If tonight is even a little bit like last night then I am not going to have any time to write to you.
If this suddenly crashes to a halt halfway through it, then that is why. I will have run out of night and been too idly disinclined to supplement writing time with a last ten minutes whilst Mark is having his shower at the end of the night.
It has been a rather fragmented day.
The last few days have been really rather splendid, enlivened by the presence of two daughters and a common-law-daughter-in-law, all of whose cheery presence has been encouraging and happy when we have dashed back to catch up with them in between bank holiday bursts of working and sleeping.
They went at half-past-nine this morning.
They tiptoed down the stairs very quietly, but we got up to say goodbye anyway, because it might be years and years before we see the Number Two Daughters again, and tried to cram all of our sleepy good wishes into a hug. We were sad to see them go, although possibly not as sad as poor Roger Poopy, whose ears drooped, and who crammed as much heartbroken dog-tragedy as he possibly could into his woebegone, abandoned expression. He loves both Number Two Daughter and Lucy very much indeed, and knew, from the quantity of luggage, that they would not be returning soon.
He has been lying on the sofa in the conservatory ever since, sighing heavily and ignoring his breakfast.
We had not managed to go to bed until half past five, and so once they had all departed we went back for another go at sleep. Of course it had fled by then, and so rather than waste the day lying sleeplessly, we rubbed our eyes and dragged on our clothes.
We got everything ready for work and then loaded the still-forlorn dogs into the car to go to the farm, where we spent a couple of hours clearing clutter out of Mark’s trailer.
There is a lot of it, and mostly it seems to be unidentifiable rusty clutter. There was an antique Victorian drill, and an enormous hydraulic machine which weighed as much as me, and which Mark said was a press. I do not know what he plans to press, probably not flower arrangements. There were all sorts of bits of steel that he has been saving in case they came in useful for something, and an enormous, immovable toolbox which had to be jacked up and the trailer backed underneath it.
The thrush’s nest is still in the horse box. The eggs have hatched, and there are five tiny, ugly grey balls of fluff curled in the nest.
I do not think that they can have been hatched for very long, maybe a day or two, because the babies are tiny, and were so fast asleep that at first we thought they might be dead, until we realised they were warm, and breathing. I heard the mother thrush shouting anxiously at us from the tree, and so we didn’t delay. We dragged everything out that we could and hurled it into the trailer.
We really need to take the shelves with us, but the nest is on top of them, so they will have to stay where they are for another few weeks.
We took it all to the new shed and wrestled the immovable toolbox out of the trailer. Getting it down required rather less ingenuity than getting it up, which had been a complicated process of jacking and leverage. It would not go any further and so it has been dumped there, in front of the camper van, so I hope we do not need to run away in it at any time soon, run away in the camper van, I mean, obviously, not the tool box.
After that we went home and slept, which meant we had the uncomfortable experience of having to drag ourselves out of bed without enough sleep twice in a day, because it was time to go to work almost before we had closed our eyes.
It is now tomorrow, and I have managed to squeeze in more diary-writing time than I had expected, although everywhere is quiet now and I am about to throw in the towel, even though it is now Double Time.
I don’t care. My bed is not just calling me.
It is issuing a determined summons.
