I am writing this in a hasty few minutes before we go and have an adventure.
We are going to go out for dinner.
This is not really much of an adventure, since I suppose we will just go out to the Indian restaurant where we always go, but this will be all right, because the best kinds of adventures are the ones that are not scary or troubling in any way, and there is nothing scary about a bottle of the House Red and a couple of helpings of Mango Butter Chicken. Also it is not very far from the Indian restaurant to our house, so even if we get impossibly drunk on the House Red, which we might because neither of us has had any wine since Cambridge, it will not matter and we will not have to argue with unhelpful taxi drivers nor sleep under a bench.
There are not many unhelpful taxi drivers out tonight. There is only Chubby and Abdul, so we had better not go very far, we do not want to be in need of a taxi. I have called them both to let them know that I am not working tonight, so if they double book themselves they will just have to flap about and sort it out on their own. I am not going to be there to make a reluctant trip and then to be rude to their customers.
As I am sure you will have gathered, Mark has come home.
I spent the entire day dashing about like Rosie when she is in the garden and hears me taking the wrapper off some cheese, cleaning and tidying and changing the sheets and going to Booths for ethical sausages. Obviously Rosie does not do those things. She just waddles about at great speeds, her little legs pumping frantically.
In the end Mark arrived at about half past three this afternoon, and when we had calmed down the excited dogs by taking them into the Library Gardens for them to charge about after a ball for ten minutes, he promptly called Autoparts to order a new battery for the camper van, because we are going to try and get it back on the road.
I tried to start it the other day, because the Council wanted to come and clear out the drain underneath it, but to no avail. Despite half an hour spent reading the newspaper with my foot on the accelerator of my taxi and the jump leads firmly attached, the camper van was having none of it. The battery remained resolutely as flat as a newly-ironed handkerchief.
He is going to be home for two whole weeks, and he has promised to fix it. He has got some things to do in those two weeks, so they are not exactly going to be a holiday, but all the same it will be a very splendid break, even if I have still got to drive a taxi at nights to make sure that we do not inadvertently spend all of our money when we are not paying attention.
I could do that very easily. I would like some new perfume and it is jolly expensive. I have been looking longingly at the Penhaligon’s website in moments when I have been trying not to write a story.
Apart from fixing the camper van, he is going to fill the hole in the kitchen wall with cement. This hole leads to a subterranean pipe with all sorts of useful bits of cabling going down it to the shed, and he has just blocked the end off with a wedge of insulation to stop the draft.
Roger Poopy and I both know that there are rats in it. We can hear them scrabbling at nights.
This is a horror straight out of Room 101.
I do not want rats in the house, not under any circumstances whatsoever. I do not care how very useful the hole might be, it is going to be thoroughly and irrevocably blocked up with cement, and in the very, very near future. Mark has been home for an hour so far and already I have explained this twice.
He has not exactly started on it yet, but I am quite sure that he will do it soon. He has got to go and fix somebody’s trailer, and bring back some firewood, but apart from that and fixing the camper van he will be just loafing about.
I would not want to encourage that.
We are going to go and get some dinner.
I am feeling quite excited.
