Oliver has gone and I am by myself.
I do not mind this in the least, it is nice to have his company and he is very useful when it comes to fixing my car or taking the dogs out if I am feeling too idle, but he is a very grown-up by now. It is far better that he is adventuring around the world than going slowly mouldy in the Lake District with his ageing mother.
He is adventuring as well, he has gone to visit his girlfriend in Kent, which is a long way away.
We are cautious about vehicles at the moment, and checked his very carefully to make sure everything on it was working before he set off. I hope it all goes well.
I am not adventuring. I have been sewing.
I think this is exciting although I am aware that you might not, it is not the sort of stuff that even Channel 4 might think was worthy of a made-for-television drama.
I am still making curtains for the camper van.
I am struggling with the tie-backs. I decided, in a moment of brainlessness, to make these curved and elegant with gold coloured piping around the edges.
When creating this extravagant design it seems that I have considerably overestimated my sewing abilities, and I have been scowling and swearing and wiping blood off my fingers ever since. I have made four so far, and am considering now whether it will be noticeable if I cut the next ones sideways across the velvet instead of up and down, because that is the size of the offcut bit of velvet I have got, and I am trying very hard not to waste any.
I am even saving the tiniest offcuts for making buttons.
I have concluded that it will be all right if I put the sideways ones in different rooms to the up and down ones, because any critical visitors to the camper van will probably have forgotten between the living room and the bedroom which way the nap fell on the curtain tie backs, and anybody who hasn’t will probably be too polite to mention it very much.
Mark will probably mention it but he might not notice.
He probably will really. I hope it does not spoil his happy enjoyment of the curtain tie-backs. I would hate to have to do them again.
In other news, I have had the happy experience today of doing the laundry and changing the sheets without needing to bother about hoovering and dusting. This has been entirely satisfactory, and is the reason I have had some spare time for sewing even though it is Monday.
There was not as much time for sewing as I would have liked, because I was compelled to waste some considerable time faffing about with the banking. I transferred our wages out of the business account into our personal bank account, with the intention of paying the bills and being at peace with the world, but when I looked at the personal account afterwards, there was still nothing in it.
Worse, it was overdrawn by £3.36.
They hadn’t even put the money back into our business account. It has disappeared into the cyber-ether.
I spent a long, long time trying to get through the bank’s automated call service, followed by a short and not very friendly time speaking to an Indian lady who clearly did not have the first idea where my money had gone, and who told me to call back after three thirty. I did call after three thirty, only to be greeted by a robot lady who told me that they were having Issues, and not to worry, because they would be fixing them in a jiffy and all money would be restored to its rightful owners.
At the time of writing I have still not got it back.
There are going to be some very grumpy telephone calls in the morning.
