We are going to have a night off.
We are going to watch a film called Oppenheimer, which I have wanted to watch ever since it came out, but have never managed to find the time.
This evening we have got time.
This is because I went to work last night and by the end of it had earned twenty quid. In fact I didn’t even have that because the night before I had forgotten to put the ten pound notes back into my change box, so it was twenty quid down. I had been surprised the night before to discover that I had earned forty quid, but of course I hadn’t and so I have made twenty quid a night for the last two nights. This works out at an hourly rate of about £3.50 and so tonight I am not going to bother. I would have a better chance of making some money by trying to get a winter fuel allowance out of our beloved leaders.
I do not in the least mind not going to work. It seems to have been a very busy day, and I am very pleased to have time to loaf about doing nothing but eating and watching a film. We have unearthed some ancient shepherds’ pies out of the bottom of the freezer, where they have been dawdling about for the past couple of years, waiting for us to have an idle night off, and tonight seems to be their big chance.
I think idling is becoming a habit.
We were not up early this morning, which made the day short, and the bit of it available for activities was shortened again by the arrival of Jack’s dad, who had come to collect a poopy, so we seized the opportunity to shirk with a cup of tea instead of getting on with domestic chores.
The poopies are old enough to go now.
He has taken the ginger-furred one. She has now been called Poppy, and will doubtless enter the vast number of animals owned by close family who finish up back here every now and again. We are pleased about this, she is a nice dog.
It was very sad to see her go, despite the complete nuisance that poopies manage to be, and the leaks, and the chewed shoelaces, but Jack rang me up whilst he was waiting for Lucy to come home from work and assured me that she seems very happy. I am sure she will miss her brothers and sisters very much, but she was getting bored and in need of new adventures.
Somebody is coming for one of the others tomorrow.
Once Poppy the Poopy had gone we had no more excuse. I took the dogs out over the fells, which was a bit of a slippery adventure. The snow up there has frozen solidly enough to be walked on, and the whole of the fell side has metamorphosised into a glacier, and I struggled around very cautiously. It is the sort of weather that broken hips are made of.
Mark is still fighting with Lucy’s car, which will not come apart very easily. Fortunately he has got a good thick boiler suit, because it is not at all nice to be bashing frozen bolts about at the moment.
After all of that I started on my current project, which is to restore the house back to its pre-Christmas state.
The Christmas tree is gone now. We cut off all of its branches and fed them into the central heating, where they flamed and crackled and roared, a Christmas tree is terrifyingly flammable, goodness knows how anybody survived the times when they used to put candles on them. By this morning only a tragic, single ceiling-high stick remained. I have shoved that in the yard to be sawn into bits and brought back in when it has properly dried out.
I swept up half a bucket of needles from the living room carpet, and tidied everywhere back to its pre-Christmas state of sombre dignity. This is a relief now. It is nice not to be festive any more.
LATER NOTE: Oppenheimer is a modern and incomprehensible film. Its main message seemed to be that the Government were determined to persecute and bring down anybody with left-wing opinions or who opposed nuclear war. Mark said that it missed out all of the interesting physics, which was why he had wanted to watch it in the first place, presumably in case it included the instructions for making a nuclear reactor, which has long been one of his pet projects.
It is one of those films that jumps about from one time to another, which always confuses me. I like stories to start at the beginning and carry on until they have finished. This approach used to get me in trouble at Cambridge where making your story weird and incomprehensible was actively applauded. Freddie Mercury was in it and some bits were inexplicably filmed in black and white.
I couldn’t give any spoilers because I am not actually sure what happened in the end. Still the shepherds’ pie was excellent and we drank about half a bottle of sherry, so a good time was had by all.
I hope Poppy the Poopy is all right.
