I have had an extraordinarily frustrating day.
I went out with the dogs this morning and barely noticed the mists and mellow fruitfulness all around me, so busy was I thinking about the next bit of my story. I stumped along pondering, through the middle of the Galloway herd, who barely even glanced in my direction, past the hawthorn berries and the gorse and the rippling brook, through the middle, in fact, of what is possibly the most beautiful landscape in the entire world, and looked at none of it.
I was too busy considering the fate of my poor weary heroine even to listen for the squabbling robins or watch for the hunting buzzards.
I came home bursting with it, and desperate to rush upstairs and to move her along into her next bit of tactically-placed jeopardy.
Of course, I could not just rush upstairs. First, there were things that had to be done.
Of course there was the laundry, two lots today because the tablecloth in the conservatory had become filthy, and the table needed a good wash down.
It had turned out that I had not fed Mark enough last night, and he had come rushing home in the middle of the evening, so desperate for nourishment that he had eaten an apple. His dinner of beef burgers, lamb burgers, kebabs, sausages, pizza and potatoes, had not even taken the edge of his ravenous hunger, and he had practically eaten chunks of the steering wheel..
I wonder if he has picked up a tapeworm on his oil rig.
I had to go to Booths.
Even before that, I had to go to the library, before my due-date turned into a threat.
The library was having some new shelves installed, installed by the librarians, that is, who were excitedly puzzling over which bit might go where, like a giant Meccano set without the instructions. I asked them what they were doing with the giant pallets on which they had arrived, and they scratched their heads and said: We were wondering that ourselves.
Mark and I took my taxi round and collected the pallets, which always burn very nicely. They are not much good for open fires, because they spit like teenage boys in a bus shelter, but in the stove they burn up hot and quick, and are jolly useful.
These were dry and thick, nothing but the best for the Library.
Mark had swept the chimney whilst I had been out, because of its repeated tendency to burst into flames lately, and even though it is hardly two months since the last time he swept it, he scraped so much tarry soot out of it that he said he was not surprised, and that I must run the fire hotter. I don’t tend to run the fire hot, no matter how cold it is, because that doubles the amount of firewood-related labour, and it is less trouble just to put on another jersey, but I sighed and agreed that henceforward I would remember.
Once I had been to Booths I set about turning the shopping into dinners. I cooked more potatoes to shove in Mark’s dinner, and baked a tray of fresh biscuits. I sliced melon and chopped raspberries and strawberries into yoghurt.
By the time I had finished it was almost six o’clock.
I had got twenty minutes left to write my story before I had got to go to work.
I would like to say that I am trying not to be cross about it, but that would be a complete fib, because I am not trying at all. I am feeling very grumpy indeed. I have spent my entire day trying to organise food that I don’t eat and washing everybody’s clothes, and not only have I not written a word, all of the splendid ideas of this morning’s walk have now faded so far away that I will not be able to catch them again.
I bet JK Rowling does not have these problems.
