Mark is coming home tomorrow.
This is a surprise, although obviously not an unwelcome one. We didn’t have a return date for this job, you might recall that the directive was that he would stay on the rig until the job was finished. It isn’t finished, but the rig has gone into shut down and has booted off lots of itinerant welders in order to free up their beds for an influx of maintenance workers.
It sounds as though he will be required to go back in a few weeks.
I am hoping very hard that if this turns out to be the case it will not clash horribly with our trip to Glyndebourne.
Fortunately I have already tidied the house, and as good fortune would have it, I have spent today cooking things.
Actually I did not spend all of the day cooking things. I spent the first half of the day trailing over the fells with the dogs and then taking all my clothes off at home in order to substitute clothes that were not completely sodden. It had not been raining when I set off, and I had not bothered about my macintosh.
I had to wring my socks out.
I lit the fire, because of drying laundry as well as my dripping boots, after which the rain cleared and the day became pleasantly temperate with a warm little breeze.
I grumbled about the Weather Gods but kept the washing in the kitchen anyway. I have been caught out too many times to fall for that one.
After that Mark called, which he usually does at around twelve o’clock or thereabouts. He has developed some concern about my sartorial appearance, which is reasonably justified, and went on and on about finding some sensible flat sandals to wear to Glyndebourne, because obviously you can’t wear heels for trailing around their extensively lawned gardens.
I wouldn’t be wearing heels anyway, because I have never quite mastered the art of walking in them, but misfortunately when I have become thinner, my feet have also got smaller, and all of my shoes flap about dreadfully. This makes dignified walking about as easy as if I had donned a bucket for each foot and was stumbling around lifting them with baler twine tied around the handles.
In the end he suggested that I went to look in the shoe shop in the village.
He was on the telephone so I took him with me, and together we hunted for footwear that managed to combine middle-class sophistication with comfortable flatness.
Actually I found the pair that I liked within the first three seconds of walking into the shop, and they turned out to be exactly in my size, which, it appeared, is now four and a half.
I trotted around in front of the mirrors, chatting to Mark and trying to work out how to show him pictures on my telephone, whilst the lady behind the counter tried not to look as though she thought I was mental.
We did not just purchase the one pair. The council is issuing an edict that taxi drivers must not drive in flip flops. They issued it ages ago, actually, but they have mentioned it again, so perhaps they mean it.
I am unlikely to take any more notice now than I did when they issued it in the first place, but it would be very nice to have a back-up in the event that the council meant it so seriously that somebody turned up on the taxi rank and sent all flip-flop wearers home.
Hence I admired a sensible pair of sandals which I could conceivably wear for work, since they are not flip-flops, and Mark, who has absolutely no sense of economical restraint, decided that we should purchase them there and then, with the end result that as well as having flat shoes, we are now flat broke.
I do not mind. I will look reasonably convincingly middle class at Glyndebourne.
We can always earn some more cash.
