The picture is not an impromptu indoor firework display, but a picture of my husband at work. He is operating, I am told, a machine called a Plasma Cutter, and is somewhere in the bowels of a ship.
He looks to be having a lovely time. In between making that sort of colossal mess he is being fed on all manner of splendid dinners, being roast venison and sticky toffee pudding today, and so you will not be surprised to hear that he is not in the least concerned about coming home.
I am also having a lovely time. It has been the weekend, as of course you know but future readers of this diary may not, as the date line at the top neglects to provide this useful piece of information. I have discovered this whilst occasionally reading through past entries. We seem to have had a very uneventful ten years, I am surprised I have any readers at all. Some of it makes very dull reading even for me.
This diary has been going for ten years now. I considered having a special birthday entry in February, but then I forgot.
Anyway, sunny weekends draw people to the Lake District like an old magnet from a taxi sign draws nails out of the bottom of the grate when the fire has gone out, and we have been busily making money. Not a very lot of money, because it is still only March, but more than we would have done if we had had freezing sleet and floods.
I have let the fire go out today. This felt like a superlatively idle thing to do, because of course with no fire, there is no grate to be cleaned, no firewood to be carried. The conservatory was so warm that I left the door open and the heat has flooded benevolently through the entire house. Even the dogs did not mind, and stretched themselves contentedly in the sunshine on the conservatory sofa. I left them in the car when I went to Booths. I know people go on and on about dogs in hot cars, but mine seem to seek out the very hottest place they can find in the whole house, baking contentedly on the back of the sofa, being the sunniest place probably in the whole of the Lake District.
I left the windows open when I left them in the car, because of not wishing to be a social pariah, and they shivered and glared at me accusingly.
When I came home I could not get on with writing my story, which was what I would really have liked to do. I have discovered that I have been writing it for over a year now, almost eighteen months, and I am both fed up with it and determined to finish it, not least because I was supposed to get it finished for the agent person in January. They have not asked for it, however, and I am not going to remind them until it is done, which I would very much like to happen this week. It is slow going at the moment, my heroine is boring even me, and I would not be in the least sorry if one of her many perils accidentally finished her off. There is not much more story to go now, if only I can get on with it I will finish it very soon.
I did not get on with it very much today. Instead I set to providing my week’s taxi picnics, and made the good-for-me cake that doesn’t include anything nice, unless you like dried apricots, which actually I am beginning to succeed in doing, a bit. Also I made sushi, but I tried a different sort of fish, mackerel actually, which turned out to be a bit oily and the rolls haven’t stuck together very well. I told Mark about it, and he laughed and wondered why I didn’t just purchase sandwiches in the perfectly functional delicatessen in the village, which is so nice that even people on his oil rig have talked about it, but I explained that my current favourite sandwiches are mackerel with yoghurt, and even Mark was forced to agree that it was unlikely that anything similar would be available for purchase.
If this gorgeous sunshine carries on I am contemplating the possibility of taking my thermal vest off tomorrow. I have been discussing this with various taxi customers, with mixed results. Most people feel that this would be far too reckless an undressing so very early in the year. I am still undecided and am going to examine the weather forecast carefully before reaching a final decision in the morning.
I will keep you posted.
