Oliver is home.
He was supposed to come home last night but diverted via Loughborough to see his friend, and hence did not make it back until this afternoon. This worked well because there were more parking spaces this afternoon, and I still have not managed to get the council to reply to my bitterly-worded complaints about their tiresome white line.
It is very nice to see him. He seems taller and broader, although when we measured him against his mark on the wall he is still the same height that he was, so I must just have forgotten.
He is exhausted after a busy half term and is going to spend half term asleep. This seems to me to be a very good idea, and one I would quite like to try out myself if only circumstances allowed it, but they don’t, and so I am on the taxi rank.
I had a busy day up until his arrival, at which point I idly sat down with a cup of tea to listen to Oliver’s stories of college and door supervising and other youthful jollities. Before that moment I had, of course, washed the sheets. I hung them out in the garden and got dirty handprints all over them because stupidly I had not washed my hands after bringing in the horrible filthy firewood.
I would like to say I was cross with myself about that, but I wasn’t. Actually I was cross with Mark which wasn’t really fair. The handprints finished up on his side of the bed by accident, but it won’t matter because he will only be sleeping there before a night or two before it is time to change them again.
They dried nicely in the garden. It has been terribly cold today, with occasional little flurries of snow, but dry, like the Antarctic, not that I would like to try pegging my washing out there. I didn’t much like pegging it out here, and did it as soon as I got back from my walk in order to get all of the worst things done first so that I could get warm afterwards and not have to think that I was going to get cold again soon.
I have not had the fire going very hard because of not wishing to use the last of the firewood, and so I have been sloping about the house wearing an extra jersey and my slippers, but I opened it up a couple of notches this morning so that Oliver’s room would warm up nicely. Then once the day’s chores were done I retreated to my office where I sewed more buttons on my dungarees and listened to an audible book about how to buy Bitcoin. I think I shall buy some Bitcoin. I do not have the first idea what they are or what you spend them on, but I do not trust that our beloved leaders can be relied upon not to devalue the magnificence of Sterling yet further, and so I am trying to find out.
I went to an online trading platform to have a go, but it turned out that you had to pass a general knowledge quiz before it would let you buy and sell anything, asking things like what percentage of leveraged stock would devalue in the event of some catastrophe, I forget what. I did not have the first idea what it was talking about, it was worse than my Chemistry O Level, and in the end it told me that I was too stupid to be trusted with finance and to go away and find out more first.
It is a good thing eBay does not do this.
I do not know what Leverage is either, come to that.
I sewed on several buttons whilst I was trying to find out from my audible book. I have only got four buttons left now and will have to buy some more soon, because I have still got several pairs of dungarees left to go.
It is a good thing I did not spend all my cash on Bitcoin. Buttons are expensive.
After all, I am trying to be careful with my money.
