We are almost, almost ready.
I have crossed so many things off the List that it is no longer a List any more, but a brief mention of some things I am not interested in doing, like mending the hole in the dogs’ cushion, and a very lot of scribble.
I am feeling very pleased with the world.
We have parcelled up all of the Christmas chocolates, all, that is, apart from the several tins in our fridge left over for personal greed over Christmas, and we have posted them. We even took some for Nigel in the post office, so that he would not mind so much about the massive queue that formed behind us as we were obligingly passing piles and piles of Sellotape-festooned packages on to the scales.
In the end we were done, and I felt as though I was walking about half a stone lighter, which I suppose is reasonable since I haven’t eaten any of them yet. It is a wonderful feeling, though, to be list-less.
Once home I started doing everything else that needed doing, because of course there was absolutely lots of it. Oliver arrived home in the middle of the night last night, and we all sat around talking until long after two, after which he dashed out to his car to return with a massive sack of laundry, so guess what I did today. It was our Clean Sheets Day as well, so things in the washing machine department became a bit frantic. Fortunately – very fortunately – the Weather Gods had smiled kindly upon us, and it was not only dry but very windy, and everything flapped madly in the yard until it was hardly damp at all.
After that we dashed into Kendal. You might recall that we had put Mark’s taxi through an MOT not very long ago, and it passed. You will not be surprised to hear that we celebrated briefly and then forgot all about it, until I had a mildly irritated email from the Town Hall requiring that we came to collect the new taxi plates which were still cluttering up their desk.
We went to TK Maxx for more socks for Mark, who might need to cut his toenails more often, and finished up in Marks and Spencer, for some fish, because although we will not eat it now, of course we will be back on Friday and dashing about trying to get ready for work when we are late and in a hurry. I was quite proud of this foresight. I will get home on Friday and discover that somebody cares about me.
Finally it was time for the last task of the day, which was the Packing.
We are going in the morning.
It is more likely that we will be going in the afternoon, we are not very good at early starts, especially after late nights, which this one inadvertently seems to have become.
I have packed everything. I think I have remembered most things, this one will not be a repeat of the terrible year when I forgot all of Mark’s underpants. I even managed to cram everything into a single suitcase, which is rather remarkable, there have been several years when we have needed two or three, so maybe I have forgotten something after all.
After that I wrapped the Christmas presents that we need to take with us, the rest will have to wait until we get back, and then shoved everything into the conservatory.
I could have collapsed with happy weariness, except that when I looked around I discovered that whilst we have been busily making things and wrapping things and packing things, we had completely trashed the house.
I spent some time putting left over bits of brown paper, cardboard and string into the dustbin.
It is all done.
Mark will be home from work in a very short time now, and we will be going to bed, ready to leap out of it with shining morning faces tomorrow.
It is here. We are really going.
Hurrah for nearly Christmas.
