My first day of being solitary again, if you don’t count four boisterous dogs and a leaky cat.
I have attached a picture of the cat, just because it makes me laugh. It is a picture of Guffy trying to look inconspicuous at the vet the other day, working on the principle that if she can’t see him, obviously she must also be invisible.
It is uncharitable to laugh at a helpless little creature’s terror, I am a bad person.
We have not been to the vet today. Today’s outing was accomplished all by myself. I went to Morecambe to get new tyres on the taxi. They had become smooth and slippery, which as we all know is not an ideal state for tyres, most especially if the taxi inspector pops round, and so I resolved to remedy it.
It is ages since I have driven any long distance, not that Morecambe is a long distance, and apart from forgetting to take the top sign off, which considerably increases wind resistance and therefore fuel use, and also discovering, to my horror, about two miles along the motorway, that I was still in third gear, it passed without event.
It is easy enough to forget about the top sign because when I am standing next to the taxi I am not tall enough to see it. I have to approach it from a distance.
I did take it off in the end. Putting it back is always a bit hazardous, I have saved that until I go to work.
Apart from that, my day has not been very eventful. I have become mindful that our magical trip to Glyndebourne is approaching at high speed, and have begun to think about clothes.
It is a good job I have started to think about this, because when I looked it turned out that I do not have anything at all that I can wear.
I mean, really not anything. I have got half a dozen beautiful dresses, and every single one is about four sizes too big.
I tried them all on, dolefully, this afternoon. I look like a grey-haired raisin hiding in some very elegantly flowered sacks.
I found a beautiful dress which could possibly be altered to fit, and a beautiful jacket about which I thought the same, but even I could see that they clashed dreadfully. I don’t think scarlet and vibrant deep pink make good companions, although the overall effect was quite startlingly striking.
There was a very nice chintzy one which made me look like a nineteen seventies armchair from which the stuffing had been removed, and a divine ball gown whose neckline was so revealing that the whole dress just slipped off my shoulders, even with the zip pulled up. There was a cotton one which made me look like Marilla in Anne of Green Gables, and a cocktail dress into which I could have fitted me and a cocktail waiter.
I even tried on an old dress of Lucy’s, left over from school, which fitted fairly well, but which looked as though it had been designed for a teenager hoping for a hot date, and which I instantly dismissed as not matching my wrinkles.
In the end I bought a dress on eBay which was £6.50, so it is absolutely bound to be sophisticated and middle-class. I will wait and see what it looks like when it turns up, and possibly get one of the old ones altered as well. I am sure it is very lovely to be thin, but it is turning out to be tiresomely costly.
I quite like the idea of eating more chocolate.
I might try that instead.
