There is never very much time for anything at the weekends, because of working.
Last night was especially worky, because of the football. The match did not start until ten o’clock, and then finished in the middle of the night, so of course everybody suddenly burst out of the pubs all together and wanted a taxi home at the very same moment.
Especially they wanted a taxi home because it started to rain.
It rained and rained, really hard. Tragically, most people had just come out dressed only in their underwear, because of having the sort of optimistic expectation of the weather that you can only have if you do not live in the Lake District.
Also there were only three taxis left by then, the others having decided that they did not want to fill their clean shiny taxis with drunken wet football fans, stumbling into the back seats with their hands full of greasy kebab and chips.
I did not much want to do that either, but the cash is always handy so I stayed out. Fortunately, England won, so everybody was feeling cheerful, and actually my taxi was not too bad, or at any rate, it wasn’t much worse than it usually is. A person with four muddy dogs can hardly afford to have exacting standards in this sort of thing.
Hence it was very late when I got home, and later still by the time I had gone out again to deliver the mobile telephone I had been rather grumpy to discover on the back seat, and I did not get up very early this morning.
I jumped out of bed with some enthusiasm then, though, because I wanted to get on with my curtain manufacturing project.
I think I have already told you about this. I have been making the first curtains for the van, the little narrow ones for the back windows. I am very excited about it. I think they look truly magnificent, although Oliver rolled his eyes and asked if I was trying to beat Blackpool in a Tasteless competition.
I do not care, they are lovely.
Yesterday and today I have been making tie-backs for them
These are blue velvet with gold velvet piping and gold rings, and they look just like the Orient Express might look if the railway company had ordered their curtains from a very clumsy person with blood-smeared fingers. Pins can turn up in some unexpected places, I can tell you.
Dearie me, piping is difficult.
You have got to think really hard about piping. I mean really hard. You have got to wrap the piping inside the gold stuff the right way out and then turn the fabrics the wrong way out and sew the wrapped-up piping in between the two edges. This does not sound very difficult, but actually it is horribly complicated, especially with really, really slippery velvet and round corners.
Also there is a part of a person’s brain that deals with turning shapes over and over and fitting them together. This is the bit of your brain that they ask you about in Non Verbal Reasoning Tests, which are special tests designed to see if even inarticulate idiots have got hidden cleverness and could be useful for something more than just delivering Amazon parcels or serving tea and biscuits in a cafe. Anyway, it does not seem to be there in my brain at all. It is a bit like buying a computer which does not have Microsoft Word installed, it makes all the right noises but will not do anything very useful.
Fortunately, that bit of Mark’s brain works very well indeed, and so usually I do not need to worry. The best sort of person to be married to is one who can do all of the things you can’t, and also who likes all the horrid ones in the tin of Quality Street.
I had to concentrate hard, but actually it was a very happy afternoon, up by myself in the warm attic, with the window opened wide and the sounds of Oliver and Emily laughing downstairs. I listened to the story for a while as I sewed, and then chatted on the telephone for a while, and then just thought about the camper van and how splendid it would look with blue and gold velvet curtains.
I have been trying to add a picture for a while now, but my computer is refusing to let me. If there is a picture of a curtain attached when you read this, I have managed to bully my computer into submission, and if not then probably I forgot all about it and went home.
You will just have to imagine their blue and gold velvety perfection.
LATER NOTE: I managed it, as you can see.
