are huge, and I am using dense upholstery fabric and thermal lining. Two curtains are more or less all I can manage to lift.
Today I made a start, and actually I haven’t done too badly. It is very nice to have the attic as a sewing room, because it means I can just leave everything at the point where I stop and do not have to faff about tidying up stray cotton and stuffing great rolls of heavy fabrics into drawers and cupboards before I can have a cup of tea.
Even without having to tidy up we were still late for work. This was because Mark had got the trailer to unload and I had just forgotten that you should check the time sometimes.
Note to self. I would like to get a clock in the attic.
The difficulty today was the wretched fabric. It has an intricate pattern of swirls and squares and leaves, and is almost impossible to match, even squinting with my tongue sticking out, and I spent ages with it draped over the ironing board, scowling and trying to match the swirls and the cut-off star bits together. Each curtain is a hundred and ten inches wide, so has to be made up of more than one length of fabric to be matched together, and then both curtains have got to match in the middle. Quite apart from the complicated pattern, they weigh about a stone each.
I was practically cross-eyed by the time I had finished, and felt as tired as if I had been hauling the firewood with Mark.
I did not get them completely finished, although I have made the curtains, and made up the lining, and so all I have got to do now is piece them all together.
I have got another pair to make when I have finished these two.
I am pleased to tell you, though, that I was wonderfully warm in the process. I have been wearing one of the new Base Layers instead of a T-shirt, and I have been completely blissful all day. Being warm enough is something of an unfamiliar experience, especially when I am doing something like not sawing up logs that does not involve a lot of exercisey things, and it has been splendid.
Some of the sewing was exercisey, like trying to drag the yards and yards of curtain fabric over a wobbly ironing board, and some of it, like the pattern-matching bit and the sitting at the sewing machine bit, was not. That is the bit where I would generally get quite chilly, but I didn’t.
I am wearing a new fluffy jersey as well now that I am on the taxi rank.
I am warm right down to my toes.
